India's economy to grow at 6.8 pc in current fiscal: CII

New Delhi: Industry chamber CII expects the country's economy to grow at 6.8 per cent in the current fiscal and accelerate to 7 per cent in 2024-25, driven by the government's continued focus on infrastructure development and promotion of ease of doing business.

In an interview with PTI, CII President R Dinesh, who is also the Executive Vice Chairman of TVS Supply Chain Solutions, said even on a conservative basis, the expected gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 6.8 per cent will be more than the 6.5-6.7 per cent estimated earlier by the industry body. Sharing growth projections, the CII President said: "In the beginning, we had said 6.5-6.7 per cent. Now, actually, we are saying it is going to be 6.8 per cent for this year, and we are looking at 7 per cent for next year. Obviously, the first half has given the comfort for 6.8 per cent. In fact, I would say it is a conservative number because if you look at what has happened in the first half, we are being conservative here".

On the recent state elections, he said the stock market and the industry favour continuity in policy. During the recently held state elections, the BJP won in three major states -- Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, while the Congress won in Telangana. "We welcome continuity in policy and making sure that the consensus is for the growth of the country.... for us, continuity in policy is very important and that's something that whichever party be in power, we make sure that we communicate that... The stock market is cheering the fact that there is continuity from an approach". According to him, India is in a "sweet spot", owing to various reasons, including the government's focus on infrastructure and the push for ease of doing business.

India's economy recorded a growth of 7.7 per cent in the first half of the current fiscal ended in September. When asked about the possibility of an interest rate cut by the RBI in its upcoming bi-monthly monetary policy review, he said: "We are not asking for that (interest rate cut) at all because we don't believe that it's the right time to ask because inflation is above the benchmark (4 per cent), which they (RBI) have set for themselves". "Today, we have 75 per cent to 95 per cent capacity utilisation cutting across many sectors, that has been there for the last 3 quarters. So, more or less, we can expect that very soon, we will have that percentage crossing, where people will continue to make capex investments. We did our membership survey and found that a majority of our members were actually looking at higher private sector investments taking place in H2 as compared with H1," Dinesh said.