PM Modi meets NITI Aayog members, discusses ways to speed up economic growth

Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended an interactive session with economists and other experts, organised by NITI Aayog on Tuesday on the theme “Economic Policy – The Road Ahead” during which he called for innovative approaches in areas such as skill development and tourism.

Modi said that the existing budget cycle has an effect on the real economy. He said that in the authorisation of expenditure comes with the onset of the monsoon in the budget calendar. This, he said, results in government programmes being relatively inactive in the productive pre-monsoon months. Keeping this in view, the date of budget presentation is being advanced, so that expenditure is authorised by the time the new financial year begins, Modi said.

During the session, participants shared their views on various economic themes such as agriculture, skill development and job creation, taxation and tariff related matters, education, digital technology, housing, tourism, banking, governance reform, data driven policy and future steps for economic growth.

The meeting was attended by finance minister Arun Jaitley, minister of state for planning Rao Inderjit Singh, the vice-chairman of NITI Aayog Arvind Panagariya, and senior officers from the Union government and NITI Aayog. 

The meeting was significant in view of various multilateral agencies and RBI lowering growth forecast for the current fiscal.

RBI has reduced the economic growth forecast to 7.1% from 7.6% in its monetary policy review earlier this month.

Multilateral funding body Asian Development Bank (ADB) too slashed growth projection to 7% for the current fiscal, from its earlier 7.4% due to the impact of demonetisation on economic activities.

Indian economy expanded by 7.1% and 7.3% in first and second quarters of 2016-17.

Economists, including former Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, have raised concerns that demonetisation will disrupt the economy and pull down GDP growth rate for this fiscal by up to two percentage points.