Kumar Mangalam Birla meets Arun Jaitley; expects infrastructure boost via Budget

Sounding a note of optimism, Aditya Birla Group head Kumar Mangalam Birla on  Wednesday exuded confidence that the Budget would give boost to infrastructure sector and a turnaround would be visible in the next 3-6 months.

"I expect a turnaround to happen in 3-6 months. I also expect budget to give a boost to infrastructure sector," Birla said after a 45-minutes-long meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Birla, head of over $40 billion cement-to-telecom conglomerate, is one of the first few industrialist to have met Jaitley after he took over as Finance Minister.

On plans of investment in India he said: "the group will kickstart investments soon."

Finance Ministry is getting ready to present the final budget for 2014-15 in which the efforts are likely to be made to kickstart investments and give a boost to the sagging economy.

Industrial output as measured by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) remained almost flat in 2013-14 and declined 0.1 per cent compared with a meager expansion of 1.1 per cent in 2012-13.

The country had registered over 9 per cent growth for a few years before the global financial meltdown of 2008 pulled it down. The economic growth rate slipped to decade's low of 4.5 per cent in 2012-13. It inched up to 4.9 per cent in 2013-14. In the current fiscal the growth rate is expected to rise further to 5.5 per cent.