8% growth to create jobs: Chidambaram

Union finance minister P Chidambaram said India’s economy has begun to turn around, and there are green shoots seen. “It’s not a V-shaped rebound, but a long and shallow U, that would take us to 5-5.5% growth this fiscal,” said Chidambaram. That’s relatively better than most of the world, he said.

“The 7% growth rate is imperative to retain existing levels of employment taking note of attrition while 8% plus growth is required to absorb new people that will enter the job market. The measures we have taken over last few months and the measures we would be taking in this fiscal and next one would be to put India back on that growth path,” he said at the launch of India’s newest stock echange, MCX-SX.

“In my quick overseas visits recently to Singapore, Hong Kong, London and Frankfurt, I discovered that overseas investors have much more faith in our country than domestic investors. While FIIs continue to put more money than what domestic institutions have been taking out, foreign companies too are exploring opportunity to do business in India at a time when our domestic corporate are looking abroad. We must rediscover faith in our own country and economy so that we can recreate the magic growth which we had during 2004-08 period,” he said.

He also urged stock exchanges to keep products simple and demystify the operations of stock market so as to inject confidence among retail investors.

“Vitality and robustness of stock exchanges is very important for growth of economy. They need to be careful that there are no malpractices like insider trading and that they should bring more delivery based products to attract genuine investors,” he said.