 "FinMin officials meet S&P team for rating review, vow to contain fiscal deficit")
New Delhi: Armed with budget proposals to bring down the fiscal deficit, the Finance Ministry officials today met Standard and Poor’s (S&P) representatives for the annual rating review.
The meeting was attended by Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram, along with other senior officials.
After meeting with Standard and Poor’s officials, Mayaram said, “there is general belief that we will see a fairly higher growth in the current fiscal than last year’s 4.7 per cent. We are expecting FY 15 growth between 5.8 to 5.9 as a reasonable target.”
[caption id=“attachment_82343” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Arvind Mayaram. Reuters[/caption]
The Finance Ministry also impressed upon the rating agency the resolve of the government to contain fiscal deficit at 4.1 per cent this year and lower it to 3 per cent by 2016-17. “We all believe numbers (fiscal deficit and current account deficit) are very credible. We will able to meet this year’s fiscal deficit target,” Mayaram said.
He further expressed hope that the government will be able achieve disinvestment target of around Rs 58,000 crore for the current fiscal. “We believe that the disinvestment target for FY'15 is very reasonable because when we did numbers of Rs 58,000 crore the stock market were not doing well. And today if you look at stock marker, the market capitalisation has steeply risen in the last three months.
In order to promote growth and investment, Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, in his budget 2014-15 has included measures to support faster economic growth, such as allowing greater foreign direct investment in insurance and defence, increasing spending on infrastructure, and introducing tax incentives for savings and investment.
S&P currently rates India as ‘BBB-’, the lowest in the investment grade, with a negative outlook. Any further downgrade will push India’s rating to the junk status, making it difficult and costlier for Indian entities to borrow funds overseas.
PTI
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