**India’s government has unveiled its annual budget, saying the “first challenge” is to return to a growth rate of 9% a year “at the earliest”.**Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the growth rate for the present fiscal was projected at 6.7%.
He said the second challenge would be to “deepen and broaden the agenda for inclusive development”.
The government increased spending on urban poor schemes and the landmark jobs-for-work scheme to help the poor.
Mr Mukherjee said the states should remove bottlenecks to speed up infrastructure projects, and announced increased funds for construction of highways and flood prevention schemes.
“The first challenge is to return the GDP growth rate of 9% at the earliest,” Mr Mukherjee said.
“The second challenge is to deepen and broaden the agenda for inclusive development.”
The finance minister said that there were “signs of revival in domestic industry and foreign investors have also returned to Indian markets in the last couple of months”.
“It is possible that the two worst quarters since the global financial meltdown in September 2008 are behind us,” Mr Mukherjee said.
Mr Mukherjee said the government could not “afford to drop its guard”.
“We have to continue our efforts to provide further stimulus to the economy,” he said.
The Indian economy grew 6.7% in the year to the end of March 2009, but had grown by an average of 8.8% in the previous five years.
Exports - which make up about 15% of gross domestic product - have also fallen, as overseas demand for goods continues to shrink in the global recession.