To boost economy, an investor-friendly approach is must: Jaitley

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said the main challenge before the next government will be to work for re-developing the confidence in the economy and expedite decision making.

"In order to regain that confidence, we will need to expedite all decision making process and a new mechanism would need to be put in place for speedy grant of approvals at state and central levels," he told a group of reporters in Varanasi.

Talking about BJP's economic agenda in case it is voted to power, Jaitley said, "We will need to have an investor-friendly approach. The ease of doing business would need to be improved significantly."

The fiscal policy, he said, needs to be better and the first priority should be to address areas that are like low-hanging fruits, such as infrastructure, real estate, urbanisation, rural housing, tourism and skill development.

"Another area, which might not be a low-hanging fruit, but needs to be addressed immediately is to give a push to low-cost manufacturing. But, first we need to target the easy to achieve objectives," he said.

Jaitley said that the UPA government created a Cabinet Committee for Investments to give a push to the decision making process, but the objectives were not met as there was no mechanism to involve states.

The senior BJP leader also said that the UPA government had a major weakness as all its "three" power centres were "very introvert".

"While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was genuinely introvert, Rahul Gandhi always looked down upon others and Sonia Gandhi had no major role to play," he said.

"What we need is simultaneous participation of states in decision making process, rather than having a ping-pong like situation between states and the central government," he said, citing issues related to Orissa projects and "hurdles" by the environment ministry in various projects.

He said there was clearly a lack of coordination between states and the Centre. The states would need to be told that it would be for their benefit if investments take place in their areas and they would certainly not go against the development, he said.

"Except for a state adopting totally partisan approach, which we cannot help, no one will say no to any development in their area," Jaitley said.

He claimed, "BJP in this election will get highest-ever numbers in its history. We will get a comfortable majority with our NDA alliance partners and as of now we are looking at very close to 300-mark."