India needs strong, decisive govt to maintain high growth: Jaitley

New Delhi, October 16

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said India needed a strong and decisive leadership at the Centre to continue its high growth path and take swift decisions.

Outlining the challenges for India, Jaitley said being a net buyer of oil, a rise in global crude prices adversely impacted the country and hence the economy had to be resilient to deal with it.

“If this path of high growth trajectory is to continue...if these higher growth, higher revenues and higher resources have to continue, better infrastructure objective has to be achieved, India needs a strong and decisive leadership at the Centre.

“A weak leadership, within days of crisis, could not have handled IL&FS the way the present government did and, therefore, a crisis in the making was handled with swiftness,” Jaitley said in his address to the AGM of industry chamber Assocham.

Debt-ridden IL&FS and its group companies had defaulted on loan repayments, following which the government superseded its Board by appointing eminent banker Uday Kotak as its Chairman, he said.

Talking about the political challenges facing the country, Jaitley said these are thrown up by unstable coalition and aspiring politicians, who wanted to acquire the top place.

“Therefore, today what India needs is not individuals with lack of understanding of policies, lack of understanding of directions or inherently unstable coalition, but a government and leadership with absolute clarity about the direction so that this unique position which the IMF refers to as a sweet spot in the world, this sweet spot we continue to occupy for the next two decades,” he said.

Jaitley said if India continued on high growth path then the country could get rid of poverty and become a developed country.

“You need a decisive government, you need a government which has a coherent policy and is absolutely clear in the direction you have to move, and you need a government which is not dependent on those who would try to pull the government down by their strategies,” Jaitley said in his video-conference address.

Indian economy grew at 8.2 per cent in the April-June quarter of current fiscal. It grew at 6.7 per cent in 2017-18 fiscal.

Stating that domestic policies of certain countries had spillover effects on India, Jaitley hoped such effects would not be everlasting and were transient in character.

“As a fast-growing economy we have the capacity to face these challenges,” he said.

Jaitley said global oil prices had risen on account of “artificial shortages” and it had adversely impacted India. India imports 83 per cent of its oil needs.

“Therefore, we have to face that challenge by making our economy so resilient itself that we have the capacity to bear that challenge,” he added. PTI