India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley speaks during an interview in Beijing Friday June 24 2016. India wants to attract manufacturing investment following its latest market-opening initiatives this week the country's finance minister said Friday despite
BEIJING: Sky is the limit for investments in India and its economic growth is sustainable because it has a lot of distance to cover, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today.
"It (growth) is sustainable for the reason that India has lot of distance in terms of economic growth to cover," Jaitley, who is here on a five-day visit, told Chinese state-run CCTV in an interview.
In view of this a lot of potential exists for investments in infrastructure, urbanisation, housing, power, water and social sector, he said.
"For us today sky is the limit. That is the kind of investments we require. Therefore a lot of economic activity has to go into it. Currently public finances are taking the lead in doing so. I am sure in due course as the economy is picking up, private sector will also boost this," Jaitley said.
"Secondly we grew in the last two years despite the fact that we had less than normal monsoon. Monsoon plays very important role in India's economic growth. This year hopefully the monsoon seems to be all right," he said.
Jaitley stated that if the country has a good monsoon, that itself will help boost rural economy, rural purchasing power and would add to the economy.
"We grew by 7.6 per cent last year. We will certainly maintain that and with good monsoon hopefully improve upon that," Jaitley asserted.
Last year, India surpassed China which posted 6.9 per cent growth rate.
On the global infrastructure and economic growth, a subject in which he is going to speak at a seminar here tomorrow, Jaitley spoke about his concerns over the global economic slowdown.
"In large populated economies like India job growth is extremely important," he said.
"How long will this (global slowdown) continue and how world will pull itself out of this situation and how does growth return to the world...I think it is inevitable irrespective of the theme of the conference this issue will dominate all economic discussions," he said.
Jaitley today also attended the Board of Governors meeting of the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
