India needs to improve macro-economic parameters like inflation, fiscal balance and current account deficit to achieve 9 per cent growth rate, President Pranab Mukherjee said today.
"...Unless many of our current macro-economic indicators like price level, fiscal balance and current account balance improves, it will be difficult to revive economic growth to the 9 per cent plus levels which is absolutely imperative if we want to achieve the objective of removing poverty," he said while addressing an AIMA function here.
India's economic growth rate slipped from 9.3 per cent in 2010-11 to 6.2 per cent in 2011-12. It is estimated to fall to 5 per cent in 2012-13.
The immediate challenge before the country, Mukherjee said, is to "reverse the deceleration in growth".
"It is possible for us to re-enter the 7-8 per cent growth bracket in the next two to three years. But for that, we must revitalise investments in the country," he added.
The decline in growth, he added, is due to factors like tight monetary policy aimed at containing inflation, lack of adequate procedural flexibility for projects and reduction in export demand due to global slowdown.
In order to improve the macro-economic parameters, the government has drawn a road-map to bring down the fiscal deficit to 3 per cent of the GDP by 2016-17, from 5.2 per cent in 2012-13. Similarly, steps are being taken to reduce the current account deficit, which touched a historic high of 6.7 per cent of the GDP in the quarter ended December 2012.
Although the WPI inflation moderated to 6.84 per cent in February, retail inflation continued to remain a matter of concern at 10.91 per cent in the same month.
