New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said India is expected to surpass Britain next year to become world's fifth largest economy.
"This year, in terms of size, we have overtaken France. Next year we are likely to overtake Britain. Therefore, we will be the fifth largest (economy)," he said.
Other economies in the world are growing at a much lesser rate, he said, adding that India has the potential to be among top three economies of the world in the next 10-20 years.
According to a World Bank report in June, India became the world's sixth-biggest economy, pushing France to seventh place. The US tops the list followed by China, Japan, Germany and Britain. The new calculations arrived on the basis of Indian economy's performance in 2017. India's gross domestic product (GDP) was valued at $2.597 trillion at the end of 2017 overtaking the French economy, which was amounted at $2.582 trillion last year.
Earlier, Jaitley had said that the rising international crude oil prices and the global trade war would pose as crucial challenges. "We have already seen a significant move up in India's ranking in the ease of doing business and as a preferred investment destination. Today we stand to be tested in the midst of a global challenge thrown up on account of the international crude oil prices and the trade war," he said.
Jaitley, who has recently resumed office as the finance minister, had claimed that the NDA government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has ensured that rural India and the less privileged get the first right on resources and if this, along with increased expenditure, continues for the next decade the impact on India's rural poor would be significant.
"This benefits all irrespective of religion, caste or community. The Congress provided India's poor with slogan. Prime Minister Modi has given them resources. This will ensure faster growth and lead to a faster depletion in the poverty," the finance minister added.
He said the Congress party in 1970s and 1980s followed the model of "populist slogans" rather than "sound policy and actual expenditure for the welfare of the poor".
Jaitley had asserted that ever since the Modi government took over, it has been working to translate the advantages of faster growth to rural India as well as to bring a significant section of people into the neo-middle class and bring people out of poverty.
The Indian economy is estimated to grow at 7-7.5 per cent in the current fiscal, higher than 6.7 per cent growth clocked in 2017-18 fiscal.
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