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Its a simple enough proposition that all you have to do to boost the economy is do what China does......massive investment in INFRASTRUCTURE and INDUSTRY. Or of you like, inflation free growth....and millions of jobs for the 25 million a year Indians who leave the village to join the urban population.
However, unlike highly centralized, and well managed PRC, India isn't so efficient.
India has problems of effective resource mobilization, primarily due to the inefficiency of the central government and bureaucracy.....and a very weak outdated tax structure inherited from the Raj.
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PM Modi moves in to speed up $300 billion stuck projects
.
By Times of India and Reuters
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
has taken direct control of a project-monitoring body to fast-track
investments worth almost $300 billion and revive manufacturing in the
country, two officials with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Pro-business Modi has faced criticism in recent weeks that his ambition
to spur investment and re-energise the economy has yet to be realized,
more than six months after he won elections with the strongest mandate
in three decades.
Industrial output contracted in October in
its worst performance in three years, jarring with a much-publicised
"Make in India" campaign Modi has championed to make the country a
manufacturing powerhouse.
By taking over the Project Monitoring Group
(PMG), which was previously in the cabinet secretariat, Modi could help
firms planning coal, power, steel and infrastructure projects cut
through a maze of up to 180 clearances.
"The fact that the
prime minister's office (PMO) will be directly overseeing all the
project clearances will impart a greater degree of efficiency and also
ensure that clearances are fast tracked at every level," said one of the
officials, declining to be identified ahead of a public announcement.
Ford Figo at Ford India Limited Manufacturing plant at Maraimalai Nagar near Chennai (TOI Photo)
"The PMO's stamp will make a big difference."
A PMO official said a bureaucrat who had worked closely with Modi when
he was the chief minister of Gujarat will head the monitoring group. The
senior officer is among a few trusted civil servants with whom the PMO
thrashes out key decisions, often at the expense of ministerial
authority.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up the PMG
last year to prod ministers and bureaucrats sitting on files, a tendency
that came to be known as "policy paralysis" and was blamed for growth
of less than 5% for two straight years.
Since its inception, the PMG has facilitated 197 stalled projects worth about $110 billion.
South Korean steel maker POSCO
is one of many companies to have approached the PMG. POSCO has waited
nine years to get approvals to set up a $12 billion steel plant, which
would be India's biggest foreign direct investment.
Tata Power and Adani Power are other top companies awaiting clearances.
"Business confidence has certainly improved in the last six to seven
months, but this confidence now needs to get translated in the project
delivery, kick-starting the investment cycle and boosting consumer
demand," said Sunil Kanoria, president-elect of industry body Assocham.
