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The Indian economy is likely to witness close to double-digit growth in the current fiscal year despite the second COVID-19 wave ravaging the country, Principal Economic Adviser (PEA) Sanjeev Sanyal said on Wednesday.
The economy is slowly getting back to normalcy as the number of COVID-19 cases is declining, he said while participating in India Global Forum event.
"We are probably going to see close to double-digit, if not double-digit (growth) in this financial year," he said.
The growth will be bolstered by a slew of structural reforms undertaken by the government to address supply side constraints and opening more and more sectors for foreign investment.
"Most countries were focused on demand side measures (but) we were also focussed on supply side...virtually every week you will see new sectors being opened up. We have done major reforms in IT sector, BPO sector, geospatial sector and we can open up many other sectors because we want to be a part of the global supply chain," he said.
It is to be noted that many global and domestic institutions, including the World Bank and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have slashed India's growth forecast for 2021-22 as economic recovery was halted by the devastating second wave of coronavirus infections.
Earlier this month, the World Bank slashed its 2021-22 GDP growth forecast for India to 8.3 per cent from 10.1 per cent estimated in April, while RBI lowered it from 10.5 per cent to 9.5 per cent.
RBI expects the economy to grow at the rate of 18.5 per cent in April-June, 7.9 per cent in the second quarter, 7.2 per cent in December quarter and 6.6 per cent in the fourth quarter.