PM says India to persist with open-trade regime

'The country can get back to 8% growth rate in the short to medium term'

India will persist with open trade regime, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said expressing confidence that the impact of the slew of measures initiated to boost the economy will be "visible" soon.

Asserting that fundamentals of Indian economy remain strong, he said India can get back to 8 per cent growth rate in the short to medium term.

"... We are purposefully addressing the fiscal and current account deficits. At the same time, we will persist with our open trade regime. I am confident that the impact of these measures will be visible soon," Singh told Indonesian newspaper Kompass.

Noting that India's savings and investment rates are still over 30 per cent of the GDP, Singh said that given capital output ratios, "we can restore the growth momentum to 8 per cent per year in the short to medium term".

To bolster growth, which declined to 5 per cent in the last fiscal, the government has taken a number of reform steps.

The prime minister said various reform measures to boost domestic investments, attract more foreign investments, strengthen the financial sector and improve and simplify the tax regime have been taken.

"We have launched a broad range of entitlement programmes for the vulnerable sections of our population that require special attention of the government," Singh said.

Acknowledging that are some supply side bottlenecks, he said those are being addressed through policy and administrative reforms.

"If you leave aside last year's economic performance, in the previous nine years, the Indian economy has grown at an average annual rate of about 8 per cent per annum.

"This is the highest rate of growth achieved by India in any previous decade," he added.