Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Govt. pulling out of manufacturing sector

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI MARCH 21. The State Government is planning to "generally withdraw" its presence from the manufacturing sector, the Finance Minister, C. Ponnaiyan, announced today.

"We have formulated our disinvestment policy on the lines set out by the Government of India," he said presenting the budget for 2003-04. The Government would take up disinvestment of its stake in all public sector and cooperative sector enterprises in the manufacturing sector.

"We shall also restructure all remaining public sector undertakings to make them efficient and cost-effective." A voluntary retirement scheme for employees in the public sector undertakings and cooperative institutions had been implemented. Necessary amendments would be introduced in the Cooperative Act.

The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board would undertake measures to reduce cost as suggested by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission. It would concentrate on improvement of efficiency, quality of energy supply, reduction in cost and prevention of theft.

In public transport, the Government would introduce competition and better service. The State Corporations would be restructured through amalgamation.

Fiscal responsibility

The Government would undertake further fiscal consolidation so that Tamil Nadu was taken on a higher growth trajectory.

A bill on fiscal responsibility would be introduced in the current session. Its main objective was to set out the principles of prudent fiscal management and secure adherence. The Government would also strictly enforce budgetary and fiscal discipline.

While the administrative departments would have a greater say in formulation and execution of their budgets, they would also have to ensure proper budgetary and fiscal discipline.

With a phenomenal increase in the total debt, the Government initiated the process of restructuring outstanding debts to control the debt-servicing cost.

This year, an estimated Rs. 1,045.89 crores of outstanding high-cost debt with the Centre had been `swapped'.

The Government was taking up with the World Bank funding of the Tamil Nadu Road Sector Project (Rs. 2118 crores), Water Resources Consolidation Project-II (Rs. 2900 crores), Poverty Alleviation Project (Rs. 1,156 crores), the Tamil Nadu Health Systems Development Project (Rs. 650 crores), the Water Supply and Sanitation Project for Rural Areas (Rs. 2,300 crores) and Urban Development Project-III (Rs. 750 crores).

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