India can achieve 8 per cent GDP growth, says President

Kolkata: Stating the nation could achieve an eight percent GDP growth, President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday lauded the Narendra Modi government's initiatives including Digital India, Make in India and Swachh Bharat which made India a lucrative investment destination.

"The political stability and government's new initiatives like Swachh Bharat, Make in India, Digital India, Skill India, made India an attractive investment destination in the eyes of various countries," said Mukherjee, while inaugurating the 185^th Anniversary Celebrations of Calcutta Chamber of Commerce.

Mukherjee also said that a period of high growth, particularly in the middle years of last decade fuelled the augmentation of country's GDP growth.

"Though in 2012-13 the country could only manage a growth less than five per cent, our economic growth in all the other years has not been less than 6.6 per cent. The country did have good years of growth in the past record, despite the fact that protracted global economic slowdown had affected the growth performance of all the major economies", he claimed.

Mukherjee said, "an invigorate manufacturing sector will further pave the way for bettering the economic performance."

During the years 2005-06 to 2007-08 our economy grew by more than nine percent which was followed by the increment of exports in excess by 20 per cent.

Though exports have come down in the last three years, the decline in oil prices has also caused a diminution of the import bill, he said.

This had further assisted in keeping the current deficit at a tractable level of 1.4 per cent last year. The country was holding up its foreign exchange reserves at a comfortable level i.e. $353 billion as per the end of October.

"An integrated effort in this direction will surely help India to procure an eight percent GDP growth rate" he added.

(With inputs from agencies)