Stressing the urgent need to push through reforms, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) chairman UK Sinha on Friday cautioned there was ?an overall feeling of anger and rejection?. Speaking at a seminar on the financial sector, Sinha said: ?I would like to highlight that there are some reforms which have long been pending, and one which was mentioned a short while ago ? the pension reform. It has been years and years together but some of the reforms which have been on the anvil for almost a decade are yet to come through.?
According to the head of the market watchdog, reforms needed to be speeded up if policymakers wanted to revive investor interest and stem the fall in growth rates, which were among the world?s highest till a few years back. India?s GDP grew at just 5.3% in the three months to March, way below expectations. ?If we start making progress on these things (reform execution), then despite forecasts about the economy coming down from the higher levels of 2007-08… we can again come to the levels which are perhaps commendable in comparison to any part of the world,? he said.
Interestingly, Sinha?s statements come less than 24 hours after the government was yet again forced to defer the pension reforms Bill after ally Trinamool Congress opposed some clauses. The government had hoped to get the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, which seeks to give legal sanction to the interim pension regulator, passed in the monsoon session, but did not succeed.
The sense of frustration felt by industrialists at the government?s inability to move on new policies and legislation seems to be spilling over to regulators and even chiefs of PSUs. On Thursday, NTPC chairman Arup Roy Choudhury had blamed the government for chronic fuel shortages that have worsened the country?s energy crisis.
Choudhury said the spate of corruption scandals created a climate of fear, freezing officials into inaction on environmental clearances, land acquisition and allotment of coal mines. ?Public sector companies like mine are under tremendous pressure because of the environment of suspicion and mistrust,? Choudhury told Reuters in an interview.
The Sebi chief dwelt on the need to revive investor sentiment and economic growth: ?That is something all of us have to consider very seriously ? how long can we go on deferring this… We cannot become complacent about policy-making and implementation domestically… The fact is that the rest of the world is also getting affected and in some sense, they are affected much more severely than us,? he said adding ?the decline in growth forecasts is happening across the board.?
He added the slowdown being witnessed in India was part of a global phenomenon and the good part was that the impact on India had been much less when compared to that in other countries.
