GDP to grow by around 6% plus: FM

With India’s GDP estimated to have grown about 5% last year, the lowest since 2003-04, finance minister P Chidambaram said the economy this year would grow faster.

With India’s GDP estimated to have grown about 5% last year, the lowest since 2003-04, finance minister P Chidambaram said the economy this year would grow faster.

The final GDP numbers for the year 2012-13 will be announced this week. Current full year estimate for 2012-13 is at 5%. For the first three quarters, it grew 5.1%. From 9.3% in 2010-11, the economic growth decelerated to 6.2% in 2011-12.

“The economy has slowed down, business has slowed down. But I expect this year it will grow at least 1% more than last year," Chidambaram said while inaugurating the regional office of the public sector Canara Bank.

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He also expressed hope that the growth would be one percentage point higher than the current year in financial year 2014-15 and would soon reach potential growth rate of 8%.

He also urged banks to distinguish between the wilful and business cycle-affected honest defaulters.”NPAs (non-performing assets) are not unusual and will remain when the economy is not performing well. Banks cannot abandon their clients but should hold their hand,” he said.