After a gap of less than five months, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a meeting of the industry representatives to take stock of the economic scenario. Singh met the industry last in November to take account of the financial crisis.
Notable among those who have been invited for the meeting tomorrow are K V Kamath of ICICI, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance, Anil Ambani of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, Rahul Bajaj of Bajaj Auto, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Airtel, Deepak Parekh of HDFC and Kumar Mangalam Birla of Aditya Birla Group. The presidents of three industry associations — CII, Ficii and Assocham — are also expected to attend the meeting.
“We will try and impress upon the government that economic growth should continue and steps such as interest rates reduction should be taken to maintain a healthy growth rate,” said Harsh Pati Singhania, Ficci president and managing director of J K Paper.
After posting growth of over 9 per cent in the preceding three financial years, the Indian economy is projected to grow only at 7.1 per cent during the current fiscal year, as per an estimate by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO).
For the first time in 16 years, India’s industrial production has seen a decline for two consecutive months. In December 2008, production declined 0.63 per cent,, while in January, the output dipped 0.5 per cent.
Exports are not doing well either. While exports during the April-January period of the current year posted an increase of 13.2 per cent in dollar terms over the same period last year, January exports registered a decline of 15.9 per cent. This has had impact on employment intensive sectors like textile, leather, gems and jewellery.
The government has taken measures like lowering taxes rates to drive the consumer spending while the Reserve Bank of India has been taking steps to infuse liquidity into the economy.