This will be India's decade of inclusive growth: Chief Economic Advisor Subramanian

WASHINGTON: India has stood out from the rest of the world in its economic thinking by not only in terms of the reforms that have been carried out by the government, but by also converting the crisis into an opportunity, the country's top economic advisor said on Wednesday, asserting that this will be India's decade of inclusive growth.

Exuding confidence over India's economic potential, Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Venkata Subramanian told an American audience from the corporate sector that on average, he expects India's growth to be near 7 per cent in this decade.

"Mark my words, this decade will be India's record of inclusive growth where in FY 23 we expect growth to be between 6.5 to 7 percent and then accelerating further as the impact of these reforms are seen,"  Subramanian told representatives from the US corporate sector during the fourth leadership summit of US India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF).

"I think the fundamentals of the economy were strong, even before the pandemic. There were only the financial problems," he added.

"When you look at the data itself, the V shaped recovery and the quarterly growth patterns actually establish the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Looking forward, the kind of reforms that we've done and the supply side measures that we've taken will enable actually strong growth not only this year going forward as well," said the Indian economist.

Projecting a double-digit growth for India this year, Subramanian said from the long run perspective, India is the only country that for the last 18 to 20 months has done so many structural reforms.

"India actually in its economic thinking has stood out from the rest of the world, not only in terms of the reforms that have been done, but by converting the crisis into an opportunity," he said.

Observing that every other large economy that has only done demand side measures, Subramanian said in contrast, India is the only country that has done supply side as well as and demand side measures.

The post-COVID-19 economy in India actually will be very different from the pre-COVID-19 economy, he said.

In the last seven years, this government has demonstrated the ability to be able to administer welfare programmes very well, cutting out the inclusion and exclusion errors and targeting it well.

"So that having already been achieved, now we need to basically have macro-economic objective being growth and growth alone, and not sort of conflicted with your inequality in equity, because these welfare programmes doing it well, will enable in reducing inequality in the process they will put money in the bottom half of the income pyramid and thereby, also generate enormous demand, aggregate demand and reduce inequalities," he said.