Finance and Company Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, on Friday, gave a clear indication of his resolve to put immediate brakes on further growth in the government's revenue deficit, but said there were no prospects of privatisation of airlines taking off in the near future.
"I will be content with any growth in the deficit on the capital side, but on the revenue side, I will certainly reduce the deficit's ascending trend, even though I know I cannot cure the problem overnight," he said at the India Networking Lunch organised here as part of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.
On the question of privatisation of airlines, Singh said these would not happen as there were no buyers and the issue was not being handled properly.
On the other hand, the government was keen on privatising the airports so that the physical infrastructure for doing business in India improved and did not remain a bottleneck.
Singh, who chose only to respond to questions raised by participants and the challenger, Daniel Kaufmann, director at the World Bank Institute, said the government was committed to debureaucratise and efforts had already been initiated in this direction.
He told the participants to note that while the US bureaucracy was not wanting to reform, the Indian bureaucracy had already made a beginning to restructure and reform itself.
When asked by Rajat Gupta, chief executive of McKinsey, if the Indian government could reduce the duty level of 40 per cent on Indian manufacturing companies, Singh said: "Replying to that question would cost me my job."
Singh, however, said that the government still paid a lot of attention to manufacturing and he was confident that India would be the manufacturing base of tomorrow.
He mentioned housing, tourism and gems & jewellery sectors as having the potential for creating more jobs. "India could also exploit the health sector to its advantage," he added.
The finance and company affairs minister assured the participants that financial sector reforms were on course.
On a related question of fundamentalism and terrorism on the sub-continent affecting development, Singh said the problem was not just in Pakistan, but in the conditional thinking in the West.
Kaufmann had raised three specific challenges before Singh, namely excessive bureaucratisation, widening fiscal deficit and slow banking sector reforms.
Earlier, Karnataka chief minister S M Krishna, explained how his government had used e-governance to improve the lot of the people and bridge the gap between those who had the technology and those who were deprived of it. He laid emphasis on education and health services.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu said India was capable of growing by 10 per cent, if the finance minister gave the right policy thrust on February 28.
Naidu also outlined the rapid progress made by his state in attracting new investments in information technology and business-process outsourcing.