Quick-fixes cannot solve economy worries: FM

Chidambaram says government will announce steps by the end of this month or next month to boost investment

Unoin Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Friday said temporary economic problems cannot be solved by “quick-fixes” and the government will continue to take measures with long-term perspective to deal with them.

He further said the government will announce steps by the end of this month or next month to boost investment and growth.

“The temporary problems that we face cannot be solved by quick-fixes, it can only be solved by continuing to take long term measures,” Chidambaram said. He said long term measures would bring stability and growth to the economy.

Referring to his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday, Chidambaram said, “the Prime Minister endorsed all the measures. You will see that these decisions are taken in the remaining days of June and July and they will bring benefits to the economy”.

Chidambaram said that government will announce a host of measures to deal with issues like coal and gas pricing and raising of FDI cap in several sectors, including defence.

Since September 2012, the government took several reform initiatives including liberalising FDI norms in various sectors, capping the number of subsidised LPG cylinders and partial decontrol of diesel prices. “The measures that we have taken since August have brought down the fiscal deficit,” Chidambaram said.

The finance ministry has been able to restrict the fiscal deficit to 4.9 per cent of GDP during the 2012-13 financial year and has proposed to lower it further to 4.8 per cent in 2013-14.