'In 2012-13, aim for 8% GDP'

The Budget should aim at raising the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate to eight per cent in 2012-13 from expected seven per cent in this financial year, said Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

“We should aim at eight per cent (growth) next year and from then onward, we can build on to a more rapid growth. The most important thing will be a Budget that signals a return to fiscal consolidation,” Ahluwalia said in an interview with Karan Thapar on CNBC-TV18.

“The government’s objective in the Budget should be to recover the growth momentum.” The government, last month, revised the growth forecast for the current financial year downward to 7.5 per cent, on domestic concerns like high inflation and slowing industrial output, besides a global slowdown. The Indian economy had expanded by 8.5 per cent in 2010-11.

During the first half this financial year, economic growth stood at 7.3 per cent. In the second quarter (July-September) of 2011-12, growth slipped to a two-year low of 6.9 per cent.

“How much we can do to uncork the bottlenecks in infrastructure depends on the confidence the Budget can bring in. But I think it would be reasonable for us to try to take the economy back to eight per cent (growth),” he said.

Ahluwalia said the aim should be to create conditions for greater investment by the private and public sectors. “Public sector undertakings (PSUs) have a lot of cash and should invest in energy or infrastructure. I think those are the things we focus on,” he said.

According to him, it would be possible to signal international investors that India’s growth fell to seven per cent, but is on the way up again.

“There would not be, too, many countries doing that, other than China,” he said. He pegged growth in the current year at seven per cent.

“I think we are going to end the year with around seven per cent growth, without the panic about inflation... That’s a good time to look at what the next year is going to look like,” he said.

He said at a time when sovereign ratings of many euro zone countries have been downgraded and global uncertainty, markets in India and abroad are looking to see which countries are positioning themselves well.

“In my view, India is in a position where we could give signals that position us well,” he said.

Asked about the fiscal deficit target of 4.6 per cent of the GDP in 2011-12, he said, “I do not want to go beyond what the finance minister has said. I think what the finance minister said is that it (fiscal deficit) is going to be worse, but he is working on the fiscal consolidation programme and you just have to wait till the Budget to know what that is.”

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has already said meeting the 4.6 per cent fiscal deficit target would be difficult in view of the economic slowdown and less-than-expected revenue collection. “I do not think seven per cent or 6.5 per cent (fiscal deficit) is remotely possible... I can easily argue that a deterioration in fiscal deficit on the order of maybe one percentage point to GDP from 4.6 per cent to 5.6 per cent could be little bit higher. This is not something that is new,” Ahluwalia said.

According to him, markets are aware of the likelihood of slippage against this year’s fiscal deficit target. “Markets anticipated it and everything that you are seeing reflects the fact that the fiscal deficit has slipped... Fiscal deficits basically increase because of less revenue than you expect,” he said.