During the meeting Friday the two sides pledged to intensify bilateral relations as envisaged in the Vision Statement issued jointly by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the then US president Bill Clinton during the latter's state visit to New Delhi last year. Their deliberations also covered greater opportunities for US trade and investment in India in the context of the second generation economic reforms being implemented by it, an Indian embassy spokesman said. The issue of growth in India is, of course, an issue of implementing further structural reforms. I think Indian Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and government are absolutely on the right track to have defined structural reforms as the major vehicle to lift up this growth rate of five to six percent to, maybe, eight percent or even more. It is possible.
More growth is needed to find a decisive breakthrough against poverty.