Govt promises transparency, accountability

The government plans to set up a commission to reform the financial sector laws and institute an independent evaluation office among others, to bring about more transparency and public accountability.

"The government proposes to set up a Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission to re-write and clean up the financial sector laws," Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Parliament while presenting the Budget for 2010-11.

This would bring the laws in line with the requirements of the sector doing away with ambiguity and complexity crept in the old legislations with amendments and changes made in them over the years, Mukherjee said.

He further said that an effective tax administration and financial governance calls for creation of information technology projects which are reliable, secure and efficient.

For this, the government proposes to set up a Technology Advisory Group for unique projects like Tax Information Network, New Pension Scheme, National Treasury Management Agency, Expenditure Information Network, Goods and Service Tax, which are in different stages of rollout.

"To look into various technological and systemic issues, I propose to set up a Technology Advisory Group for unique projects under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani," he said. Further, to evaluate the impact of flagship programmes, the government proposed an Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) to be set up as independent entity under a Governing Board chaired by the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman.

The findings will be placed in the public domain to bring in more transparency and accountability in the implementation of these schemes," Mukherjee said adding it will improve the effectiveness of the public interventions.

With the aim to reduce legal backlog from an average of 15 years now to three years by 2012 and provide timely justice for all, the government has approved to set up the National Mission for Delivery of Justice and Legal Reforms.

Mukherjee said that it would also help in improving the legal environment for business, as per an official statement. The government has also decided that the Planning Commission would prepare an integrated action plan for affected areas to address the development problems of the 33 left wing extremism affected districts, it said.