Time to pull up our socks

As India celebrated its 59th Independence Day, its economic performance in many respects has also been remarkable. Everyone will perhaps agree with me that since the early 1990s, India has been among the fastest growing economies in the world.

The sectors such as services, outsourcing, telecom, Information Technology have seen tremendous growth. I feel inflation too has been relatively well contained and the balance of payments has been maintained at comfortable levels.

Surprisingly, this performance was achieved despite negative agricultural growth for many years, high crude and commodity prices.

In Exports, India has set a target of about $ 120 billion of merchandise export for 2006-07 and also expects to exceed $ 150 billion by 2009, which in itself is noteworthy.

Exports in February 2006 were valued at $ 7.8 billion, 12.31 percent higher than $ 6.9 billion a year earlier and I will not shy away from saying that India's share in total global exports in 1992-93 stood at 0.41 percent and it now aims to have at least 1 percent share in total global exports. Although this figure needs to be improved, I have no doubt that in the coming years the country will make its presence felt in the global market.

On the other hand, India’s imports during April to February during fiscal year 2005-06 were valued at over $ 126 billion while during the 1990s import was just over 7 percent of the GDP.

In the manufacturing sector also India is showing satisfactory growth. Share of the manufacturing sector in India’s GDP has remained stable at around 17 percent for a decade.

The manufacturing sector's growth slumped from 7.4 percent in the first seven years of reforms from 1990 to 97 to just 4.7 percent over the last seven years (1997-2004).

But the sector has staged a comeback and is witnessing high growth rate at 10.5 per cent in June 2006. This is one sector which I feel will be a dominating factor in enhancing India’s stature in the global scenario.

I think this is the best time to pledge that all of us will do our bit to take our country ahead.