Nirmala Sitharaman signals speedy recovery, projects 8.9% GDP growth for current fiscal

Finance Minister NIrmala Sitharaman | Illustration: Moneycontrol

India's economic growth is likely to be robust at 8.9 percent in the current financial year, reflecting the country's strong resilience and speedy recovery, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.

Sitharaman also expressed confidence that India will continue to achieve a high growth rate in the next financial year as well, the finance ministry said in a statement. Addressing the 7th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of New Development Bank (NDB) via video conferencing, she underscored the importance of multilateralism and the spirit of global cooperation for economic recovery.

The minister acknowledged that NDB has successfully established itself as a reliable development partner for emerging market economies and appreciated the progress made towards setting up the India Regional Office in GIFT City in Gujarat. NDB will play a significant and meaningful role in the development journey of its member countries in the decades to come, she added.

Due to ongoing pandemic, this Annual Meeting of NDB which was hosted by India this year, was organised in virtual mode, the statement said, adding this year's theme for the Annual Meeting was 'NDB: Optimising Development Impact', which is particularly relevant in the current global economic scenario.

"Highlighting that India is celebrating 75 years of Independence this year, the finance minister mentioned that India's economic growth in the current financial year has been robust and is estimated to be 8.9 per cent which is the highest among all large economies," it said.

The meeting was also attended by Governors/Alternate Governors of Brazil, China, Russia, South Africa and the newly joined members Bangladesh and United Arab Emirates (UAE). Set up by the BRICS group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in July 2014, NDB started operations a year later with an initial subscribed capital of USD 50 billion with total paid-in capital of USD 10 billion.

The purpose of the bank is to mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging market economies and developing countries to complement the existing efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global growth and development.

The bank was operationalised in 2015, with its headquarters in Shanghai, China. Last year, NDB expanded its membership to include four countries — Bangladesh, UEA, Egypt and Uruguay. NDB has so far approved 21 projects of India for an amount of USD 7.1 billion.