Painting a rosy picture of the economy, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Monday that the country's growth was buoyant and, "I am optimistic and positive" about the prospects for this fiscal.

"I think if all players play their part, the year will end on a very substantial and positive note," Chidambaram told reporters after presenting to Parliament the mid-year review, which has projected a six per cent plus growth for this fiscal.

Also read
Mid-year review predicts lower growth

He, however, asked farmers, industrialists and service providers not to be complacent and work hard to achieve results and move forward as the year 2005 was expected to be even better.

Enthused by the strong fundamentals of the economy, Chidambaram said, "It is fair to say that prospects for economic growth are very bright".

In fact the mid-year review has projected impressive growth for the first half of the current fiscal and looking at the October-November figure the prospects were even better, he said.

As elaborated in the mid-year review, most of the deficits in the kharif crop would be made up in the rabi crop and therefore the feared setback in agriculture might not happen, he said.

The figures for industrial output for April-October showed 8.4 per cent growth as against 6.2 per cent in the current fiscal, he said.

Reeling out statistics, Chidambaram said manufacturing recorded 8.8 per cent growth in the first half of this fiscal as against 6.8 per cent in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Electricity recorded 7.1 per cent growth during April-September this year as against 2.9 per cent of the previous year, mining five per cent as against 3.9 per cent, he said.

In November, the industrial production was expected to be "even better".

Turning to revenue collection, Chidambaram said income tax, corporation tax and customs duty collections were on target, but excise duty collections were "slightly behind" because of the duty cuts undertaken twice to contain petro prices in the face of surging global crude oil prices.

The excise duty collections in non-petro products were reasonably good, Chidambaram said and hoped that shortfall in excise duty collections, if any, would be made up in the remaining three months.

He said the exports have recorded a booming growth of 25 per cent, infrastructure was doing well with lot of investments taking place, credit offtake was good, stock market sentiment was good, as BSE Sensex surged over 6,300 and foreign exchange reserves at over $130 billion.

The optimism about growth in the remaining period of the year stemmed from these positive indicators, he said.