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The Planning Commission today said the deceleration in economic growth in the first quarter was on expected lines and it may improve in the second half of the fiscal.
"Well, we were aware that the growth rate has been slowing down. We never felt that in the first quarter there was much sign of an improvement...And it's in the second half of the year that we might see an improvement," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said reacting to the first quarter GDP figures for 2013-14.
India's economic growth in the April-June quarter of the current fiscal dipped to 4.4%, the slowest pace in at least four years, dragged down by a contraction in manufacturing and mining.
The economy grew at 5.4% over the same period of 2012-13.
He said the government in the last two three months has initiated lots to measures to revive investment, however, their impact will take some time to be felt.
"...So therefore we were aware that the growth rate in the current year is going to be poor than was predicted when the budget was formulated some time in January...But I didn't expect to see any strong performance in the first quarter," he added.
Pointing towards weak performance by the manufacturing sector, Ahluwalia said high levels of investment is required to give the economy an stimulus and the government has set up the Cabinet Committee on Investment to thrust it.
"I think manufacturing has put in a very weak performance. It is high levels of investment that give us stimulus for a production of capital goods and its true that investment has been down.
"Our analysis has been that one of the reasons why investment is down, is that there are lot of ongoing projects that were held up for a number of regulatory and other clearances. That's why the cabinet committee on investment was set up."
Ahluwalia said the economic growth has to be felt in the second half of the year, adding, the first quarter has shown a pretty weak performance.
He also said that the overall agriculture growth for the fiscal might improve on the back of good monsoon in the current season.
The agriculture sector showed a growth of 2.7% in the April-June quarter of FY14.
