New Delhi, Aug 1 (IANS) To allay concerns of India Inc, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Monday held a marathon meeting with top industrialists, including Ratan Tata, Anil Ambani, Sunil Mittal and Anand Mahindra and said the government was not suffering from policy paralysis.
‘There has been some cynicism expressed of late regarding lack of adequate movement on policies and institutional processes. This is based more on perception than facts,’ Mukherjee told the industrialists during the two-and-half-hour meeting.
He claimed that the government had taken several significant policy initiatives in the recent past and ‘many others were in the pipeline’.
Mukherjee said important financial sector legislations were being pursued.
‘Some of the bills introduced in the last session including Banking Laws Amendment Bill, Factoring and Assignment of Receivables Bill, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, Insurance Laws Amendment Bill and Life insurance Corporation Bill were expected to be passed in the monsoon session of the parliament,’ according to a statement released after the meeting.
The finance minister asked India Inc to suggest ways to boost industrial and economic growth.
He said the government has set up a panel of secretaries to take note of sector specific concerns.
Other top industrialists who attended the meeting were ITC’s Y.C. Deveshwar, Infosys’ N.R. Narayana Murthy, GMR’s G.M. Rao, TVS Motor’s Venu Srinivasan, and RPG’s R.P. Goenka.
Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma and top officials like Finance Secretary R.S. Gujral, Economic Affairs Secretary R. Gopalan, Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar and Chief Economic Adviser to the finance minister, Kaushik Basu, also attended the meeting.
The finance minister said such interaction should help in building the synergy needed to propel the economy to greater heights in the coming months.
On weakening of the business sentiments, Mukherjee said it had been partly due to an uncertain global environment and, also on account of rising cost of domestic credit.
He said that a tight monetary policy had been necessitated because of the continuing challenge posed by inflationary pressure.
