India's FinMin Says Raising GDP Growth Immediate Challenge To Government

(RTTNews) - The immediate challenges before the India government is to increase the growth rate as it will boost both the economic activities and the revenue collections, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at the pre budget consultation meeting on Friday.

Based on different estimates, he said the economy is likely to grow in the range of 6 to 6.5 percent in 2015-16 even though it has a potential to grow at much higher rate.

He urged regional finance ministers to work with the central government for putting India back on the higher growth path.

The minister noted that the growth in service sector is quite good while growth in agriculture is reasonable. He referred to the patchy growth in the manufacturing sector and stated that this was one of the biggest challenge for the government.

In an interview to the broadcaster NDTV Profit, Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan said India is currently not in a phase of strong growth, but there is high possibility that the country will return to strong growth in next two years.