Inflation will be tamed without affecting growth: FM

Chennai, Apr 22: The Centre was trying to curb inflation without affecting growth, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.

Speaking at a function organised by the Corporation Bank at suburban Adambakkam here last evening, he said people had to bear with the government, which was taking all fiscal and monetary measures to tame inflation.

''If we try to curb inflation alone, it will affect growth. We must control inflation without affecting growth, which is very important'', he added.

''Only when there is growth, people will have income to spend,'' he said, adding that the government was aiming for a 10 per cent growth. Observing that inflation was bound to happen due to demand-supply gap when there was growth, he said people should take it as a bitter pill for some time. ''But we will surely curb it,'' he asserted.

Inflation for the first week of the new fiscal has risen to 6.09 per cent from 5.74 per cent in the preceeding week, keeping up the pressure on RBI to further hike rates in its annual monetary policy for 2008 to be unveiled next week.

However, Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund have forecast India's growth to slowdown to a little over 8 per cent in 2007-08 against the 9.2 per cent expected in 2006-07.

Allaying the doubts raised on the 10 per cent growth rate, Mr Chidambaram said few people were sceptical and doubt the 10 per cent target. ''But I am unhappy that we are not able to aim for 12 per cent growth''.

He hoped that a growth rate not less than nine per cent would be achieved during this financial year.

UNI