PM meet economists and experts for review of economy post demonetization

28 Dec 2016 Evaluate

Prime Minister Narendra Modi as chairman of government think-tank NITI Aayog attended a meeting of economists and experts to take stock of the economy and get feedback on ways to deal with the problem of cash crunch post demonetisation. At the meeting PM discussed a range of subjects including agriculture, job creation and skill development with a group of select economists and experts. Further, 4-5 sectoral groups have been set up to discuss new initiatives and Budget proposals.

Vice chairman of NITI Aayog, Arvind Panagariya said that farm sector experts suggested incentivising states to undertake market reforms, create corpus fund for promoting farm mechanisation and micro irrigation, and provide interest subvention for term loans, among others, to double farm income by 2022. Panagariya further said that another key theme under discussion was job creation and skill development. The economists present at the meeting urged that unorganised labour be brought into the formal economy. They also stressed on the need to make skill development more demand driven and increase the emphasis on apprenticeship.

The meeting assumes significance in view of various multilateral agencies and RBI lowering growth outlook for the current fiscal. RBI has reduced the forecast to 7.1 per cent from 7.6 per cent in its monetary policy review earlier this month. Also, Indian economy expanded by 7.1 per cent and 7.3 per cent in first and second quarters of 2016-17, respectively. The theme of the meeting was ‘Economic Policy Reform, Road Ahead’ and there are about 15 invitees for the conference. Further, the Prime Minister will also took stock of various initiatives of NITI Aayog to promote digital economy like Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi Dhan Vyapaar Yojana to incentivise digital payments.

The meeting was attended by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya, and senior officers from the Union Government, among others. The economists and experts who were present included Pravin Krishna, Sukhpal Singh, Vijay Paul Sharma, Neelkanth Mishra, Surjit Bhalla, Pulak Ghosh, Govinda Rao, Madhav Chavan, N K Singh, Vivek Dehejia, Pramath Sinha, Sumit Bose and TN Ninan.

 

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