PMEAC anticipates that GDP may grow at 6.4pc in 2013 fiscal year

The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) said here today that, it is expecting the economic growth rate will be 6.4 per cent in the current fiscal, 2013-14 as against the 5 per cent in the previous fiscal.

The expected raise in the growth rate is due to the improvement in performance of agriculture, manufacturing and services sector. The Council Chairman C Rangarajan while releasing the Economic Review 2012-13 her said, "Economy will grow at higher rate from now. We projected growth rate of 6.4 per cent in the current fiscal".

In 2012-13 the country's Economic growth rate had slipped to decade's low of 5 per cent mainly on account of the impact of the global financial afflictions. 

According to Mr. Rangarajan, the agriculture sector was likely to grow at 3.5 per cent compared to 1.8 per cent in the previous fiscal and in case of industry and services sectors, the growth rates have been projected at 4.9 per cent (3.1 per cent in 2012-13) and 7.7 per cent (6.6 per cent), respectively.

He also said, the raising Current Account Deficit, may come down to 4.7 per cent of the GDP in current fiscal from about 5.1 percent in the previous fiscal. The CAD heightened to an historic high of 6.7 per cent of the GDP for the quarter ended December 2012.

He noted that the government would have to maintain an attractive return in financial assets for bringing down the demand of gold and also price and subsidy reforms in petroleum products need to be completed to control our oil import bill.

The PMEAC said though inflation continues to remain high there are signs that Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based inflation is coming down. It has pegged inflation at 6 per cent in 2013-14 and the provisional figure for inflation at the end of 2012-13 is 5.96 percent.

Mr. Rangarajan finally said if India grows at 8-9 per cent per annum, "we will graduate to the level of a middle income country by 2025".