Govt mulling steps to boost economy, says Cabinet Secy

Addressing global summit of the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Seth said Finance Minister P Chidambaram had on the August 6 made a statement indicating how the government intends to deal with the current situation and to see that the economy is brought on a high growth trajectory.

"I can just say at this stage that the government is considering a series of measures to implement the announcements made by the Finance Minister," he said.

Chidambaram, after assuming charge of finance portfolio last month, had said that he would unveil a roadmap to boost investment and economy by fine-tuning policies to put in place a stable and non-adversarial tax regime and measures to attract domestic savings and foreign capital.

He also set up a committee under former Finance Commission Chairman Vijay Kelkar to suggest measures for fiscal correction.

"Dr Vijay Kelkar has submitted his report on the fiscal consolidation side. Now this is again an area on which the government is very keen to ensure, I think there is no choice considering the extent of the fiscal deficit and the current account deficit, there has to be consolidation," Seth said.

The Committee's recommendations for disciplining the government expenditure come in the backdrop of the fiscal deficit reaching over 50 per cent of the target in the first four months of the whole year of 2012-13.

Fiscal deficit -- the gap between revenue and expenditure -- stood at Rs 2.64 lakh crore in the April-July period.

"So, essentially the government is keen to remove the perceived difficulties of doing business in India. And we want to remove the fear of regulatory burden or regulatory over-reach," Seth said.