New Delhi: In a strong rebuttal to those doubting India being the fastest growing major economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday reeled out statistics on credit growth and record FDI inflows to underscore that the economic success was the hard-won result of prudence, sound policy and effective management.
“For India to be at the top of global growth tables is an unusual situation.
Obviously, there are some who find that difficult to digest and come up with imaginative and fanciful ideas to belittle that achievement. The fact is that India’s economic success is the hard-won result of prudence, sound policy and effective management,” he said at the Bloomberg India Economic Forum. Stating that India’s growth rate is acknowledged as the highest among major economies, he said, “There are some who remain confused and have said the growth rate does not ‘feel’ right. Perhaps I can be of some assistance to them in reducing the confusion, by stating facts in place of feelings.”
Reeling out statistics, he said there has been a smart pickup in credit growth after September. While credit off-take in the year to February increa-sed by 11.5 per cent, overall fund flow to the corporate sector through equity and borrowings rose by over 30 per cent in the first three quarters of 2015-16.
Also, the trend of firms facing credit rating downgrade in 2013 and 2014 has been reversed and in the first half of fiscal year 2015-16, for every company getting a downgrade, there were more than two companies which received upgrades, the best level in recent years, he said.
Stating that experts are unanimous India is one of the world economy’s brightest spots, he said the country has low inflation, a low balance of payments and current account deficit and a high rate of growth. “This is the result of good policy, not good fortune,” the Prime Minister said.
He said, if oil prices were the driver of success, many emerging econ-omies dependent on oil imports would have shown similar results. But they are not.”
