Creating jobs ‘the priority for India’

India’s new government will use public and private investment to create jobs for the millions who enter the workforce every year and will make containing inflation its top priority, its president said yesterday.

Outlining Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic plan following his landslide election victory last month, President Pranab Mukherjee said the government would introduce a general sales tax, encourage foreign investment and speed up approvals for major business projects. It would also tackle bottlenecks that have caused food prices to rise.

Although Asia’s third-largest economy is in its longest slump for a quarter-century, consumer inflation has been stuck at an average of nearly 10% for the past two years and was one of the main issues that brought Mr Modi to the helm of the world’s largest democracy.