Fiscal deficit may exceed target: says Sinha

On government8217;s projection on the growth rate of the Indian economy for 1998-99, Sinha said, quot;we have projected a safe figure of around five per cent. It could be even 5.5 per cent of the GDP.quot;

At the same time, he noted that there were varied estimates of growth rate projection from four per cent to six per cent. The actual growth rate for 1998-99 would also depend ultimately on the performance of the agriculture sector after the harvesting of winter crop in a month from now, he said.

Sinha ruled out scrapping the Foreign Investment Promotion Board FIPB in the wake of automatic route for approvals to foreign investments. Sinha said his government had alreadyexpanded the automatic route considerably and that it would endeavour to continue defining policy in this regard wherever required.

quot;We do not have the latest figures to show the extent to which the automatic route for foreign investment approval has been expanded because of some of the policy changes were made only recently,quot; he said.

Sixty per cent of the industry was covered some time back for automatic route approvals to 95 per cent at a future stage, Sinha observed.

He said though the automatic route was expanded, there were quot;still some peoplequot; who wanted exceptions to be made which were not covered by the policy parameters.

quot;In those cases, approval can be given only by the FIPB and so the board in some form will have to be there,quot; he said.

To a question, Sinha said Indian government had requested the World Bank WB to discuss issues arising out of the US move to lobby other countries to block WB development loans and even IFC loans to Indian private enterprises.

Sinha declined to commentwhether a decision had been taken to abolish the existing zero import duty on some capital goods saying zero duty imports should not be encouraged.

quot;Almost all imports must have a minimum import duty. What exactly will happen will be unfolded only in the coming budget8221;, he added.

The Minister also parried questions on the continuation of Special Import Duty SID and special additional customs duty SAD. The SAD, which was reduced from eight per cent to four per cent, is currently a bone of contention between the government and the European Commission with the latter threatening to take New Delhi to the World Trade Organisation on the issue.