Happy with the high growth in the second quarter, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today expressed confidence that the economy would grow by over 7 per cent this financial year.
"Taken together the two quarters, I do hope it will be possible for us to achieve 7 per cent plus (growth rate), but still it is too early to predict. I will wait for the third quarter figures," Mukherjee told the reporters here.
He was commenting on the official growth figures for the second quarter (July-September 2009-10) which showed the Indian economy recording a growth rate of 7.9 per cent, much more than what was anticipated by any analyst or think tank.
"I am quite happy that the second quarter GDP growth has been registered at 7.9 per cent. In fact it is more than that of the first two quarters of the previous year, which were at 7.8 per cent and 7.7 per cent," he said.
Pointing out that the stimulus given to the industry to combat the impact of the global meltdown were paying dividends, Mukherjee said, "the corporate sector is responding, industrial growth is taking place and negative growth of export has come down in October."
The government had provided three stimulus packages to the industry to fight the impact of global downturn, which pulled down the GDP growth rate to 6.7 per cent in 2008-09 from 9 per cent a year ago.
