FM on govt policies, investor confidence

Finance Minister P Chidambaram has reiterated the government’s policies would be directed towards containing the fiscal deficit, boosting growth and encouraging foreign investments in the country. Speaking at the Sixth Meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) on Thursday, Chidambaram highlighted the efforts being made to turn the economy around.

He informed FSDC members that to encourage foreign flows into India and offer reassurance on the positive investment climate, he has recently held discussions with international investors at Singapore, Hongkong, London and Frankfurt and hoped to get positive results.

Chidambaram reiterated the commitment of the government for observing the path of fiscal consolidation and imposition of fiscal targets and policies that will make necessary fiscal correction needed for the economy and take the economy back to the path of higher growth.

In November 2012, he had given a fiscal consolidation roadmap as per which fiscal deficit would be contained at 5.3 per cent of the GDP this year and brought down to 3 per cent by 2013-14.

In this meeting, financial sector regulators presented their suggestions regarding the forthcoming Budget 2013-14, the finance ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The FSDC meeting was held as a pre-budget consultations’ exercise with Financial Sector Regulators and was attended among others by D Subbarao, Governor, RBI; UK Sinha, Chairman, SEBI; Yogesh Agarwal, Chairman, PFRDA; J Hari Narayan, Chairman, IRDA; RS Gujral, Finance Secretary; Arvind Mayaram, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs; Sumit Bose, Secretary, Department of Revenue; Ravi Mathur, Secretary, Department of Disinvestment; Raghuram Rajan, Chief Economic Adviser; Rajiv Takru, OSD, Department of Financial Services and other senior officials of the Ministry of Finance.