More reforms in the offing, says Chidambaram

The FM said India as a country seems to be comfortably on track for meeting the millennium development goal in terms of reducing poverty because of high growth performance during the 1990s.

“We are aware that for India to meet 2015 targets, an extraordinary efforts would be required,” Chidambaram said.

Although India has had an average growth of about 6.3% over the last decade, the growth has been uneven and regional disparities persist, he said.

Unless the effects of growth are spread to these lagging states, targets for all India will be difficult to achieve, he warned.

In achieving the human development outcomes captured in the millennium development goals, there has been notable success in some of the states, Mr Chidambaram said.

“The government of India has been supplementing the development expenditures of states in a big way in recent years to achieve targets that are very similar to millennium development goals,” he pointed out.

The public spending on health is being raised to at least 2-3% of GDP with focus on primary health care, he said adding outlays of schemes for control of communicable diseases and aids control programme have been enhanced.

He said the absence of substantial progress in infusing adequate amounts of additional official development assistance to meet MDGs is prompting exploration of various innovative financing mechanisms.

India warns against uneven global growth

: India has warned that unbalanced nature of robust growth of world economy and widening current account imbalances posed serious risks and wanted appropriate strategy to be evolved to tackle it. “There is growing consensus that adjustment of these imbalances needs to be paced and sequenced in a non-disruptive manner,” Finance minister P Chidambaram said. —PTI