Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday expressed confidence that inflation would fall to seven percent by March and that the country would grow by 8.5 per cent in the current fiscal.
The PM said the government is pushing its economic reform agenda. “I sincerely hope that in this current Budget you will see a clearer picture of the reform agendas that our government has. We have not given up, we will persist,” said Dr Singh.
“We have to deal with inflation despite an adverse international environment and you have my assurance that we will succeed. And, at the end of the fiscal year, the inflation rate should come down to no more than seven percent,” said Dr Singh. He said the government didn’t want to take steps to hurt growth momentum. “If we were concerned with only curbing inflation I think we could have done it by pursuing tighter monetary policies, we could have brought about a situation where price rise could be moderated. But if in the process the growth process gets hurt, I think that wouldn’t do our country any good,” said the PM.