He also did not accept that there is overall slowdown of the economy or any derailing of the economic reform process and in fact intends to pursue higher growth rate in the next year.

He was not daunted by prophets of doom and was optimistic of ending the year with a creditable 6.5 per cent growth and containing the fiscal deficit at budgeted level.

In an interview, Mr Sinha disclosed that the budget will outline a medium-term strategy to spur growth, push up investment in infrastructure, agriculture and downsizing government.

"When I say the budget will be growth-oriented, this is precisely what I have in mind that we must have a kind of regime that will spur demand and investment," he said.

Mr Sinha said the measures will have to be both sectoral and overall as the basic problem was to spur growth to promote investment in the Indian economy."Some sectors have special problems. Some of them have been taken care of and others will be taken care of as we go ahead with the preparation of the budget because we are too close to the budget now."

Allaying fears of a slowdown, Mr Sinha said, "The point to make is we are not in a crisis situation. In certain sectors of industry there has been a certain slowdown. The performance of the government has to be judged not in the context of slowdown but from the response of the government to the emerging situation."

Looking from the global context, Mr Sinha said the performance of the economy has been creditable with a 6.8 per cent growth rate in 1998-99, not a growth rate anyone should be ashamed of. It was followed by 6.4 per cent in 1999-2000.

Noting that the petroleum prices started going up right from May, the minister said if the whole situation was taken, it was the manufacturing sector which was not doing well.

"Actually it is 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent fall in growth rate. In manufacturing, what is particularly not doing well is the sector of capital goods. It is this one segment which is responsible for the slowdown and some people try to give this a colour of crisis," he said.

"Therefore, given the very difficult situation I will personally think any growth rate above 6 per cent this year should be considered satisfactory and creditable," he said.