Come what may, Chidambaram says he will pursue for 8% growth

Chennai, Sept 10: Finance minister P Chidambaram on Sunday said any dissent in the way of achieving 8% economic growth a year would be brushed aside.

“My intention is to ensure that India will grow at 8% annually over the next few years. Any dissent in the way of achieving the said growth will be brushed aside,” he said a gathering including overseas visitors and customers, at a function to launch the $286-million expansion plan of SPEL Semiconductor Ltd.

When asked to elaborate on his comment, he said, ‘‘Why should there be any action as long as we can accommodate debate and dissent.”

Earlier, he said India can replicate the success of IT in hardware and emphasised the industry would not take 15 long years to achieve the success of IT in hardware. “We should have the confidence to make India also a hub for hardware manufacturing,” he said. Given its pool of skilled young professionals and entrepreneurs. India can have a complete hardware manufacturing capability in the years to come, he added. While asking the company to invest in R&D, the finance minister cautioned that due to increased recruitment of leading IT companies in India there would be a shortfall of qualified engineers in the field of manufacturing, chemical, civil, mining and metallurgical. ‘‘We must pay attention to human resources development to take care of other industries too to achieve a sustainable and balanced growth,” Chidambaram said.

Expressing his anguish over knowledge-borrowing from other countries, he said knowledge will not come free of cost. It was important India became a knowledge producing, knowledge inventing and knowledge sharing country to the world.

—To achieve this, one should focus on investing heavily in R&D, he said.

Package soon for hardware industry

The government will soon announce a policy incentive package to the hardware industry. Both the ICT and the finance ministries are working towards this and will be announcing the same in the next two to three weeks, said P Chidambaram.

Responding to specific queries, he said it will be the combination of fiscal incentives and the package would be announced after the return of Prime Minister from the US, he added.