NEW DELHI - Union Finance Minster Pranab Mukherjee said here on Friday that the UPA Government is committed to ensuring inclusive and equitable growth of the country’s economy.

Addressing the 88th annual function of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Mukherjee said: “The present Government has a renewed mandate for reinforcing inclusive growth, for which the architecture was laid out by the present Government in its last term. It is a mandate for equitable development, where all legitimate aspirations of the people of India can be meaningfully realized.”

” However, it is important that we take every such step that will allow our economy to develop spatially and synergistically across different sectors of the economy to ensure the overall sustainability of the growth process and a quality of life that the ‘Aam Admi’ aspires for,” Mukherjee added.

He said in a globalizing world, the challenges and opportunities of development, in general, and that of sustaining high growth over an extended period of time, in particular, have become more complex.

Mukherjee added that the economic slowdown and recession in major developed economies adversely impacted growth in all parts of the world.

“It revealed critical gaps in international policy making and regulation, in risk management and international development cooperation. It also raised a number of questions on the process of international decision making and accountability that have a direct bearing on the global economic environment for the developing countries,” he said.

In his address Mukherjee stressed on the need of having strong domestic economic foundations to benefit from the ongoing process of globalization and called for setting up of an integrated and a coherent policy approach to protect and promote national interests.

“We have to deepen and broaden the domestic market so that we can ride the shocks and uncertainties of the global economy just as well as the periods of expansion and boom. This requires that we take a balanced broad based approach to our development process- an approach that is well captured by the idea of garland of grids,” Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee opined that with the help of huge young human resources and the demographic advantage country should work to make the 21st Century a truly Indian Century. (ANI)