'7.5% not India's best potential for economic growth': FM Arun Jaitley

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that India's 7.5% economic growth rate is not its best potential growth rate and that there is restlessness in Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA Government to further boost economic growth.

Jaitley said that a series of reforms aided by a lot of investment particularly in infrastructure, improvement in manufacturing, agriculture will help push up India's economic growth.

The Finance Minister predicted an eight percent growth this year.

"Nobody is very excited about a 7-7.5% growth rate in India because everybody realizes, including the Prime Minster that probably our potential is a little higher than that," Jaitley said.

"And having covered this distance I think the next two, three years are going to be very critical because a series of reform steps, which are in the pipeline are going to be implemented. We have identified all problem areas, one by one, as we go resolving most of them, hopefully we should reach our destination targets," he added.

He also said the government will set higher GDP growth targets in the future.

When asked about the concerns over what is termed as "renewed tax terrorism" in India, he said this is a term coined by him and it is his responsibility to make sure that it does not happen in India again.

Jaitley, who is currently on a nine-day visit to the United States, will hold meetings with Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) and top CEOs of American financial companies during his stay.