India needs sustained GDP growth of 9-10%: Jaitley

Says this will help create better infrastructure, bring down poverty faster

India’s economy needs to reach an annual growth rate of 9  per cent  to 10  per cent  and then sustain that activity “many, many more years than 10 years” in order to improve infrastructure and bring down rampant poverty, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said  here on Tuesday.

“We need resources and I can’t get resources until I grow by 9 to 10  per cent. And therefore, I would like to see India grow by that rate for the next 10 years,” Jaitley said in response to a question following an impromptu speech at the Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Jaitley, in New York on a private trip just two days after presenting the Budget that focused on boosting growth before taking on structural reforms, said he realises that to achieve this goal, the $2 trillion South Asian economy needs to find investment from outside.

“I have no doubt about the fact that the investment available within the country is very modest. Even our banks' ability to finance that is modest, and, therefore, we need it from wherever it is available,” he said.

The new Budget is the first full-year Budget since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's landslide election victory last May.

It promised higher investment in India’s decrepit roads and railways, while offering the carrot of tax cuts to global companies but the stick of tighter rules to get business tycoons to invest at home rather than stash wealth abroad.

India’s economy is forecast to accelerate to 8-8.5  per cent  growth in the fiscal year starting in April, up from 7.4  per cent  this year. Jaitley used China as the example of what high growth rates can do over a decades-long period. He said that if the country could reach 8  per cent  growth and then boost that to the 9-10  per cent  range, “we will have substantially created a better infrastructure and brought down poverty rates at a faster pace.”