India's macroeconomic fundamentals very strong: President

Setting the stage for presentation of the government's Economic Survey for 2017, President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday said India's macroeconomic fundamentals are very strong.

"India has been widely acclaimed as a bright spot in the global economy, at a time when global growth has been slow. The rate of inflation, the balance of payments, current account deficit and the fiscal deficit have been consistently reduced since 2014," Mukherjee said addressing the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on the first day of the Budget Session.

"Foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign exchange reserves have reached record levels. The country's macroeconomic fundamentals are very strong, creating a platform for sustained high growth," he said.

Noting that India is ranked third in the list of top prospective host economies for 2016-18 in the World Investment Report released by Unctad, the President said the FDI policy was further liberalised last year.

"My government further liberalised FDI policy provisions in various sectors in June 2016," he said.

"The FDI inflows in 2015-16 were $55.6 billion, the highest-ever for any financial year," he added.

Declaring the central government had launched the demonetisation drive in November to combat the menace of black money, counterfeiting and terror financing, Mukherjee said it was closely working with state governments to identify constraints in doing business.

"The rankings of the states and union territories show the national implementation average of reforms stands at around 49 per cent, much higher than last year's 32 per cent," he said.

--IANS

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