By IANS
New Delhi : India will attain a growth rate close to nine percent in the current financial year 2007-08, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said Friday.
“The Indian economy is growing at about 8.6 percent and that has been the growth rate for the past four years now. In 2007-08, we will achieve a growth rate close to nine percent,” he said while addressing a business delegation from Iceland here at a function organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
The minister also said that oil prices, which have reached closed to $100 a barrel, would continue to surge along with the prices of commodities and food prices.
“We need to ensure that these prices remain in control and that inflation should not go out of hand,” he said.
Raising the issue of signs of slowdown in global markets and “turbulence” in the stock markets, Chidambaram said: “We cannot afford shocks, we cannot afford major turbulences; hence India will continue to remain cautious.”