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Push for passage of pending Bills: N K Singh

A Correspondent in New Delhi

N K Singh, Member, Planning Commission, urged a distinguished gathering of manufacturing sector CEOs to collectively push for the passage of 23 pending Bills in Parliament.

He stated that these bills covered a gamut of issues that impinged directly on the efficiency of the manufacturing sector and hence there passage was important to spurt the growth of the sector.

Singh was addressing a plenary session titled 'Dialogues on manufacturing sector scenarios' on Tuesday at the India Economic Summit jointly organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the World Economic Forum in New Delhi.

Sharing the government's perspective, Singh stated that he continues to be amazed by the asymmetry that while on the one hand the area of industrial licensing had been subjected to large doses of deregulation, on the other, deregulation has made only a nominal difference to the contribution of manufacturing to India's GDP.

He also reminded the industry that 84 per cent of the problems that ailed manufacturing in India are internal factors and only 16 per cent were external or related to government policies.

He assured the participants that all the external concerns of the sectors were been addressed by the government. In the power sector he expected 'significant changes in the next two years' and some states such as Haryana and Rajasthan had already began to reap the benefits of the new policy.

He expected ports to be corporatised, leading to cost reduction and lowering of turn around times. He indicated that major reforms in the currently distorted railway freight rates were on the anvil, and that new beginning in internal duty rationalisation will be made in April 2003 with the introduction of VAT.

Unlike the industry, Singh was optimistic about labour reforms and put it high on the agenda of the government.

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