Economy has resilience to reverse slowdown, says PM

New Delhi, December 20

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said the Indian economy has the resilience to reverse the current slowdown and return to high growth trajectory and exhorted corporates to take bold investment decisions to help push up GDP growth.

Modi highlighted his government’s decisions such as decriminalisation of corporate offences and promised that “no inappropriate action will be taken on genuine corporate decisions”.

Speaking at an Assocham event, he said a massive Rs 100 lakh crore will be spent in the coming years on building infrastructure and another Rs 25 lakh crore on rural economy and this will help nearly double the size of the economy to $5 trillion by 2024.

“I am fully aware of the discussions happening around (current economic slowdown). I don’t challenge comments made on it. I try to take away positives from such discourse,” he said.

He went on to add that economic growth had fallen to 3.5% in one of the quarters during the previous Congress-led UPA regime with inflation hovering at 9.4%, core inflation at 7.3% and wholesale inflation at 5.2% while the fiscal deficit had widened to 5.6% of the GDP.

During the tenure of Modi government, GDP growth has fallen to a six-year low of 4.5% in July-September 2019 amid slump in manufacturing and declining consumption.

“I don’t say why some people were silent when GDP growth rate slipped quarter after quarter,” he said. “These kinds of ups and downs have been seen in the past but the country has the potential to come out of these circumstances,” he said exuding confidence of returning to a high growth trajectory. — PTI