Economic growth to cross 5 pc this financial year: PM

New Delhi: Pinning hopes on the good monsoon and recent reforms, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said economic growth will cross 5 per cent in the current financial year and accelerate further in the coming years.

Addressing the Governors' Conference here, Singh said the Indian economy, after many years of rapid growth, has slowed down in the past two years.

Inflation, weakening of the rupee and other domestic and external factors contributed to this state of affairs, he said.

"However, we have reasons to be optimistic about the future. There are signs of revival of economic growth on account of the several measures that our government has taken. A good monsoon has also helped us in our efforts.

"It is expected that the growth rate of our economy will cross 5 per cent during the current fiscal when the final figures are released. We expect that the reforms that we have undertaken will help in increasing the growth rate further in subsequent years," the Prime Minister said.

The Central Statistics Office has projected GDP growth of 4.9 per cent in the current financial year as against 4.5 per cent in 2012-13, which was the slowest in a decade.

An Indian Finance Ministry document yesterday said a big threat to growth is high inflation as it would impair the ability of India's central banking institution Reserve Bank to cut interest rates to boost economic activities.

The Prime Minister said deprivation and poverty are significant contributing factors to rising discontent in the backward and poor districts, many of which lie in Scheduled Areas.

"We, therefore, need to urgently address the widening economic, income and developmental disparities between citizens living in such areas and those in more developed parts of the country," Singh said.