Date:26/08/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/08/26/stories/2005082602880900.htm

Back Coalition limits options on privatisation: Manmohan

Our Bureau

Chennai , Aug. 25

"WE are a coalition Government and that limits our options in some ways. Privatisation happens to be one such area," the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has said in an interview to McKinsey Quarterly, a publication of the consultancy firm McKinsey.

The Government did not think that profitable public sector enterprises needed to be privatised. These enterprises were free to go to the market to raise resources. The Common Minimum Programme of the Government mentions the "navratnas" - mainly in the oil and power sectors - which were doing well, and "other than going to the market to raise funds for their own expansion, our options are limited by what is stated in the Common Minimum Programme," he said.

However, all options were open to the Government for those enterprises that did not come under the "navratnas" fold. "But I must confess to you that in the prevailing milieu, the thinking in our coalition is that for enterprises that are doing well under competitive conditions, we must have special justification for privatisation," Dr Singh, told the questioner, Mr Rajat Gupta, a past managing director of McKinsey and a director in the Stamford office.

The Prime Minister emphasised the need to create jobs in all sectors of the economy, especially in the manufacturing and services sectors. Conditions had to be created in which manufacturing and services moved fast. While agriculture accounted for 60 per cent of the country's labour force, the country would need a second green revolution to increase production and productivity, and in the process, create more jobs. But over a period of time, "our salvation lies in getting people to move out of agriculture."

Dr Singh said modernising agriculture was necessary not only to help farmers but also consumers. He had got feedback on the need for a unified food law, he said and added that "we have just now prepared the Bill, and it will be introduced in Parliament." Along with this, electricity had to be supplied in rural areas and cold storage facilities provided. The Government had an ambitious plan of energising all the villages. "I hope that should bring about a new revolution in the handling of agri-business," the Prime Minister said.