Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh

India is now on a new growth trajectory... a trajectory where sustained economic growth of 9 per cent -10 per cent per annum, considered impossible even five years ago, seems possible for many years to come.

This was stated by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in his keynote address at the Fortune Global Forum in New Delhi today.

This acceleration of economic growth over the past two decades has been driven by rising investment and savings rates and by rising domestic consumption, the PM said. "I believe this can be sustained in the foreseeable future for two important reasons.

The first, he said, was the unleashing of Indian enterprise in this past decade where big corporates have gone global and the small and medium have become more competitive..

The second, dr Singh said was a demographic transition that was now underway in India and where the number of savers far exceeded the number of dis-savers. For many decades to come, India will be one of the important contributors to the available global workforce.

Simultaneously, the country had increased public investment in agriculture, rural development and infrastructure and was working to remove regional disparities in levels of development; to improve the productivity of our agriculture and to increase employment opportunities outside agriculture.

Dr Singh said that the country had ambitious plans to expand and modernise its infrastructure such as roads, railways, civil aviation, seaports, energy and telecommunications.

"We have facilitated greater private sector participation in infrastructure through public-private partnerships. Our needs are immense. In the next five years, we need more than $450 billion as investment in infrastructure alone", he said.

The PM added that as India grew, it sought to be better integrated with the global economy and that is why the country chose to join the World Trade Organization. He said that as a founder member of GATT, the country remained committed to the Doha Round of trade negotiations, but with equity and equal partnership.

"This was what we dreamt of in 1991. I doubt whether Fortune would have considered hosting such an event in India even a decade ago. The fact that you are all here today is proof of your faith in the abilities of Indian people," the PM told the gathering.

(See: Text of the PM''s address at the Fortune Global Forum)