The Planning Commission has said deficient monsoon is likely to pull down the economic growth in the current fiscal to about six per cent, from 6.5 per cent last year.

Talking to reporters in New Delhi, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said in case of 12th Five-Year Plan, 2012-17, the annual average economic growth could be around 8.2 per cent as against the earlier estimate of 9 per cent envisaged in the Approach Paper to the policy document.

As regards the current fiscal, the Reserve Bank has recently lowered the growth projection to 6.5 per cent from 7.3 per cent in the wake of deficient monsoon and global economic problems.

Asked whether special schemes were needed to tide over the drought like situation, Ahluwalia said those were issues that state governments had to tackle. He said rural employment guarantee scheme MGNREGA could deal with the problem of unemployment in rural areas.