 "Arun Jaitley")
Enthused over encouraging GDP numbers, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the government will push ahead with its reform agenda to retain the fastest growing large economy tag and help India move towards becoming "a more developed economy".
"For India to realise its full potential for the next few decades, India certainly needs to pursue its programme for economic growth more vigorously and it's only then by maintaining higher level of growth that we can attract best response as far as poverty alleviation is concerned," he said delivering a lecture at Osaka University here.
Notwithstanding an unsupportive global environment, India clocked a GDP growth of 7.9% in the January-March quarter and 7.6% for the entire 2015-16 fiscal on account of the government's pro-growth policies, he said.
Jaitley further said, "India will maintain this paramount position of fastest growing economy in the world. And if we do that, we can present ourselves as a society which evolves from an emerging economy and moves towards a more developed economy."
"And we have a pipeline of reforms still left over the next few years to be implemented and notwithstanding global slowdown and two years of bad monsoon, we have reached a situation where we still have the highest growth rate in the world," he said.
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On future outlook, Jaitley said that he wasn't sure if the world growth would be supportive, but monsoon rainfall in India this year promises to be better and that itself will push growth.
"Our reform process, I am confident, is going to continue. It has helped us in restoring the credibility of the economy... and both domestic and international investors feel much more confident about investing in India. That has helped us," he said.
Jaitley, who arrived here on the second-leg of his six-day investor-wooing trip to Japan, said that he has seen enthusiasm during his visit and various pension and sovereign funds as well as investors were "very seriously looking at India as a possible destination".
"We offer them much better returns and hopefully a combination of these factors are increasing domestic demand," he said.
