GST promises to boost GDP growth rate: President

It paves the way for creation of a unified market for goods and services, and promises to boost GDP growth rates by up to 2 per cent over the medium and the long term,” he said at a conference here on ‘Enabling Make in India through Industry Academia Innovation Platform’ organised jointly by CII and IIEST. 

“To reap the full benefits of our growth potential, we, however, need to overcome infrastructure bottlenecks, improve the quality of our labour force by educating and skilling them appropriately, and ensure better health standards of the population,” he said. 

The President also said recent initiatives like ‘Make in India’, improving the ease of doing business, Invest India, Skilling India and Start-up India aim to address some of these issues and boost our capacity for growth. Noting that global economic condition continues to remain weak, he said India has established itself firmly as the fastest growing economy with a growth rate of 7.3 per cent in 2015. 

“We can say confidently that our economy has revived and our prospects are brighter as we are poised to grow at 7.5 per cent in both 2016 and 2017,” Mukherjee said. Noting that food prices remained within comfortable levels in the early months of this year, the President warned that ‘we must remain alert as they have started to rise lately’. He expressed satisfaction at India’s foreign exchange reserves which as of Monday stand at $365 billion.