The government is making slow progress on its reforms agenda. Only 60 of the 160 central ministries and departments have drawn up their priority action plans for reforms.
Central ministries were supposed to submit to the Planning Commission by the beginning of October detailed action plans on how to achieve their reform agendas. But, more than half of them are yet to submit their blueprints.
The plan body, which was to give a monthly progress report on the priority agenda to the prime minister, has written to him stating that ministries are not showing adequate interest.
It has also emphasised the need for intervention, failing which the pace of reforms and that of economic growth will slow down.
Ministries had been directed to submit detailed action plans on how they would achieve their part of the government's priority agenda on reforms within six weeks, starting August 20.
The deadline ran out on October 1, but only about 37 per cent of them have submitted their action plans to the Planning Commission.
The agenda, which was drawn up after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's call for a focused reforms programme for the current fiscal, includes 115 policy-related items.
The Planning Commission is to monitor the progress of these policy-related initiatives listed in the priority agenda.
Formulation of a national policy on subsidies, a new civil aviation policy, a policy for rural electrification and a national action plan to double food production by 2010 are on the priority list.
Work on the priority agenda outline was begun in January this year after the list was cleared by the prime minister's office and ministries were asked to come up with detailed proposals on how to achieve the identified objectives.
The thrust items related to projects will be monitored by the ministry of programme implementation.
The government's focus projects include computerisation of the income tax system, timely completion of the Golden Quadrilateral and North-South and East-West corridors and the completion of the Electronic Data Interchange with regard to foreign trade for online filing and data collection.
Stalled reforms
- Central ministries were supposed to submit to the Planning Commission by the beginning of October detailed blueprints on how to achieve their reform agendas.
- Only 60 of the 160 Central ministries and departments have drawn up their priority action plans for reforms.
- The Planning Commission has informed the prime minister that ministries are not showing adequate interest in the programme.
- The reforms agenda includes 115 policy-related items.
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