India poised to grow 6.5-7 pc in 2009: Cabinet Secretary

New Delhi, Mar 29 (PTI) Driven by demand returning to
the automobile, steel and other sectors, India looks poised to
grow by 6.5-7 percent in 2009, beating the gloomy 5.1 per
cent forecast by the International Monetary Fund.

According to IMF data, India's economy expanded by 7.3
percent in 2008, pulled down by a 5.3 per cent growth rate in
the last quarter of the year as agriculture and manufacturing
output turned negative.

However, a number of sectors like cement, steel, capital
goods and auto are showing signs of recovery.

Asked about his projections for India's economic growth
in 2009 vis-a-vis the numbers projected by IMF, Cabinet
Secretary K M Chandrasekhar said, "It is difficult to specify,
but we hope to grow between 6.5-7 per cent."

In its World Economic Outlook in January, IMF had scaled
down India's economic growth projections to 5.1 per cent for
2009 from 6.3 per cent forecast earlier.

The outlook said emerging and developing economies will
also suffer serious setbacks, though they are more resilient
than in previous global downturns.

However, Chandrasekhar, at the CII annual session last
week said,"I don't think 5.1 per cent is what we are going to
achieve. Our own guess is we will grow much more than 5.1 per
cent". Historical records of IMF show that their forecast is
invariably less than the actual growth achieved by India, he
pointed out.

The capital goods sector grew for the second consecutive
month in January by 16 percent, as compared to negative 0.1
percent in November 2008, Chandrasekhar said.

Passenger car sales, which had declined to minus 24 per
cent in November, recovered by 16 per cent in February, while
domestic sales of trucks which had fallen to less than 5,000
in December have more than doubled in February, he added.

Despite wide-ranging policy actions by governments and
central banks around the world, IMF said financial strains
remain acute, pulling down the real economy.

With IMF projecting that advance economies will witness
minus two per cent growth in 2009 compared to one per cent in
2008 and 2.7 per cent in 2007, Chandrasekhar also said, "But,
still I think there are troubled times yet to come. All around
the world, we find that growth is contracting."

IMF also predicted world growth to fall to its lowest
level since World War II to 0.5 per cent in 2009, with the
financial markets remaining under stress and the global
economy taking a sharp turn for the worse, sending both global
output and trade plummeting.

"We now expect the global economy to come to a virtual
halt," IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard had said. PTI IND
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