Growth rate has more than doubled: PM

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday that the country's growth rate had more than doubled to an annual average of over seven percent and the economy was on an upward trajectory in the last 20 years.

"The rate of growth more than doubled to an annual average of over seven percent and the economy was put on an upward trajectory in the last 20 yrs," he said while addressing the HT leadership Summit here. "Today, many feel dissatisfied with a growth of five percent, while for more than two decades, five percent was the target rate of growth of our Five Year Plans," the prime minister added.

"There will be periodic ups and downs. The economic cycle presents us years of high performance and years of modest performance," he said. The 81-year-old prime minister termed his generation as one that had lived through nearly half-a-century of slow growth, low industrial development and little social mobility.

He also said that economic growth, social change and political empowerment have brought in their wake the new aspirations of an entirely new generation. "A revolution of rising expectations is underway and I welcome it," he said.