India on track for 9 pct growth: govt official

NEW DELHI: India can still achieve average annual economic growth of nine percent despite the current slowdown while inflation will ease, a top economic policymaker forecast on Wednesday.

"I am very confident that India is at a position when it will get a higher growth rate in the days ahead," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters in the Indian capital.

"A target of nine percent growth in the Eleventh Plan is not unreasonable," he said, referring to the five-year plan spanning the fiscal 2007 to 2012.

Ahluwalia, one of the senior economic advisors to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, also predicted that inflation, riding at a 44-month high of 7.83 percent on the back of surging food and metal prices, will fall in coming months.

"Given a certain amount of patience, inflation will come down in three to four months significantly," he said on the sidelines of a business conference.

The Congress-led government has taken a series of steps in a bid to cool inflation to shield India's poverty-stricken masses from rising prices before it faces general elections due in a year.

It has reduced import levies and suspended futures trading in staple foods such as chickpeas and wheat. Futures contracts involve betting on future price movements of such items as commodities and shares.

The central bank has also been on an aggressive monetary tightening drive which has slowed the growth of Asia's third-largest economy.

Ahluwalia said apart from infrastructure and agriculture sectors, the country needs to focus on improving health, energy, water and employment to boost India's economic performance.

Forecasts for growth for the current financial year to March 31, 2009 range from seven percent to 9.5 percent. The government has estimated the economy grew by 8.7 percent last year.

At the same time, Ahluwalia stressed the need to make growth more inclusive in the country of more than 1.1 billion people, where hundreds of millions have been bypassed by India's new economic dynamism.

"A good (economic) policy, if does not incorporate inclusive growth, will not be sustainable in the long run," he said.

Last year, the prime minister said India aimed to achieve 10 percent economic growth by 2012 but warned that the country could not be "fully immune to international developments" such as financial market turmoil.

Economists have said that India needs double-digit growth to make a significant dent in poverty.