Narendra Modi meets 40 economists and industry leaders amidst slowing down of economy
Ahead of the presentation of the Union Budget, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi has interacted with 40 economists and industry experts, on the current economic scenario, in a session organised by the NITI Aayog.
The key issues discussed during the session, ‘Economic Policy – The Road Ahead’, were further opening up of the banking and insurance sector for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), acceleration of the disinvestment processes and efficient management of water resources.
The session holds significance as Narendra Modi had said few days back that he wants India to be a U.S. $ 5 trillion economy by 2024.
A statement from NITI Aayog read, “During the session, participants shared their views, in five distinct groups, on the economic themes of macro economy and employment, agriculture and water resources, exports, education and health.”
Expressing his views of the session, Narendra Modi tweeted, “Had a fruitful interaction with economists and other experts on the themes of macro-economy and employment, agriculture and water resources, exports, education, and health. The inputs received were insightful and will benefit our growth trajectory.”
The meeting was attended by ministers, advisory firms and industry leaders. The economists present at the meeting included, Former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government – Shankar Acharya, former Governor of reserve Bank of India (RBI) – Bimal Jalan, Chairman of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (PMEAC) – Bibek Debroy, Former member of PMEAC – Surjit Bhalla, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of National Stock exchange (NSE) – Vikram Limay, Chief Economist at Japanese financial company Nomura Holdings – Sonal Varma and Director General of non-profit think tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) – Shekhar Shah
The Minister of Commerce & Industry – Piyush Goyal and Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog – Rajiv Kumar also attended the meeting. Industry leaders present at the meeting comprised of Chairman of Tata Sons – N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Vedanta Resources – Anil Agarwal and CEO of Paytm – Vijay Shekhar Sharma.
As per the data released by Central Statistics Office (CSO), the economic growth in the January-March 2019 quarter tumbled to a five-year low of 5.8%. The main reasons attributed for the slowdown of economy were the poor performance of agriculture and manufacturing sectors. The data also revealed that number of jobless people were at a 45-year high of 6.1% in 2017-18. The annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for fiscal 2018-19 was at a five-year low of 6.8%. The GDP growth in 2017-18 was 7.2%.
For the records, the Finance Minister of India – Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the Union Budget for 2019-20 on July 5, 2019 in the Lok Sabha.
