India’s finance minister forecast Thursday another year of nine per cent economic growth and called on industry to back measures to help the nation’s rural masses share in the boom. I’m assuming a growth rate of nine per cent (for 2007-08),’ said Finance Minister P Chidambaram, a day after announcing a budget which declared that boosting the farm sector should have ‘first charge’ on India’s resources. ‘The growth story is intact,’ he told India’s NDTV television network. India’s economy is forecast to grow 9.2 per cent in the financial year ending March 2007, the fastest rate in nearly two decades. Chidambaram’s growth forecast came after he briefed industry leaders on the budget and urged them to support investment measures to put the rural economy, which has been bypassed by the economic boom, on a higher growth path.