Reforms tempo stepped up

Manufacturing, infrastructure, single farm market top agenda: Kalam.

Setting the reforms agenda for the Budget, President APJ Abdul Kalam today announced a slew of government initiatives, including a 10-year national manufacturing initiative, a new civil aviation policy, a rail freight corridor, an attractive FDI regime and a common market for agriculture.

Promising to keep inflation moderate despite surging global oil prices, he said the national manufacturing initiative would act as a driving force for employment and economic growth and that the government would evolve a policy framework for the development of petroleum, chemicals and petro-chemical regions with $10 billion investment in each location.

Steps had been initiated to set up a Sixth Pay Commission for government employees, he said, adding that model concession agreements were being formulated for public-private partnership to modernise ports and for the development of national highways involving an investment of Rs 1,75,000 crore over the next seven years.

Addressing the joint sitting of Parliament marking the beginning of the Budget session, he announced a Rs 14,000-crore package for reviving cooperatives and amendments to the Essential Commodities Act and the APMC Act to push up farm development.

He said a national horticulture mission, a national rainfed authority, a national biotechnology authority and a national biodiesel programme would be launched, apart from creating a common market for agriculture.

After the Delhi and Mumbai airports modernisation, the airports at Kolkata and Chennai will be taken up and efforts will be made to make India the information technology hardware manufacturing hub and put in place a mechanism for releasing spectrum for commercial use for reforming the telecom sector.

Kalam said the economy was on the move and after the none-too-exciting growth of around 5 per cent per annum during 1999-2003, it had bounced back recording 7.5 per cent growth in 2004-05 and that it was likely to cross 8 per cent this fiscal.

"This is probably a precursor to better times," he said. The renewed optimism of the people was visible in the savings rate, which was now over 29 per cent and the investment rate, which was near 31 per cent, the President said.