Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the Indian economy is on a strong wicket with sound macro-economic fundamentals.

At a press briefing to detail state of the economy, he said India has been the fastest growing major economy for the last three years and the attempt is made now to maintain high growth rate in coming years.

In a presentation made at the briefing, Economic Affairs Secretary S C Garg said inflation has consistently come down since 2014 and will not cross 4 per cent this fiscal.

Detailing macro-economic fundamentals, he said that current account deficit will be less than 2 per cent this year and foreign exchange reserves have crossed USD 400 billion.

On fiscal deficit, he said the government is committed to sticking to the target of 3.2 per cent of GDP for the current fiscal but a review would be done in December.

Stating that the GDP growth slowdown has bottomed out and the economy is turning around, he said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had recently projected that the country would achieve a 8 per cent growth rate soon.

Garg further said that the government is confident of surpassing the disinvestment target of Rs 72,500 crore for this fiscal.

Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said that total government expenditure so far this fiscal has been Rs 11.47 lakh crore out of Rs 21.46 lakh crore budgeted for this financial year.

Out of capital expenditure target of Rs 3.09 lakh crore, Rs 1.46 lakh crore has already been spent. Central public sector units have spent an additional Rs 1.37 lakh crore out of their target of Rs 3.85 lakh crore.

Lavasa said 83,677 km of road will be built in the next five years.

Banking sector non-performing assets (NPAs) rose from Rs 2.75 lakh crore in March 2015 to Rs 7.33 lakh crore as on June 2017, Department of Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar said. Of that Rs 1.75 lakh crore relates to just 12 cases which have been referred to NCLT.

GST, demonetisation – biggest growth contributors: Economic Affairs Secretary

Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Garg on Tuesday said that Goods and Services Tax (GST) has been the biggest tax reform, along with other ones like demonetisation and the battle against black money.

“Inflation has come down significantly and that India’s GDP is poised to grow from here on,” said Subhash Garg while presenting the numbers at a media conference here.

While talking about the recently flashed inflation numbers, Garg said that it is not likely to rise beyond four percent.

“The current economic slowdown is bottoming out. Fiscal deficit is under control and that the government is unlikely to overshoot its target of 3.2 percent fiscal deficit at the end of the current fiscal year,” added Garg.

“Rs. 11.47 lakh crore on capital expenditure, more than half its target for the fiscal year has already been spent by the government,” said Garg.

He added that the increased government spending has been targeted in a manner, which will bring in more investment and spur growth.Pointing at effective and targeted spending, Garg said that the main priority of government is quality infrastructure.

“Government will spend Rs. seven lakh crore in road infrastructure over the next five years. Construction of new roads under the Bharatmala programme will take place along with entail construction of 34,800 km of roads,” added Garg while announcing governments target spending plan.