New Delhi: With the NDA government’s ambitious target of making India a $5 trillion economy by 2025 facing the twin challenge of a domestic economic slowdown and unemployment reaching a 45 year high, the Prime Minister has called a high level review meeting of the infrastructure sector on October 23 at his residence.
Highly-placed sources said that Mr Modi would be brainstorming with ministers of key infrastructure sector-related ministries to find ways of achieving the aforementioned goal amid prevailing domestic economic slump. The PMO is learnt to have expressed concern over the current economic scenario and with even Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee having expressed grave concern about the banking crisis in India, the review meeting called by Mr Modi could not have come at a more pertinent time.
While several key ministers like road transport minister Nitin Gadkari, power minister R.K. Singh, petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan are expected to be present in the meeting, railway and commerce minister Piyush Goyal won’t be there as he is in abroad, sources said.
Senior officials of these ministries are also likely to be present in the meeting.
Niti Aayog CEO, Amitabh Kant, it is learnt, would be making a presentation on the present state of economy and how it can be brought back on track to achieve the target of making India a $5 trillion economy by 2025, sources in the know added further. Nobel laureaute Mr Banerjee on Tuesday had said that there is a need to bring in important and aggressive changes to deal with the banking crisis.
India is currently a $2 trillion worth economy. Finance Minister Nirmala while presenting the Union Budget for the year 2019-2020 had expressed confidence that it would become a $5 trillion economy in a few years time.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on October 4 had cut the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.15 percent, the lowest level in the past nine years, aiming to revive investor sentiment and encourage flow of funds.
