Govt will tide over the economic crisis: CM

Hyderabad, Sept 17 :

 The Chief Minister, K Rosaiah, on Thursday stated that the Central Government and all the State Governments have a great task at their hand to delicately balance between growth and inflation.

Inaugurating the two days international conference ‘Global Economic Meltdown –Challenges and Prospects’ at the Jubilee Hall here, the Chief Minister said that without increasing any tax rate, without imposing any new tax and without increasing the power tariff to any class of consumers, the state revenues have grown at 18 per cent per annum during the last five years and as proportion to GSDP, it was the highest for any State in the country.

As per RBI report on the State finances 2008-09, AP stands first both in absolute terms and also in per capita terms in respect of all the four important parameters viz plan expenditure, development expenditure, social sector expenditure and capital expenditure. 

It was late chief minister Dr Reddy’s firm conviction that faster economic growth is the only remedy for faster reduction of poverty, as the revenues of the State bear a direct proportionality to its GDP, he said.

Thanks to many bold and imaginative initiatives taken by our late chief minister, the state had achieved an average annual growth rate of more than 10 per cent in GSDP in constant terms for the four years period 2004-08.

But the impact of the global slow down hit our economy too  and registered a slightly lower growth rate of 6 per cent for the year 2008-09. “Despite this, the average annual growth rate of our GSDP for the five years period 2004-09 was 9.1% as against the national growth rate of 8.5% and as against the average annual GSDP growth rate of 5.7% for the preceding 25 years,” he added. He said that the state achieved an average annual growth rate of 6.7 per cent for the five years period 2004-09, as against national figure of 3 percent for the corresponding period. Higher growth rates in agriculture have naturally benefitted 60 percent of our population directly dependant on that sector, he pointed out.

The Centre’s three fiscal stimulus packages had helped the states in making more funds available at a time when almost all the States including our own have suffered loss of revenues because of the impact of the global meltdown. Despite all these great and timely initiatives, the country’s economic growth has suffered a set back with a severe fall in its GDP growth rate for the year 2008-09, he claimed.

He said that the whole episode is a sad reminder of how human greed has once again taken the toll of the humanity and how unwilling we are to learn the lessons from the past. He hoped that the government will be able to tide over the present crisis and would be back on the path of 9 per cent GDP growth rate. Dr C Rangarajan, Chairman of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, delivered keynote address in the conference.

M S Swaminathan, Chairman, National Commission on Farmers was the chief guest. Convener Anand Babu said that the experts would discuss the factors that went into the present crises, its disastrous implications on various fields and the role of regulatory bodies in coming out of the crises.