SME Times News Bureau | 02 Apr, 2010
The Indian economy should have grown at 7.5 percent in 2009-10 and a tad faster than 7.2 percent expansion predicted officially on the back of a strong rebound in exports, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said in the capital on Thursday.
'We have had a strong recovery in exports in the past few months. We expect the economy to have grown 7.5 percent, not 7.2 percent,' Sharma said during an interactive session on foreign investment policy hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Sharma predicted 8.5 percent growth for this fiscal, in line with the official forecast.
The minister's comment came on a day when the latest commerce ministry statistics said India's exports rose 34.8 percent in February to $16.09 billion -- the fourth straight month of rise after 13 consecutive months of decline, since October 2008.
But the decline during the first seven months of the previous fiscal resulted in an overall decline of 11 percent during the 11-month period to February, down to $153 billion from $172 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal.
