Budget 2014: Balance inflation growth trade off, lower cost of trade, says FIEO

NEW DELHI: Exporters body FIEO has laid out the five major challenges confronting the Finance Minister in the upcoming Budget, which include balancing inflation-growth tradeoff, lowering cost of credit and stimulating manufacturing, among others

Federation of Indian Exports Organisations (FIEO) President M Rafeeque Ahmed said that the foremost challenge would be to strike the right balance between inflation and growth while urging the Finance Minister to give equal priority to growth to augment supply and contain inflation.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has to, accordingly, find ways and means for reducing the cost of credit which has moved up by over 60 per cent in last three years or so since the adoption of the base rate regime in July 2010, Ahmed said.

He also described stimulating manufacturing which showed 1 per cent growth in 2012-13 and contracted in 2013-14 would be the another major issue before the Finance Minister.

Propelling exports, Ahmed said, when world economy is expected to grow at over 4.5 per cent, will be much-needed both for managing trade deficit, current account deficit as well as generating employment in the country.

Besides, the economy should be made buoyant to attract overseas investment in infrastructure projects so as to provide medium and long term support to it, he said.