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Economic growth to slow to 8.7 pc: Chidambaram The pace of India's economic growth will ease to 8.7 per cent in the fiscal year ending March 31 primarily due to a slowdown in consumer demand and the manufacturing sector, finance minister P Chidambaram said on Friday. That's down from expansion of 9.6 per cent in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, India's fastest expansion in nearly two decades. ``Overall, there was a deceleration in the growth of public and private consumption, which affected the growth of the services sector, including construction,'' Chidambaram said in Parliament on Friday. The slower growth of consumer goods is also the most important factor in the slowdown of the manufacturing sector, he said.