Structural reforms needed to overcome fiscal deficit 8212; Sinha

8220;We have to finance our plans by borrowing from the market and our net borrowings now stand at about Rs 80,000 crore. We cannot go on like this,quot; Sinha said, lamenting there had been no balancing of the budget for the past 20 years.

quot;Today we are spending Rs 88,000 crore just to pay the interest on loans we have taken earlier,quot; he said.

Referring to the diesel price hike, Sinha said instead of hiking the prices the government could have taken on itself an additional burden of Rs 10,000 crore and further increase the fiscal deficit. quot;I can keep on borrowing money to face this situation. But we cannot pass on the debt burden to our next generation,quot; he said.

The Finance Minister said 8220;we cannot stop paying interests on loans taken from world agencies, reduce defence expenditure or subsidy or pensions or even the grants in aid given to state governments.quot;

Due to expenditure on these heads and on non-plan account, no money was left for industry, he said.

On the forthcoming Seattle round of multilateral negotiations of World Trade Organisation WTO, sinha said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will convene a meeting of all political parties soon to seek a consensus on India8217;s stand at the conference.

quot;We have also been holding discussions with developing countries at various fora including G-15 to chalk out a common approach of developing world at the Seattle round,quot; he said.

Reacting to interventions by Narain Dutt Tewari Congress and Sudip Bandopadhyay Trinamool Congress on revival of certain sick public sector units PSUs, Sinha said special revival packages had been finalised for 18 identified PSUs and the government take all steps to strengthen the navaratna and mini-ratna units.

While some units which cannot be revived would have to be closed down, Voluntary Retirement Schemes VRS have to be introduced to compensate the workers, Sinha said, adding that funds saved from such closures would be used to strengthen other PSUs.

Claiming that stability of the economy had been maintained despite the east Asian crisis which also affected Russia and Brazil, Sinha said India and China had been recognised worldwide for maintaining a stable rate of economic growth, with the former recording growth of six per cent.

He claimed that rate of growth of both wholesale and consumer price indices had also been maintained and the quot;lost confidencequot; of developed nations has been quot;regainedquot;.

He said the government had pledged to fulfill the basic minimum needs of the people in the next five years quot;through the process of economic reformsquot;.