FICCI plan to speed up Karnataka's growth

With Karnataka's growth slowing down during the last four years, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) has mooted a five-point agenda aimed at ensuring comprehensive development of the state in the next five years, to achieve 10 per cent growth.

The FICCI has urged political parties to include the 5-point agenda in their respective manifesto for the assembly elections.

The agenda includes: diversifying and broadbasing the economy and focusing on other areas for investments; reviving agricultural economy; improving economic governance and efficiency of government spending in targeting the rural and urban poor; revamping institutions that deal with government delivery of services and developing Bangalore with a totally new governance model.

FICCI Chairman and Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who presented the agenda at an interactive session "" 'Vision Karnataka' "" at Raj Bhavan to Governor Rameshwar Thakur, said: "FICCI deliberately focused on these issues since we believe that the micro solutions will evolve if the agenda is accepted by one or two political parties. Our early engagements with the political leadership have been positive."

By implementing the agenda, FICCI, believes that the state can become a $150 billion economy by 2015. "The economy has been allowed to and has become dangerously uni-dimensional and over-dependent on IT sector and offshoring. This makes the state vulnerable going forward to global trends in this sector," he added.

Chandrasekhar pointed out that growth and economic progress have not been inclusive. "A large part of the state's population and economy has been affected as a consequence of the agricultural economy shrinking. Growth in the state has tapered off and stalled over the last 4-5 years," he said.

Noting that agriculture sector's share in the state GDP has come down to 20 per cent in 2005-06 from 34 per cent in 1993-94, he said the focus should be on derisking agriculture by promoting agro processing. "The state has 10 agro-climatic zones and nine distinct soil types. Most produce marketed without significant value addition leaves great scope for agro and food processing industries," he stated.

Since the state has the highest acreage of dryland after Rajasthan, emphasis should be on increasing investment in irrigation projects, revatilising small tanks and encouraging rainwater harvesting. "In the process, contract farming should be encouraged. Many groups like Reliance and Bharti are interested in retailing. They are willing to invest in logistics and cold chains," he said.

Chandrasekhar was of the opinion that Bangalore should be developed on a 'mission mode' basis as against the present incremental mode.

"The state should seek special status for the city. The Greater Bangalore City Corporation should be restructured. The municipal bodies should be delinked from implementing large infrastructure projects by creating a better agency," he added.

He said political parties have to take a development-oriented route since people are increasingly becoming impatient with the present state of affairs.

"The demographies of our state is pointing to a younger and more important population that is increasingly impatient to old style of politics. People want solutions today and are not prepared to be silent and wait," he said.