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Unido asks India to speed up reforms

The UN Industrial Development Organisation on Friday asked India to speed up its pace of economic reforms for getting more FDI in view of donor countries' decision to cut down funds for undertaking development projects in developing countries like India.

"There is now a scarcity of donor funding. International agencies like UNIDO undertake development projects in developing countries like India from Overseas Development Assistance given by Japan and countries in Europe. It has been seen that the quantum of such funds is coming down," managing director UNIDO Dr Nilamadhab Mohanty said.

He said in face of the decline in donor funds the only alternative for India was to tap FDI more aggressively and said that the recent measures to liberalise FDI norms was a step in the right direction.

He, however, cautioned that actual inflows would depend on how soon the liberalised norms were actually implemented.

Criticising the slow pace of reforms he said: "It has been almost a decade since India started its economic reforms. However, the pace of privatisation is too slow and many others have gone far ahead including many Latin American and East European countries."

Also, some of the policies of the government based more on political rather than economic considerations were coming in the way of faster industrialisation like the continued reservation for the small scale sector, he said.

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