Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda yesterday told bankers that the government will announce a new package of schemes for farmers by the end of this month. The new package is expected to benefit about 1 million farmers living below the poverty line.
The Prime Minister said he would not like to make any policy announcements before the budget and made no mention of credit offtake or interest rates. The brief meeting took place at Raj Bhavan. This was followed by a dinner, hosted by Congress leader Murli Deora at a five-star hotel in the city. Iindustrialists and bankers were invited to the dinner.
Among the invitees to the Raj Bhavan meeting were prominent bankers, Reserve Bank of India governor C Rangarajan, the four deputy governors, State Bank of India chairman P G Kakodkar and Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) chairman S H Khan.
Among the industrialists invited to the dinner at Taj Intercontinental late last night were Tata group chairman Ratan Tata, Shashi and Ravi Ruia of the Essar group, Anil and Mukesh Ambani, managing director and vice-chairman of Reliance Industries, Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla group and Mahindra & Mahindra chairman Keshub Mahindra.
PTI adds: The Prime Minister asked the RBI and other financial institutions to evolve a scheme within a month that could generate 1 million jobs a year. Talking to reporters here after a meeting with RBI governor C Rangarajan and heads of other financial institutions, he said the government was committed to generating employment for educated unemployed youth who have registered with the employment exchange.
He said states and financial institutions had been asked to jointly evolve a system of identifying those in need of jobs with an emphasis on self-employment.
The meeting was a preliminary one intended to explore ways of resolving the unemployment problem, specially among the educated unemployed.
The approach paper to the ninth five year plan, approved by Chief Ministers at the NDC meeting in Delhi on Thursday, also accords high priority to generation of employment in both the formal and non-formal sectors, he said.
The Prime Minister said the Centre had been looking at various employment generation programmes like the integrated rural development programme (IRDP), the Prime Ministers Rozgar Yojana (PMRY) in its efforts to help educated unemployed youth.
The Centre, states and credit institutions have to jointly ensure that the benefits of development accrue to those sections of society who have no economic support, he said.
The RBI governor assured the Prime Minister that providing credit and other support to back this national endeavour would not be a problem, an official spokesman said.
The financial institutions committed themselves to holding internal discussions to identify bottlenecks in these projects and sought recommendations for new initiatives.
Gowda said he would decide on projects that do not require parliamentary approval before he leaves for Davos at the end of this month.