``It will happen. We are on course. But one cannot chart out a time-frame for this,'' Dr Acharya said, in an exclusive interview with The Financial Express. Countering the argument that policy failure from the government's side had caused the return of economic slowdown and inflation in recent times, Dr Acharya has attributed them to the rise of oil prices at the international level. Dr Acharya is slated to go on a two-year sabbatical from the ministry.

``I think first of all one should not exaggerate the order of the economic slowdown we are talking about,'' he commented.``Heavens are not going to fall at this reduction of one per cent,'' he asserted.

According to him, if one goes by the various assessments by the different institutions like the Reserve Bank of India, and other independent forcasters including the Delhi School Economics, the CMIE, all of them very broadly had centered their growth target at around six per cent for 2000-2001. At the time of the Budget, the economic growth was estimated at around seven per cent and the ministry of finance had put the growth at 6.5 per cent, he stated. Dr Acharya said one should also remember the context in which the slowdown has occurred. The scenario prevailing at the begining of 1999 has totally changed during the begining of the 2000 as oil prices have moved upwards. The oil prices had shot up from $10 a barrel to $30 a barrel.

The oil import bill of all developing countries have gone up, Dr Acharya pointed out.the government had no choice but to pass on some of the burden to the user. Otherwise the oil pool deficit would have gone up sharply, he said.The world over, all the major and minor developing countries have suffered growth slowdown because oil prices has gone up and oil is an important part of the economy.

``If the costs go up, it hurts all the buyers of oil,'' he said. ``So this paring of growth is not unique to India. It is an international phenomenon which existed throughout the year,'' he noted. ``Earlier, there was a view that the effects of the oil price rise will go away, but it never happened,'' Dr Acharya said.