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No need to alter 9% growth target: Montek

“We can make it up next year”

— Photo: PTI

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia speaks at a conference on ‘Growth and Development of Lagging Regions in India,’ in Hyderabad on Saturday.

HYDERABAD: Even as inflation continues to be in the double digit for the second consecutive week, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the medium term target of achieving 9 per cent growth for five years will not be altered.

“We are not concerned about short term phenomenon and we can make it up next year,” he said. However, Dr. Ahluwalia is not hopeful of achieving 9 per cent growth during the current year and said he would be quite happy with 8 per cent growth during the current fiscal.

He was here on Saturday in connection with a conference on “Growth and Development in Lagging Regions of India “organised by the Administrative Staff College of India.

Dr. Ahluwalia said the country was faced with inflation because of major changes in the oil prices that reached an “unreasonably high” level and the government was doing everything it could to bring it down. “We want the oil prices to stabilise at a more reasonable level and hope that inflation will begin to come down in a few months,” he said.

As part of efforts to check inflation, the Planning Commission had to apply brakes on the monetary policy for a couple of quarters and this might slow down growth. “But, it is not going to be a permanent phenomenon.”

Asked about the performance of small States, he said many were doing quite well. “I don’t think size of a State matters in development,” he said.

Inaugurating the two-day conference earlier, Dr. Ahluwalia set aside the argument that liberalisation had resulted in the rich becoming richer and the poor, poorer. No State actually got poorer in terms of falling per capita income, but the inter-State inequality certainly increased.

There was a need to launch an effective anti-poverty programme where the lagging States got a larger share while connectivity and infrastructure that would make a significant difference in the development of backward regions should be improved. ASCI chairman T. Narasimham presided over the inaugural.

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