President A P J Abdul Kalam said on Friday that to completely eradicate poverty in the country, India would have to achieve a GDP growth of 10 per cent continuously for a decade at a stretch.
"We have in our nation 260 million people living below the poverty line. The nation has to lift them up. For this we have to achieve a GDP growth of 10 per cent, as against the current 8 per cent, continuously for 10 years to solve this problem," Kalam said addressing the 38th convocation of the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata.
Kalam said more focus must be given on the futuristic sectors of agriculture and food processing, education, health, IT, Infrastructure development and centralised critical technology to aid the economy.
In a large country like India, making financial and taxation policies was very complex since it involved large volumes of data of uncertain nature and modelling on the basis of this data, he said.
Pointing out that though India was furthering friendly relations with a number of nations of the world in recent times, Kalam said the issue of technology denial by some of these countries had not been fully addressed.
"We have seen a lot of technology denial from some nations. How to overcome it? We must address this issue by finding answers to all our technological questions," the scientist President, whose Vision 2020 document has been hailed by technologists and politicians alike, said.