Depository System Will Curb Unfair Practices: Fm
Speaking to newspersons after inaugurating the eighth foundation course at the national academy of direct taxes (NADT) here, he said there was an urgent need to increase the percentage of delivery of shares in the total trading done.
Mostly they are squared off and very little delivery is done. As a result, speculators dominate the stock markets, he added.
The finance minister hoped that the starting of the depository from November 1 this year and the increasing trend towards screen-based trading will professionalise the stock exchanges to a greater degree and help curb errant brokers and dishonest traders. Corporatisation of brokers and tightening of short-selling alone would restore investor's faith in the exchanges, he said.
Replying to a question he said the Indian statistical organisation should study whether the assessment of national income was accurate or whether a large portion of the income still remained unreported.
He said the country overcome chronic poverty by achieving an annual growth rate of at least 7.5 per cent for the next 25 years.
He said there was no reason why any country should tolerate abject poverty which was only a consequence of wrong economic policies. Even countries like Malaysia, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, which were once poorer than India, had outdistanced us and have achieved a higher per capita income, he pointed out.
Chidambaram said past policies pursued by India had resulted in a growth of five per cent a year for the first 30 years, leading to a 50 per cent increase in per capita income.
If the economy of the country grew by 5.5 per cent a year for the next 25 years, the per capita income would double. But if the growth rate was 7.5 per cent, the per capita income would go up by 400 per cent over the same period, he said.
It was this additional two per cent on which economic policy makers and planners must concentrate, he suggested.
Chidambaram said poverty has been haunting India for the last 5000 years and was sought to be pampered over by religion, irrelevant myths and fatalism.
Noting that most of the 44 probationers of three services who were undergoing the course came from urban, affluent families, he said this imposed a greater obligation on them to understand the needs and aspirations of the people of the country, most of whom were poor and lived in rural areas.
He urged the officers to voluntarily seek postings in states other than their own in order to understand and unite the country.
Service to the people and the state should be your highest ideal, he said and dismissed as rubbish the talk that it was not possible to remain honest in services like customs and excise.
The same thing can be said about politics too and still there were hundreds of honest officers, just as there were hundreds of honest politicians, he said. It is these honest officers and politicians who are remembered and revered for long and not those who are corrupt and caught, Chidambaram said.