Seeking to boost industrial activity at the state level, the government has called a meeting of state chief secretaries to expedite implementation of public expenditure schemes.
The meeting convened by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar this week will be attended by chief secretaries of all states and representatives of Union Territories, a senior official said.
The Centre has already announced two stimulus packages and the Reserve Bank of India has injected Rs 3,20,000 crore since October, to help the industry battle the impact of global financial meltdown.
In addition, the central government had raised the public expenditure by 20 per cent, over and above Rs 7,50,000 crore earmarked in the Budget for 2008-09, to step up public expenditure especially in the infrastructure projects.
However, sources said, implementation has to be done at the state-level and it was necessary to impress upon them to remove bottlenecks hampering speedier implementation of projects for which money has already been earmarked by the government.
The meeting called by the cabinet secretary is also likely to be attended by officials from other central ministries responsible for implementation of the projects in the infrastructure sector.
The meeting with state chief secretaries comes in the backdrop of industrial slowdown, which after a gap of 15 years turned negative in October, though the output picked up marginally in November.
What is more worrying, however, is declining exports that shrank by over 12 per cent in October and have remained in the negative zone ever since.
