That is why, over the last four to five years, it was able to reduce the revenue deficit considerably and also the fiscal deficit. But for this year alone, every year the target fixed has been fulfilled by the Government and the Government was nearly approaching to the level of eradicating the revenue deficit and making it to zero. But for the interim happenings in the international areana, perhaps, the Governemnt would have achieved those targets also. So, taking all this into account, I find that this Government was able to amke a kind of innovative approach to budget-making and also accountability to the people. Madam, today the fundamentals of the Indian economy are very strong as the earlier Finance Minister used to say that today, we have a robust economy. In the last four to five years, our growth rate has been hovering between 8.5 per cent and 9.5 per cent. Today, because of the world recession and because of the development outside the country, we find stagnation, there is slowing of growth, but even here, one has to admit that if the fundamentals of Indian economy had not been strong, if the banking system in the Indian economy had not been strong, perhaps India would have slipped further down to a growth rate between 3 per cent and 3.5 per cent. When the whole of world economy is growing between 4 per cent and 4.2 per cent, Indian economy is able to maintain even today a grwoth rate of 7.2 per cent in spite of the world or global recession. The most important factor for this is that we have been able to develop a good banking system which did not crush with the developments in the banking system elsewhere in the world. That was because we have created the public sector banking system here and not the private sector banking system.
