The Hindu : Reforms irreversible: PM

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 18, 2002

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Reforms irreversible: PM

By Sushma Ramachandran

NEW DELHI Oct. 17. A formal economic partnership between the East Asian tiger economies and India seems to be on the cards with the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, today mooting an India-ASEAN agreement, for which he said there was "profound economic logic'' even as the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, suggested the creation of a regional trade and investment area. He also sought to convince ASEAN ministers and businessmen that economic reforms in India were irreversible despite the recent "hiccups'' in the liberalisation process.

Inaugurating the one-day India-ASEAN Business Summit, Mr. Vajpayee said these hiccups, a clear reference to the disinvestment controversy, were only the democratic process of reconciling divergences and achieving a consensus. "Our reform process continues to target high growth with balanced and equitable development. Our ambitious GDP growth target of eight per cent exhorts us to stay on this path. There can be no looking back," he said.

He looked forward to a Regional Trade and Investment Area as a near-term objective of India-ASEAN economic relations. The Malaysian Prime Minister, in his address later in the day at the same forum, was keen on knowing about India's response to an ASEAN-India Economic Partnership Agreement. " Let me suggest it is high time for the ASEAN and India to work on a comprehensive economic partnership that will be mutually beneficial to us and to the rest of Asia and the world.''

Mr. Vajpayee said India and the ASEAN had a mutual interest in working towards beneficial preferential and free trade arrangements.

"We need to look at conventional as well as innovative mechanisms to promote economic integration", he said.

Mr.Vajpayee compared the Indian economy to an elephant, slow to gather momentum but unstoppable and irreversible. He also assured ASEAN businesspersons that every effort was being made to make policies more investor-friendly, using e-governance to tackle the problems of cumbersome procedure, paper work and bureaucracy.

He criticised the globalisation process and the fact that there had been "uneven benefits'' among and within nations. "Globalisation cannot be sustained as a one-way quest for developing country markets by the products and capital of the developed world,'' he said.

On this issue, Mahathir Mohamad lauded India's role as a global leader on economic issues. "I have in the past been impressed so often by the posture taken by India in, for example, the WTO'', he said.

Mr. Vajpayee made a pointed reference to the "barbaric terrorist'' attack in Bali which called for the harshest condemnation.

"Your summit also cannot ignore the negative impact of such terrorist acts on business climate in the affected country and region'', he said.

Mr. Mohamad also spoke of the threat of terrorism in Asia but criticised the concept of a "balance of power'' approach "because when you prepare for war, war all too often is what you get''.

Evidently referring to Indo-Pakistan tensions, he said the risks were heightened when nuclear weapons entered the balance of terror.

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