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As part of Japanese investment plans in India, two of the country’s agencies, JICA and JBIC, have started conducting feasibility studies for over a dozen highway projects worth INR 15,000 crore in the North East region, especially in Arunachal Pradesh. According to a Road Transport Ministry official, there are presently about 12 proposed projects estimated to cost over USD 2.5 billion in the North East.

A JICA official said that the agency had initiated a study since August to assess the status of regional transport infrastructure such as road, rail and port linkages in and around South and South-East Asia, which encompassed India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, besides Myanmar and Thailand. There existed tremendous potential for cross-border trade between India and its neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.

Indian economic growth to cross 5pct this financial year - PM Pinning hopes on the good monsoon and recent reforms, Mr Manmohan Singh PM of India said that economic growth will cross 5 Percent in the current financial year and accelerate further in the coming years.

Mr Singh said that the Indian economy, after many years of rapid growth, has slowed down in the past 2 years. Inflation, weakening of the rupee and other domestic and external factors contributed to this state of affairs. However, we have reasons to be optimistic about the future. There are signs of revival of economic growth on account of the several measures that our government has taken.

He said that a good monsoon has also helped us in our efforts. It is expected that the growth rate of our economy will cross 5 Percent during the current fiscal when the final figures are released. We expect that the reforms that we have undertaken will help in increasing the growth rate further in subsequent years.

The Central Statistics Office has projected GDP growth of 4.9 Percent in the current financial year as against 4.5 Percent in 2012 to 2013, which was the slowest in a decade. A Finance Ministry document said that a big threat to growth is high inflation as it would impair the ability of the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates to boost economic activities. The Prime Minister said that deprivation and poverty are significant contributing factors to rising discontent in the backward and poor districts, many of which lie in Scheduled Areas. Mr Singh said that "We, therefore, need to urgently address the widening economic, income and developmental disparities between citizens living in such areas and those in more developed parts of the country."

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