By IANS,
New Delhi: Fundamentals of the Indian economy are strong and the government has the ability to address the immediate concerns of price rise, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Thursday.
“Though there are some immediate concerns for economic management arising from inflationary pressures, and from the uncertain external environment, we have the ability to address them,” Mukherjee said during his pre-budget consultations with NGOs here.
Soaring prices of essential commodities have become a big concern for the government. Annual food inflation has almost doubled during the last one and a half months. The food inflation has eased marginally to 16.91 percent for the week ended Jan 1 from 18.32 percent in the previous week.
The finance minister said Indian economy has recovered robustly during the current financial year from an unprecedented global economic slowdown. “The recovery has been broad based with agriculture, industry and services – all contributing to the consolidation of the growth momentum.”
Mukherjee said the challenge was to sustain this high economic growth over an extended period of time and find the means to cross the “double-digit growth barrier” in the coming years.
“The objective is to harness this growth to make the development process more inclusive, strengthen food security, improve education opportunities and health facilities both in rural and urban areas,” he said.
“At the same time, we are looking to address the weaknesses in our systems, structures and institutions at different levels of governance,” he added.
This was the fourth meeting in the series of pre-budget consultations held by finance minister with the stakeholders of different sectors.
The finance minister has already held pre-budget consultations with stakeholders of agriculture, industry and trade unions.