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Terming economic expansion in the range of 7 per cent perfectly good, Member of Economic Advisory Council to the PM, Sanjeev Sanyal has said India should be satisfied with the current growth rate unless the external environment improves. Further, he said it was necessary to protect the hard-earned macroeconomic stability.

Sanyal stated ‘Now look, it is possible for us to hit double-digit growth, but I would actually be rather careful about it. This whole game is about compounding growth.’ India's economy grew at better-than-expected 8.4 per cent in the final three months of 2023, logging the fastest pace in the past one-and-a-half years. The growth rate in October-December helped take the estimate for the current fiscal to 7.6 per cent.

He said ‘We should not attempt to grow this economy by anything more than what it is growing now. If the external environment does not dramatically improve, because what will happen then, is that our external accounts will begin to overheat, our inflation will begin to overheat and so on.’

He noted that the key is not to lose control of macroeconomic stability as it was a very hard-earned thing. He said ‘You can only generate very high rates of growth if the external environment is conducive, otherwise we should be satisfied with what we are doing or even something in the range of 7 per cent is perfectly good.’