India's first priority is spurring economic growth: Manmohan

Sapporo (Japan), July 9 : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that India's first priority is spurring economic growth so that it could eradicate dire poverty.

The Prime Minister called on G8 countries to keep their promises to deliver significant green house gas reductions.

Singh told leaders at a meeting of 16 major economies in northern Japan that India must work to help its poor and could not even consider quantitative restrictions on emissions.

"The imperative for our accelerated growth is even more urgent when we consider the disproportionate impact of climate change on us as a developing country," Singh said.

India had little choice but to devote even more and huge resources to adaptation in critical areas of food security, public health and management of scarce water resources, he said.

Around 600 million Indians do not have access to modern energy sources and a quarter of its population lives on less than a dollar a day.

Developed countries had not shown demonstrable progress on even the low levels of greenhouse gas reductions that had been agreed to, he said.

"This must change and you (the G8) must all show the leadership that you have always promised by taking and then delivering truly significant GHG (greenhouse gas) reductions," Singh said.

India is amongst the world's lowest per-capita emitters.

Singh also called for greater cooperation on clean technologies between developed and developing countries, faster transfer of those technologies to developing nations and a fairer regime for intellectual property rights.

ANI