Govt to design instruments for attracting NRI investment: FM

New Delhi, Jan 9 (UNI) Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said the government was in the process of designing financial instruments with a longer time horizon for attracting flows from overseas Indians and indicated that an institutional mechanism was in the offing for intermediation of knowledge from them.

''NRI remittance to India, on average are of a three year duration. I urge you to expand your horizon to bring long term money for at least ten years as well as your expertise in various fields, Mr Chidambaram said addressing a session at the fifth Pravasi Bharatiya Divas meet here.

He said that their expertise relating to the field of agriculture would be of particular interest to the country and enable India to move to a four per cent annual growth rate in agriculture from the meagre less than 2 per cent levels.

Mr Chidambaram said that the government was considering a proposal for setting up an ''institutional mechanism'' to harness the knowledge capital of overseas Indians.

The finance minister alluded to the fact that a 9 per cent GDP growth rate in the current fiscal would be a reality. ''I am confident that the current fiscal year will end up with a growth rate of close to 9 per cent although I do not know where the decimal might fall, he said.

He said that there were enough evidence in contemporary economic history to suggest that a double digit growth rate can be sustained for a long period of time. ''East Asian economies have demonstrated their capability to achieve double digit growth for a long period of time in the 70s and 80s. China continues to surprise us and has achieved a double digit growth for the last seven to eight years,'' he said.

So what we are aiming at is not impossible'', he said noting that in the last three years GDP has grown at 7.5 per cent per annum in India. He also pointed out that the GDP growth in the first six months of the current fiscal was to the tune of 9.1 per cent.

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