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Promising to lay great emphasis on increasing spending on the infrastructure projects, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that all such ongoing projects will be revisited, and recalibrated when required, to achieve the desired results.
In his first press conference after taking oath as senior-most minister in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet the previous weak, Mukherjee said, "My government will have to focus on implementing and strengthening the infrastructure investments,"
"The pipeline of infrastructure projects will be re-appraised, made more robust. Where necessary, policy and procedures will be calibrated to give a boost to infrastructure spending."
He also said that now the focus would be on addressing the issues and concerns of the various stakeholders to propel the growth of India and enable it to come back to the high growth path of recent years quickly.
Pranab Mukherjee also tried to alleviate fears that people in India has been trying to spend its way out of the present crisis, which will affect its fiscal position in coming years.
He said, "Prophets of doom have been unduly focusing on increased public spending and the consequent increase in the revenue and fiscal deficits in the recent past. We are hopeful an early return to our recent growth performance will help us come back to our preferred path of fiscal prudence."
As per the finance minister, the ground reality of the present time is that there is constant need of pump priming the economy in the current fiscal year and also the next and fiscal consolidation would be achieved over the next two-three years.
He added, "Let me also say unambiguously that we are committed to restoring growth and employment and that would not have been possible without increased spending funded by incremental borrowing." Hindustan Times
May 27, 2009
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