Double digit growth after two years

Finance Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai, who has been speaking plenty about double-digit growth, Thursday said that people will need to wait for two years to see the country attain this goal.

Unveiling a white paper on the state of economy on the eve of the budget, he said that the government will not be able to fulfill all of people's aspirations, as it has inherited a very weak economy.

"The budget will spur hope, but the hope should be pragmatic - firmly match the ground realities," he told journalists. Dr Bhattarai elaborated that the budget will focus mainly on providing relief to conflict hit people, driving the country into higher growth trajectory and attaining fair distribution of resources and income.

Though agriculture, infrastructure, health and education will be major areas of public investment, the budget will rate hydropower and tourism high on its priority, he added.

Dr Bhattarai indicated that the new government might not continue the past ones' privatization policy. "We will activate public enterprises, then issue their shares to people and employees, and run them under the public-private partnership modality," he said.

He reaffirmed the past governments' actions to deal with loan defaulters stringently. But at the same time, he tagged banks as 'parasites'. "Banks have completely ignored the real sector and focused only on serving able groups. This situation must be corrected," he stated.

Apart from flaying past policies and programs, the finance minister also laid down the Maoist-led government's roadmap for putting the country into higher growth trajectory. "The first two years will be a period for planning and preparations," the white paper said.

During this period, the government will adopt strategies to attract substantial foreign investment in special economic zones (SEZs) and push up economic growth by two percentage points compared to the previous year. In 2007/08, the economy had grown by 5.6 percent.

The next five years after that would be the medium development period, when the economy would grow by double-digits, said Dr Bhattarai, adding that a decade after that will be the takeoff period, when the country will go through massive socio-economic transformations.

"We want to attain it (double digit growth) now, but we can't because of faulty policy of past governments, weak implementation and poor governance," he added.

Dr Bhattarai emphasized that poverty and unemployment were the two major challenges that the present government faced. He also cited income disparity, downturn in manufacturing, decline in exports, rising trade dependency on India and growing aid dependency as his main concerns.
Source: eKantipur