The PMEAC, in its ‘Review of the Economy 2010-11’ report released on Monday, also said the country’s GDP is likely to grow by 9 per cent in 2011-12, back to the high rate it had witnessed before onset of the global economic recession.
PMEAC’s projection of 8.6 per cent growth is in line with government estimates released earlier this month.
According to PMEAC, the agriculture sector is expected to grow at 5.4 per cent this fiscal.
This is higher than the 0.4 per cent rate of growth registered by the farm sector in 2009-10.
“Agriculture will do very well this year. We might have record harvest of wheat,” PMEAC Chairman C Rangarajan said here.
The council also said the services and industry sectors would maintain the high growth rate of last few years.
While services are expected to register a growth rate of 9.6 per cent, industry is projected to grow by 8.1 per cent.
During the last fiscal, services sector had witnessed a growth of 9.1 per cent, while manufacturing had grown by 8.8 per cent.
The PMEAC further said the overall inflation is expected to be at 7 per cent by March-end and that the rate of price rise in the case of manufactured goods has been low.
“The declining trend in food prices particularly that of the vegetables will result in lower food inflation...
Considerable care from the policy side has to be taken to ensure that the manufactured goods inflation remains below 5 per cent in 2011-12,” it said.
The overall inflation for January has been at 8.23 per cent, while food inflation was at 11.05 per cent in the first week of February.