The Bharatiya Janata Party, riding high on India's economic boom with the world's second highest growth rate, has promised to turn its energies to make India the world's manufacturing hub.

Addressing a press conference on the BJP's economic resolution in Hyderabad on Sunday, Union Minister for Commerce Arun Jaitley said that for India to become an economic superpower, the country has to improve its manufacturing sector.

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So far, most of India's amazing success and global recognition in recent times has come from the services sector, in areas of business process outsourcing, or information technology. Manufacturing rarely figured high on India's list of outstanding achievement and the BJP is now committed to give the manufacturing sector its share of the sun.

"Manufacturing generates more jobs and more revenue," he said, adding, "Today China is a global manufacturing hub, and the BJP has decided that in the next five years, India should become a global manufacturing hub."

He pointed out that in certain sectors, India enjoyed huge advantages, such as textile, where India was already a global leader. And the economic resolution points out how automobiles made in India are now exported to across the world, and that India is fast emerging as an automobile hub.

Jaitley blamed the poor infrastructure that kept Indian manufacturing out of the world's markets and prevented India from becoming a hub even when China was surging ahead to become the world's workshop.

"Towards that end, we are committed to improving our infrastructure by way of roads, better airports, seaports, better technical education for ever increasing numbers. We plan to create high standards in manufacturing to meet the global requirements," he declared, and said the plans for new highways and for rural roads would take care of the pressing need for increased infrastructure.

The resolution also promises further power sector reforms, an expansion of the Indian railways, reforms in the coal sector, and improvement in the labour laws to ensure higher productivity and generate greater employment.

The BJP economic resolution was released at the BJP's national executive meeting that is currently underway in Hyderabad. The resolution reads out the party's plan for the next five years even as it takes credit for India's awesome economic successes in 2003 such as foreign exchange reserves of over $100 billion, controlled inflation, and the burgeoning economic growth rate.

But not forgetting the reasons that has made India the buzz of the world: its knowledge based sector, the economic resolution promised to make India the world's second centre of economic knowledge (after the United States). "Education is the key, and education has to be expanded at a massive scale," he said.

The resolution promises to create, within a yet-to-be specified time frame, a system to accredit higher education institutes.

Talking of the BJP dream to make India an economic superpower, the resolution promises to banish poverty and create wealth. Towards that end, the resolution also promises to make India into a major tourist destination. "Tourism has the potential to be India's largest employer," pointed out Jaitley.

Aware of the criticism that India's economic prosperity appears confined to the urban areas and to specific regions, the resolution speaks of spreading India's rising economic wealth, especially to the Northeast and to Kashmir.

He further added that the BJP remained convinced that India's economic prosperity was spreading to the rural areas. "Nevertheless, we also believe that we need to do better in the rural areas and I'd like to point out that this government is the first to have undertaken measures such as insuring crops and promising farmers a fixed income," he said.

He defended the BJP's record on divestment and slammed the Congress for criticising divestment on ideological grounds even as it practiced it on the ground. "The Congress declared that it would not divest any profit making company, yet the first company the newly installed Amarinder Singh government in Punjab divested was Punjab Tractors, a profit making company," he pointed out.

Later, when asked why the BJP had no reference to the fiscal deficit in its resolution, he said the BJP remained concerned about the fiscal deficit even though the BJP national executive meeting did not have any "significant discussion" on the subject. "The good news is that we have generated higher revenues this year; also this is a matter that the government is seized of and it will do something," he said.

The BJP, said Jaitley, is committed to making India a completely developed economic power by 2020 and an economic superpower after that.