I trust govt on balancing economy, says Chanda Kochhar

New Delhi: Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that the Government plans to wind down the stimulus packages as the economy has started to recover from the downturn.

"Like all economies, we also resorted to some huge stimulus packages and we plan to wind the stimulus package down by next year," he said.

The Prime Minister told the high-profile gathering of top business leaders from across the globe that the worst was behind the global economy while the path to recovery remained long and uncertain.

The Prime Minister and the Finance Minister have managed to get India Inc's support on the issue. Speaking at the World Economic Summit, MD and CEO of ICICI Bank Chanda Kochhar said she expressed her confidence in the Government and believed that economic growth will return.

"In a way, I see a positive signal in that statement. It only means that the leadership of our country is actually very confident that the economic growth is coming back, because whatever I have seen of the last one year is that the Government is playing a very balanced role in keeping the stimulus on, in terms of managing growth, managing inflation and managing quite a few of these challenges together. So, if the leadership of the country is saying that it could be some opportune time to withdraw the stimulus, I would see it as a positive to say that they are confident about growth and I'll only hope for that and I'm actually myself pretty confident that growth is coming back," Chanda Kochhar said at the Forum.

Prime Minister also predicted a growth of 6.5 per cent for the Indian economy during the current fiscal and over 7 per cent for the next year, adding a return to high growth required work in many directions, especially in the area of creating jobs and rural uplift.

Later, Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the impact of the stimulus package would be reviewed early 2010. He promised that only after the review will the decision on the modalities for its withdrawal be taken.