India now $4 trillion economy: Chidambaram

NEW DELHI: India's economy, which swelled close to a trillion dollars last year, is actually worth four trillion dollars when measured in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) and accounts for 6.3 per cent of the global economy, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Wednesday.

At market prices GDP has increased from $20 billion in 1950-51 to $912 billion in 2006-07 and is expected to cross a trillion dollars in the current year, he said, delivering a speech 'India's Socio-Economic Agenda: Development with Democracy' at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

PPP is a measure of the purchasing power of different currencies and the average cost of goods and services between countries.

The Finance Minister is on three-day visit to Norway. Claiming that Indian growth was no more a jobless growth story, he said since 2003-04 the average growth rate has increased further to 8.6 per cent and has seen over one crore jobs added annually.

During 1999-2000 to 2004-05, India added about 12 million people to its workforce each year. In this period, the rate of growth of employment was 2.9 per cent per year, he said.

India, after China, is the fastest growing economy of the world, and together with Brazil, Russia and China is the locomotive driving world growth, said Chidambaram.

Expressing the government's commitment for inclusive growth, he said the proportion of people living below the poverty line in India has declined from 51.3 per cent in 1977-78 to about 22 per cent in 2004-05.

Earlier, he met his Norwegian counterpart Kristin Halvorsen and the Norwegian Minister of Environment and International Development. Both the countries also decided to step up their bilateral and economic relations.