Manmohan Singh game for hard decisions to promote growth

By Our Economy Bureau | 23 Sep 2004

New York: Speaking at the New York Stock Exchange to the leaders of American industry, representing a cross-section of 17 companies which account for a trillion dollars of assets, prime minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday promised that the United Progressive Alliance government would take ''hard'' decisions to free the economy from bureaucratic controls and assured them that compulsions of coalition politics and Left support will not derail reforms.

India needs $150 billion investment on a conservative estimate for the next few years for a ''quantum leap'' in the infrastructure sector over which he claimed there was maximum ''political consensus''.

“India’s economy grew at an average of 6 per cent in the early 1990s and it is our expectation that it can grow at 7-8 per cent," Singh said adding, "We will take all the hard decisions to realise this ambitious target.”

“The government had in the 1990s shown that the economy could move on a high growth trajectory and "I wish to assure you that this is a task that can be accomplished and we will," Singh affirmed.