Land acquisition is the insurance reform agenda
NEW DELHI – As the government’s key reforms agenda, the ministers issued law about the land acquisition on Wednesday. This law will make easier more foreign investment in retail trading and insurance and introduction of goods and services tax (GST). Manmohan Singh said to editors that he thought the first thing was to sustain the momentum of growth that we had built.
However, support from the Opposition, especially BJP was a key theme underlying Singh’s reforms plan. Therefore, BJP was accused playing politics with GST by him. If he blamed BJP for blocking GST, it means that he would try using an IOU to look for its support in increasing the foreign investment ceiling for insurance from 26% to 49%. Yashwant Sinha as head of the parliamentary committee was reviewing the insurance bill and indications were the panel might not support the move.
Based on this case of retail, a proposal which allowing global chains to enter Indian had to wait the agreement of government. Therefore, he sought to push this case for allowing foreign investment arguing so it would help increasing supply chains and food distribution. In this case, he will try to calm frayed nerves of small traders who fear if they do out of business. Furthermore, FDI will be checking leakages in the subsidy mechanism, management of scarce natural resources, especially land.
