By IANS
New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday chaired a high-level meeting to review the performance of Indian economy and assess the impact of global slowdown and rising rupee on the country’s growth.
“Our policy must be tuned to sustain nine percent growth even if world growth slows down and global food and fuel prices continue to remain under pressure,” the prime minister told the meeting of the Council on Trade and Industry.
“India should have the ambition and courage to sustain the current acceleration of growth no matter what happens globally. Our domestic economy can sustain such a growth process, but we will need to pursue policies that can sustain growth.”
At the same time, the country must remain alert to trends in the global economy and recognise that the world was looking at India as the new engine of growth, with the potential to lift the overall global economy, Manmohan Singh said.
“If our economy continues to grow despite a global slowdown, we will be able to lift millions of our people from poverty and generate employment for our youth”.
Financed Minister P. Chidambaram, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and industrialists like Ratan Tata, Rahul Bajaj and Mukesh Ambani attended the meeting.
The other representatives of India Inc. at the meeting included Keshub Mahindra, R.P. Goenka, Jemshed Godrej, N.R. Narayanamurthy, Anji Reddy, Sunil B. Mittal, Sunil Munjal and Deepak Parekh.
The prime minister drew the attention of the participants to the next five-year plan’s strategy of paying special attention to education, and said expenditure on this sector will be increased from seven percent of total plan outlay to 19 percent.
Manmohan Singh invited Indian industry to come forward with new ideas on how the education system in the country can be expanded and modernised so that it addresses the challenges of the future.
“We must not become slaves of the past. We need creative thinking and fresh thinking to address the challenges we face in education.”
The participants at the meeting drew comfort from the fact that the Indian economy was growing at an impressive rate of above nine percent but also felt that some challenges remained in the form of rupee appreciation.
Speaking to reporters later, Kamal Nath said while the currency appreciation had affected exports and raised the prices of some commodities, the country’s target of $160 billion in merchandise exports for this fiscal (2007-08) remained unchanged.