'Budget will revive investment, push growth to 9%'

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday expressed confidence that the measures announced in the Budget for 2010-11 would revive private investment and put the economy back on a 9 per cent growth trajectory.

"I am optimistic that the measures I have outlined in this year's budget will revive private investment and put the economy back on the growth path of 9 per cent," he said at a Small Industries Development Bank of India function in New Delhi.

He said that the economy in 2009-10 is expected to grow by 7.2 per cent, which is 'impressive by global standards'.

In the current fiscal (2010-11), Mukherjee said, the economy would expand by 8.25-8.75 per cent.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh exuded confidence that the economy can get back to 9 per cent growth by the end of 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2012) and do even better thereafter.

After clocking an impressive 9 per cent growth for the previous three fiscals till 2007-08, India's GDP grew by a relatively modest rate of 6.7 per cent in 2008-09.

Image: Pranab Mukherjee