Finance minister P Chidambaram said on Wednesday that India’s near-term economic outlook was “extremely positive” and an investment boom showed no sign of abating. “Upsides are very large, and the outlook for the near term is extremely positive,” Chidambaram said in a presentation to a Norwegian-Indian business conference in Oslo. He said an investment boom that started in 2004 showed no sign of fading. “This boom will continue for the next four to five years,” Chidambaram said. “None of the factors that are driving growth will change,” he said during a three-day visit to Norway. Chidambaram noted that India has a target of doubling gross domestic product per capita in nine years and doubling it again in the nine years after that. Asia’s third-biggest economy has grown at an average of 8.6 per cent in the past four years, and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has forecast that it will grow 8.5 per cent in the financial year ending in March 2008. Despite the blistering pace, the RBI is expected to keep short-term interest rates unchanged next week and leave banks’ reserve requirements steady as it watches a slowdown in inflation.
