Jaitley sees FY16 gross domestic product growth at 7.6%

Pegging India's gross growth rate at 7.6 per cent for the fiscal 2015-16, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said it is ‘much less’ than its potential and expressed hope for better numbers next year.

Jaitley also said that India earlier had a bad reputation of not being the best place to do business, but the governments at the Centre and states have made considerable headway in reforming the system.

"As the current financial year ends today, we hope to finish this year at 7.6 per cent growth rate which is much less than our potential. . . we are hopeful that we will do better than this next year.

"Our current account deficit is well under control, inflation rate is under control. In last 16 months, the wholesale price index has been negative.

"Consumer index has been in the range of 4-5 per cent. . . interest rates are slowly coming down," he said.

"We had to reform our systems. There is a considerable amount of ease which has come in and we have moved up in global rankings," Jaitley said while delivering a K R Narayanan Oration series lecture here on the topic of 'New Economics of Financial Inclusion in India'.

The Narayanan Lectures are hosted by the Australian National University in honour of the former Indian President K R Narayanan. The annual oration is delivered by eminent Indian thinkers and the past speakers include Raja J Chelliah, Jagdish Bhagwati, U R Rao and P Chidambaram.

In his speech, Jaitley further said, "We had a fairly aggressive tax system which we have rationalised."

Stressing on the importance of Goods and Services Tax, Jaitley said its implementation could further add to the growth story of India.

Elucidating on long term vision for India, Jaitley indicated that there were very challenging tasks for the ruling government to bring and integrate rural India with similar facilities with urban India.

"Our main thrust of expenditure now would be development of rural areas and infrastructure sector," Jaitley said.

"We have 700,000 villages in India and by 2019 we intend each village to be connected by a regular pucca road," he said, adding that the allocation for rural road works were increased by almost three times this year.

Jaitley also talked about various initiatives taken by the Modi government like Swachch Bharat, Aadhaar and Jan Dhan.

He later attended a special reception organised by the Indian High Commission in Canberra.

The image is used for representational purpose only. Photograph: Reuters