NEW DELHI: Indian government officials painted an upbeat picture for the economy on Thursday as it struggles to emerge from the longest spell of sub-par growth in decades and promised to tighten up risk management at the country’s dominant state banks.

Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram said growth is on course to recover to about 5.8 per cent in the year to March 2015, up from 4.7pc last year — the second year of growth below 5pc, too slow a rate to provide jobs for the large numbers entering India’s labour force.

Recent economic data does point to a nascent recovery: industrial production is having its best run since last September, infrastructure output growth is at a nine-month high and manufacturing activity is growing at its fastest for 17 months. Car sales are also up.

“If you look at the trend growth, then you see green shoots of recovery in the economy,” Mayaram told an industry chamber.

Concerns about the health of the country’s banking system were also addressed on Thursday when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told delegates at a banking event in New Delhi that the government was working to tighten up risk management in the sector.

The prolonged slowdown has hit the Indian banks’ balance sheets as bad loans rose to 4.1pc of gross advances in March from 2.4pc in March three years ago, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its annual report on Thursday.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2014