Inclusive Development With Consolidation of Public Finances, Financial Stability, Employment Generation - FM
UNION Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee said that economic policies need to be designed in such a manner that the redistributing process does not feed off the public finances and the growth process itself is not hampered. To achieve this objective, inclusive development needs to be combined with consolidation of public finances, financial stability, employment generation and economic growth. The Finance Minister was delivering the inaugural at the two-days International Conference on ‘Economic Policies for Inclusive Development'. The Finance Minister said that some of the aforesaid competing concerns could be addressed through an optimal policy mix, which should also be one of the discussion priorities of this international conference.
The Finance Minister said that India has experienced a fairly long period of rapid economic growth and since 2003-04; there has been a further step up in India's GDP growth rate with the economy moving to a high trajectory growth rate of 8.5% to 9% per annum. He said that India's economy has become remarkably resilient to both external and domestic shocks. He said that it has not only recovered rapidly from the global economic downturn but also took the monsoon failure last year in its stride and is now showing robust growth. The Finance Minister said that 11th Five Year Plan endorsed a need for inclusive growth to ensure equality of opportunity for all. He said that a multipronged strategy was adopted that included rapid growth for reducing poverty and creating employment opportunities, improving access to essential services in health and education especially for the poor, empowerment through education and skill development and creating employment opportunities supplemented by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
The Finance Secretary, Ashok Chawla delivering the welcome address said that though Indian economy has shown resilience in past many years as far as its GDP growth is concerned yet it faces the challenge of high inflation especially food inflation. Chawla said that the Central Government has taken various anti inflationary measures to contain the inflation especially the food inflation at reasonable and acceptable level. He said that higher agriculture growth would not only help in achieving food security but also in containing food inflation. He said that the Government has accorded high importance to financial inclusion to cover the entire gamut of financial services and to ensure that gains of growth reach to the maximum number of people at large.