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NEED FOR FASTER CLEARANCES TO BUSINESS PROJECTS: RAJAN

Raghuram Rajan, Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance
Government processes in India take too long and the country needs to change regulations that govern business, Chief Economic Advisor in the Finance Ministry Raghuram Rajan said today.
“Things are difficult in India; we have to improve the business
climate and reduce the regulations that govern business.
Some of our regulations come
from British times, we need to change that... We need a thorough revamping of these
rules,” Rajan said.
The government is trying to build ways to get over the problems and according faster clearances to business projects, he added.
“Government processes take too
long. That’s why we have set up new structures to try and
accelerate the process. And even those structures take some time for teething, to find their way...
Rome wasn’t built in a day,”
Rajan told Karan Thapar in CNN—IBN’s show Devil’s Advocate.
The Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) has cleared projects worth $25—30 billion
since January, he said, adding that there was a need to attract
more investments, create jobs and boost growth.
Rajan said the macro-economic condition is showing signs of
improvement, with inflation coming down, and that would
give space to the Reserve Bank to lower rates. RBI is slated to
announce its mid-quarter monetary policy review tomorrow.
The WPI inflation fell to a 43—month low of 4.7 per cent in May,
while the retail (CPI) inflation was at 9.31 per cent.
“The fact that inflation is coming down, we still need to see CPI
inflation coming down a little more, but that should give the RBI more room to cut interest rates which then will flow into the economy and allow us to grow a little faster,” he said.
Rajan said he expects the economy to clock over 6 per cent growth in the current fiscal.
“We have taken many actions which have made the economy
more resilient... We created the environment for more
investment... We need to keep doing more,” he said.
The Indian economy grew at a decade’s low level of 5 per cent
in 2012—13.