Confident that the economy will grow at 9 per cent this year despite concerns of a global slowdown — even as prices are kept at “acceptable levels” —Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday took a strong dig at the performance of the governments that came between the Narasimha Rao regime and the UPA. Stressing that the “underlying optimism” in the economy today was also seen in the early 1990s, the PM lamented that it was “not sustained”.“After three years of above 7 per cent annual growth between 1992 and 1997, the economy slowed down considerably. In the Ninth Plan, between 1997-98 to 2002, the growth rate declined to 5.5 per cent. The governments of the day were unable to inspire. They were preoccupied with divisive agendas and their economic agenda was not sufficiently focussed,” Singh said.Hinting that the NDA government didn’t make any attempt to make growth “broad-based” and “inclusive”, the Prime Minister argued that the UPA has “simultaneously” succeeded in accelerating economic growth and putting in place the basic architecture to ensure this growth is “more socially inclusive” and therefore, “more sustainable” in the medium term.Addressing the annual general meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the PM said he knew that the industry was not happy about UPA’s “emphasis on inflation control” but pointed out that “in a country where 90 per cent of people live in the unorganised sector, inflation can be very painful” and give rise to “widespread discontent” that can hurt the growth process. “No government in our country can be oblivious to the objective of ensuring reasonable price stability without hurting the growth process,” he said.On whether India’s growth prospects could be hit by the global slowdown led by the US, the PM said, “To some extent, a major part of our growth story is driven by domestic factors, particularly improved investment and consumption demand. At the same time, we must be aware that we cannot be completely insulated from chilly global winds that may blow in our direction.” “The Finance and Commerce Ministers are seized of the matter. The domestic economy has the potential to sustain such growth. The challenge is to ensure that we tap into this potential,” the PM said. “Government and business can achieve a lot by working together. Patriotism is not the monopoly of the political class,” Singh underlined.The PM reiterated his point about previous regimes’ inefficiency again while emphasising the UPA’s ambitious programmes for reviving Indian agriculture, education, infrastructure and healthcare. Pointing out that allocation for agriculture and irrigation has been tripled in the 11th Plan compared to the 10th Plan, the PM said this demonstrates the UPA’s commitment to reverse “the unfortunate trend we saw between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s of a decline in investment in agriculture”.“We cannot have a situation where 80 per cent of our agricultural sector is outside the formal financial system and suffers from excessive burden of indebtedness. We are trying to resolve this problem and I hope it will be done soon,” he said about the government’s attempts to work out an effective strategy to deal with the scourge of farmer suicides.While stating that a Bill will soon be introduced to ensure that every child has a guaranteed Right to Education, Singh stressed that his government had done more for education than earlier governments. “The expenditure on education in the central gross budgetary support is going to go up from less than 8 per cent in the Tenth Plan to over 19 per cent in the 11th plan. As the most favoured sector, education is now seeing a three-fold increase in its share and a five-fold increase in actual outlays.”Inflation rate eases to 4.07 per centNew Delhi: With the easing of the essential food items and jet fuel it has helped cool inflation rate growth to 4.07 per cent for the week ended February 2. The wholesale price index-based inflation rate was 4.11 per cent in the previous week and 6.58 per cent week in the year-ago period. Although inflation remained below RBI’s forecast of close to 5 per cent for this fiscal, the central bank had yesterday said that the rate was high by global standards and needs to be brought down further. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that it was important to ensure that the poor are not adversely affected by high inflation, particularly of basic items consumption, he added.
