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Arun Jaitley breifs media, says GDP growth slowdown has bottomed out; economy is turning around, Finance Ministry

Oct 24th, 2017 11:43 am | By | Category: LATEST NEWS

Jaitly
THE NEWSMAN OF INDIA.COM
New Delhi: The macro economic fundamentals of the economy are strong, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today as he held a press conference flanked by top officials of his ministry. Officials are now making detailed presentations on their departments. The venue for the press conference was shifted from Shastri Bhawan to the National Media Centre, which has a better facility for audio-visual presentations. The government has been under attack from the Opposition as well former union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, who have attributed the economic slowdown to what they say is the poor handling of key reforms like demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Economic growth slumped to a three-year-low of 5.7 per cent in the June quarter, the lowest in three years. Earlier today, Mr Jaitley tweeted that the fine for delayed filing of GST returns would be waived for August and September.

Here are the highlights of Arun Jaitley’s speech:

Last month, I had mentioned that we will appropriately respond to the challenges on GST India has remained world’s fastest growing large economy for the last three years Macro-economic fundamentals are strong
Sometimes major reforms bring minor hiccups, but in the mid and long terms, these prove to be far more beneficial

Subhash Chandra Garg, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, briefing media

There has been a consistent low inflation story

Some is the case for our current account deficits… last year it was as low as 0.7 %

We have crossed $400 billion forex reserves GST has been the biggest reform, along with other ones like deonetisation and the battle against black money

There is very low level of current account deficit, in safe ranges of less than around 2%

We are taking up a mega and historic road and infrastructure building programme

Effective and targeted Government spending is the main priority of Government

Ashok Lavasa, Finance Secretary
Effective and targeted Government spending is the main priority of Government

The biggest component of road building program, the Bharat Mala programme
34,800 kms of roads to be built and it will see investment of Rs 5, 35,000 over next five years

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