By NNN-PTI,
New Delhi : India’s economic growth may slip to about 7 per cent in the current fiscal in the wake of global financial meltdown, Chairman of Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Suresh Tendulkar said .
“My gut feeling is that it (economic growth rate) may come down to seven per cent…We will take another look in January taking into account the data which are coming,” Tendulkar told reporters on Saturday at the sidelines of a meeting called by the Planning Commission to review the implications of global economic slowdown.
The PMEAC in August had forecast a gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 7.7 per cent.
There are some positive and some negative developments which will have implications on India’s economic growth, he said, adding, “one or two decimal points above and below 7 per cent should not be a worry”.
The Reserve Bank of India in its latest policy review on October 24 projected a GDP growth of 7.5-8 per cent, while Finance Minister P Chidambaram recently expressed the optimism that economy would grow by 8 per cent despite global crisis.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its latest World Economic Outlook update released two days ago has projected a growth rate of 7.8 per cent for India, down by 0.1 per cent from its earlier forecast in October.
“Seven per cent growth should not worry us. We will still be recording second highest growth rate in the world (after China),” Tendulkar said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his recent interaction with captains of India Inc had said that “a crisis of this magnitude was bound to effect our economy and it has”.
India has recorded an economic growth of nine per cent in 2007-08 and was projected to grow at an average of 8.3 per cent during the Eleventh Plan period.