While the Reserve Bank has projected growth rate of 5.5

per cent for the current financial year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has pegged it at 5.4 per cent. The Finance Ministry had earlier reduced the growth projection for the current fiscal to 5.7-5.9 per cent from the original estimate of 7.6 per cent. With a view to promoting growth, the RBI in its quarterly policy review last month lowered the key lending rate by 0.25 per cent and reduced the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) by the same margin, releasing Rs 18,000 crore or primary liquidity into the system. When asked about the possibility of further lowering of interest rate to boost growth, RBI Governor D Subbarao, who is in Guwahati for board meeting, said: "We got to know about the CSO projection. We will take that into account as and when we make our next policy... I am unable to comment on rate cuts at this forum". The latest estimate of 5 per cent for the entire fiscal means that the pace of economic expansion has slowed sharply in the second half of 2012-13, given that GDP growth in the April-September period stood at 5.4 per cent. This estimation, however, has been objected by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia who said: "I am not certain that whether they (CSO) have done it in a correct way. In the past also, the quarterly (GDP) data was very frequently adjusted." According to Ahluwalia, the CSO ignored the uptrend in growth towards the second half of the fiscal while computing the data for the whole financial year. The data suggests that services sector including finance, insurance, real estate and business services sectors are likely to grow by 8.6 per cent this fiscal, against 11.7 per cent last fiscal. On the positive side, mining and quarrying is likely be slightly better at 0.4 per cent, compared to contraction of growth of 0.6 per cent a year ago. Growth in construction is also likely to be 5.9 per cent in 2012-13, against 5.6 per cent last year.