On Thursday, while maintaining that the decline in fourth quarter GDP print cannot be attributed to demonetisation alone, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said India growing at 7-8 percent which is “fairly reasonable” in the current global context.

In March quarter, India lost the tag of the fastest growing economy to China with a GDP growth of 6.1%, which pulled down the 2016-17 expansion to 7.1%. On this Jaitley give his point that slowdown was due to both domestic and global factors.

“There are several factors which can contribute to GDP in a particular quarter. There was some slowdown visible given the global and domestic situation even prior to demonetisation in the last year,” Jaitley said while addressing media on completion of three years of the Modi government.

It is fairly reasonable level of growth by our own standard and very good by global standard. I see no reason that there would be adverse impact of GST on GDP. GST by itself should normally add to the growth. The government intends to roll out the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from July 1.

RBI as an important institution can’t give approximations. Today every currency note has to be counted, if there is any counterfeit that has to be eliminated and real count has to come. It’s an enormous exercise that RBI is doing.