Economy our key goal: PM to envoys

Speaking at a conference of the heads of Indian mission abroad, the prime minister said all-out efforts were needed to put the economy back on a sustained high rate of growth if the challenges of poverty and disease were to be effectively addressed.

The Prime Minister identified three pillars of New Delhi’s future global engagements. These  were: sustaining capital inflows to supplement investment efforts, need to take advantage of the rapid scientific and technological developments in the world to leap frog technological development and the need to ensure that the country’s growth is not constrained by scarcity of natural resources.

With the UPA government’s efforts to minimise the impacts of the global slowdown being hindered by the deficient monsoon, economic diplomacy is one of the key focus areas of the five-day Heads of Missions conference that began on Monday. He emphasised that India’s foreign policy and economic policy were integrally linked with domestic policies.

Singh, however, pointed out that India’s was still the second fastest growing economy in the world, despite the global slowdown.

He spoke extempore for around 40 minutes without consulting any note. The conference is not open to the media. The Prime Minister’s Office later released the gist of his speech.