Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Import tariffs to be further lowered: Sinha

Import tariffs, already brought down to 35 per cent, will be lowered further nothwithstanding the total dismantling of quantitative restrictions from April 1 this year, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said on Thursday.

"We have lowered our average tariff rate gradually from over 100 per cent to 35 per cent today and will further reduce it in the years to come," Sinha said at the opening plenary of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Quantative restrictions on imports will be phased out by April 2001. Foreign portfolio investment is now almost entirely open, he said. The foreign direct investment regime has been substantially liberalised over the last few years, he added.

"Our highly regulated financial system is being dismantled and interest rate policy is established by an independent central bank,"he said, listing out the progress made by India in liberalising the economy.

Noting that the capital markets were "open, transparent and subject to the same speculative excesses as capital markets everywhere, Sinha said that overall, the methodical approach has paid off for the Indian citizens.

Sinha said liberalisation has empowered the poor to communicate and they have also given people the tast of markets.

"The citizens of my country and the developing world are no longer willing to tolerate poverty," he said, adding that "they want higher growth and participate in greater opportunities."

However poverty is still a problem. "But, while we have problems, we have our strengths too. The west unfortunately, never seems inclined to talk about what we have," he said.

"Debates never focus on how much better off the bulk of the population is, the strength of the bulk of the population is, the strength of the democratic institutions in south or its quality of governance", he said.

At the time of Independence, India had a miserable life expectancy of 32 years. This had nearly doubled to 62 now, he said.

Elaborating on the progress made by India, he said most importantly its GDP growth rate has risen to 5 per cent in the 1980s and to 6.5 per cent in the nineties.

Tell us what you think of this report