India remains fastest growing economies in the world, says Kamal Nath

New Delhi, Feb 12 (ANI): Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath today said that from a national perspective, India will remain one of the fastest growing economies in the world over 2008-09 to 2010-11.

Addressing at the Hero Mindmine Summit, here, on the theme of "Challenges of troubled times: Opportunities and Threats", he further added that along with the BRIC and GCC economies, India will contribute about 35 to 37 per cent of incremental global GDP growth through the calendar years 2008 to 2012.

"We are certainly more integrated to the world economy today. The ratio of total external transactions (gross current account flows plus gross capital flows) to GDP has increased from 46.8 per cent in 1997-98 to 117.4 per cent in 2007-08. These numbers are clear evidence of India's increasing integration into the world economy", Nath said.

Speaking at the Summit, the Minister said the participants that the current global situation may well be an opportunity for India and its captains of industry to innovate, prove their business acumen and move in to fill the space being vacated.

He further added that India is better positioned than most other markets to attract pools of global capital like sovereign wealth funds, long-term insurance and pension assets and infrastructure funds.

During his address, Nath underlined the measures taken by the Government to stimulate the economy viz., additional plan expenditure in the current year for critical rural, infrastructure and social security schemes, reduction of cenvat by four per cent, authorisation to the India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd. to refinance bank lending for infrastructure projects, pre-shipment and post shipment export credit, government back up guarantee to ECGC, and refinance facility for the National Housing Bank. (ANI)