8 Point Programme Of PM for 8 Percent Economic Growth

. The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, today laid down an eight-point agenda which the Government would follow to sustain the recent upturn in the economic situation and also to achieve the eight per cent growth projected in the Tenth Five-Year Plan.

Prominent on the agenda is the promise to clean up the Government's regulatory procedures, including ``several growth-hindering hurdles that have been placed in the name of environmental protection''. It also emphasises the Government's resolve to reduce and re-target subsidies and to go in for public-private partnership in education, healthcare, shelter, sanitation and old age social security. Besides, an action plan is to follow, and this will help fulfil the Government's promise of ``10 million employment opportunities per annum''.

The agenda was unfolded by the Prime Minister during a meeting of his Economic Advisory Council here today. At the meeting, Mr. Vajpayee recalled his new Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh's recent comments that ``a major burden on our economy is the way our Government machinery functions. It is designed to achieve delay, not development; its pre-occupation is procedures, not performance.''

Hurdles to be removed

The Prime Minister said that a comprehensive review of the current regulatory procedures had begun and that a high-level official working group would soon recommend steps to re-engineer the entire set of regulatory processes at the Central, State and municipal levels. ``For example, we shall take steps to remove several growth-hindering hurdles that have been placed in the name of environmental protection, which can be got rid of without harming the environment.''

Stress on proper implementation'

Mr. Vajpayee laid stress on proper implementation of policies and programmes, saying it would be his first priority to bridge the gap between promise and performance. He listed the implementation of the new telecom policy, the on-going work on the national highway development project and the completion of a number of disinvestment initiatives as ``successful'' but said a lot more needed to be done.

He spelt out another challenge, that of further speeding up the economic reforms so that India became a clear-cut market economy with the Government withdrawing from production, barring a few clearly-specified strategic sectors. However, the Government would retain and further strengthen its role in policy-making, regulation and facilitation, Mr. Vajpayee said and added that ``we need to ensure that regulation of markets is by competent and independent regulatory agencies. These should follow transparent procedures, guided by the Government's clearly articulated policy objectives.''

On subsidies, the Prime Minister was categorical that an essential element of the poverty alleviation strategy would have to be reduction and re-targeting of subsidies so that the essential consumption of the poor was protected but the overall fiscal deficit was reduced. ``Barring those who deserve subsidy, we should develop a culture of making all others pay for what they use,'' he said and referred to unrecovered costs from sectors such as power, education, public transport and municipal services. As for the ``laudable goals of a welfare state,'' Mr. Vajpayee said these would now have to be pursued within a new framework — mainly by broadening and deepening the scope of public-private partnership in education, healthcare, shelter, sanitation, care of the aged and the poor, and promotion of sports, arts and culture.

The Prime Minister was assisted by the Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, the Petroleum Minister, Ram Naik, the Power Minister, Suresh Prabhu, the Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar, the Law Minister, Jana Krishnamurthy, the Disinvestment Minister, Arun Shourie, the Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways, B. C. Khanduri, and the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, K. C. Pant.