Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India’s large domestic demand helped insulate the country against the worst of the global crisis and the effort now is to bring the economy back to 9 per cent growth.
“The Indian economy has shown remarkable resilience to the crisis because the financial system had no exposure to the toxic assets,” Mukherjee said, adding policies were also in place to prevent build up of debt.
Developing countries were in no way responsible for the crisis but have been the hardest hit, the minister said, adding India has also been affected “but fortunately not as bad as some others.” He said India’s growth is largely domestic economy driven, with merchandise exports accounting only about 15 per cent of GDP. Further he said the depressed state of the global economy also translated into considerable loss of export demand for the developing countries.
Exports of non-oil from developing countries are expected to decline by about $900 billion in 2009, he said.
Mukherjee said the World Economy was showing signs of recovery after being in the doldrums for nearly 2 years.
Published 15 November 2009, 18:46 IST