Timely policy interventions help India remain fastest growing economy: Sanjiv Puri, chairman and managing director of ITC
India is the best performing economy in current times because of policy interventions by the government and green shoots of recovery are emerging in the rural economy as inflation is becoming moderate, Sanjiv Puri, chairman and managing director of ITC, said on Thursday.
"(The) Q2 GDP numbers are a testament to how well the economy is doing," Puri said at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Global Economic Policy Forum here. And that is a result of the spirit of enterprise, resilience of people, «enabled by a lot of very timely and purposeful policy interventions over several years», he said.
While the government has handled inflation — which has been high due to global challenges — well, all sectors, particularly export-oriented ones, are not doing so well, Puri said.
Driven by uneven and scanty rain, annual retail inflation had hit a 15-month high of 7.44% in July with food price inflation at 11.5%, its highest in more than three and a half years.
The government took several measures to put a lid on food prices such as prohibiting export of wheat, restricting export of sugar, onion and rice, importing pulses, disposing off wheat, rice, and vegetables such as onions from its own stocks, bringing food inflation down to 6.61% in October.
The Indian economy grew 7.6% in the second quarter ended September, beating expectations.
This was despite the slowdown in the western economies impacting the country's export potential.
«The western world is not facing great growth. There is the risk of recessions...and that's what's impacting our exports,» Puri said.
Higher pricing pressure due to external factors and the current climate emergency is affecting the country's economy, said the leader of cigarette-to-hotels
