'8% growth will earn India silver medal in Olympics'

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New Delhi, Jul 18: Notwithstanding the acute oil crisis and the resultant inflationary pressures, India will record over 8% economic growth and prices will moderate by year-end, finance minister P Chidambaram said on Friday.

At the same time, he made it clear that the inflation management would get the top priority and reasonable growth the second.

“I still maintain that we will grow at a 8% plus... we are managing in a difficult year but I think by the end of this year we would be able to bring about a moderation in inflation as well as return a reasonable growth,” Chidambaram said.

Admitting that it has been the most difficult of the five years as finance minister in the UPA government, he said India has been hit by the global financial, food and fuel crises and anybody who thought the country would not be affected by the global turbulence would be “naive”.

“If our economy is growing at 8%, we should not wear sackcloth and ashes and mourn. We should celebrate. Eight per cent growth will still make us the silver medallist in the World Olympics,” he said.

Very few countries and hardly any large nation except China are growing at 8%, he said and pointed out that 8% growth will still be higher than the average rate of 5.8% achieved during the six years of NDA rule.

“We would still have to balance between inflation and growth giving inflation control the first priority and reasonable growth the second priority until the world economy returns to a more stable and more normal path.”

Terming the current year as difficult one, Chidambaram said, “We will have some good years, we will have some difficult years... we must learn to manage our economy through good times and not-so good times.”

Pointing out that during the first four years of the UPA rule the per capita income grew, capital flows soared and output increased, the finance minister said, “We could have cruised along in the fifth year and we could have ended this year also with 9% growth. However, the world context changed dramatically.”