'Growth important, but India Inc must do its bit'

New Delhi, May 24: Finance Minister P Chidambaram today assured the industry that growth will continue to be the pivot of the government policies, but asked India Inc to share it's responsibility of achieving inclusiveness.

''It is a misnomer that inclusiveness can be a achieved without high growth. In fact, low growth would be less inclusive,'' Mr Chidambram said in his address at the National Conference and Annual Session of CII.

Mr Chidambaram said for the growth process to be sustainable, it must be equitable and asked the industry to do its bit in this regard, be it combating HIV/AIDS, spreading education among workers or undertaking community-based projects.

The Finance Minister remarked that this was plausible ''and must be done.'' The Minister gave an assurance that the Banking Cash Transaction Tax (BCTT) will be re-visited next fiscal, even though he dwelt at length to explain that it excluded most people from its purview. For instance, a transaction of Rs 50,000 a day would alone come under its ambit.

Referring to the surge in foreign flows, Mr Chidambaram said nothing should be done to restrict these 'copious flows', but instead there was a need for dexterously managing them. In this regard he cited the instance of China, which was managing much larger volumes of foreign capital.

Mr Chidambaram traced the persistent inflationary pressures to five factors. These include high global ruling commodity and metal prices, high public expenditure, rising per capita incomes leading to excessive demand and mismatch of demand- supply.

The Finance Minister, however, did not spare the business community saying that there were instances of industry using its pricing power, resulting from industry operating at near full capacity.

He asked corporate leaders to desist from 'arbitrarily' using this newly acquired pricing power.

Mr Chidambaram admitted that governance was a serous issue and the failure not to put an effective governance structure in place was leading to the fruits of development not reaching the targeted groups.

The Finance Minister said the problem of terrorism and unlawful activities was hampering the growth process, but the only solution to this was tackling the problem at the roots, speed up development and spread its benefits wider.

UNI