Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) D. Subbarao on Monday underscored the need to increase investment and productivity for the country to clock a higher rate of GDP growth.
Unless that happened, it would be difficult to accelerate the growth, he said, even while stressing facilitating measures such as those improving the ease of doing business and imparting skills to prospective workforce. A former IAS officer, who held various important posts, including that of Finance Secretary, Mr Subbarao was addressing a meeting Rotary Club of Hyderabad (District 3150) had jointly organised with the Rotary Club of Twin Cities at the Federation of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FTAPCCI).
Speaking at the programme, organised as part of the Independence Day celebrations, he emphasised attracting more investment in the manufacturing sector since that would create more jobs. Noting that the government had not done as well as it should on the job creation front, Mr.Subbarao said though one million people were joining the workforce not even one million jobs were getting created in a year in the country.
The job creation potential in manufacturing sector was much higher than that in the services and agriculture sectors, he said, calling for public private partnership initiatives to equip young job seekers with necessary skills. Counting infrastructure development as another facilitating factor to push up growth rates, he said experience showed that the PPP model, however, was not best suited for this job. Given that much of the bad loans today related to infrastructure, and banks were not equipped to finance such projects, the need was for long-term financing instruments.
Measures aimed at improving farm productivity, better governance, facilitating ease of doing business by ensuring the rule of law, higher spend on education and health, promoting innovation, managing urbanisation as well as environmental issues were other aspects that Mr. Subbarao emphasised.
