|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Thursday, 20 May 2004 |
 |
|
 |
World | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
India's incoming Prime Minister pledges 'pro-growth' measures NEW DELHI, Wednesday (AFP) Manmohan Singh, the father of India's economic reforms who is expected to be the country's next prime minister, said Wednesday financial markets had nothing to fear from a new communist-backed Congress government. Singh, who served as finance minister in the last Congress government between 1991 and 1996 and is a former governor of India's central bank, promised "pro-growth" measures. "We'll bring in policies that will not hamper India's progress - policies that are pro-growth," Singh told Aj Tak television in an interview. "So (market) fear is absolutely wrong." Indian shares posted their biggest one-day crash in 12 years Monday amid investor fears that a communist-backed Congress government would stall or stop economic reforms that have helped power India's strong economic growth. Singh, who the Press Trust of India news agency said Congress had elected as its choice for prime minister after party leader Sonia Gandhi turned down the post Tuesday, said he had appealed to party allies to "act with restraint." Analysts fear the communists' decision to support the government from outside could allow them to hold it to ransom with populist demands that could balloon India's deficit and halt its privatisation drive that has brought billions of dollars worth of foreign investment into Indian shares. "Everyone wants our country to progress fast but poverty must be eradicated as well.... It's imperative we now work together to give the country a stable government," he said. The "aim of reforms should be to take the country forward," said Singh, who put India on the path to economic liberalisation in the early 1990s. "For this, agricultural production should be improved, industrial production must pick up and move forward, exports should pick up," he said. "Also our policies will give more money for education and health." Congress has been expected give its policies a more "common man" stamp after India's hundreds of millions of poor rejected the BJP government in the April-May polls because it failed to pass on the fruits of a booming economy. In its election manifesto, Congress pledged growth of eight to 10 percent and to broaden it to all areas, particularly agriculture. It said it would take a selective approach to privatisation. India's economy is expected to grow by 8.1 percent in the financial year to March 2004, helped by a bountiful monsoon in the farm-dependent nation. Shares have clawed back much of their losses since Gandhi, who led Congress to an upset win over the ruling Hindu nationalists whose pro-business agenda made it an investor favourite, said she would reject the premier's job. Gandhi, torchbearer of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and widow of assassinated premier Rajiv Gandhi, faced virulent attacks from outgoing Hindu nationalist government members over her suitability to be premier due to her foreign birth. She said power had never been her aim and she only wanted to give India a strong, stable and secular administration. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
