PM calls for ways to check economic slowdown

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday set the agenda for the Planning Commission to find ways and means to ensure that India gets back to the high economic growth path and secures its rising appetite for energy.

"We have been through a difficult year because of the global economic downturn, which is only now coming to an end with a slow return to normalcy in the months that lie ahead. The country has also seen a poor monsoon," the Prime Minister said.

"I felt it would be useful for the Planning Commission to present its assessment of the overall economic situation to the Minister Members of the Commission," he told a meeting in the Capital of the full plan panel, of which he is the Chairman.

The meeting, attended by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, among other key policymakers, also reviewed India's energy policy.

"Energy is vital to our economic growth. This is an area where we are a deficit economy. We import over 70 per cent of our petroleum energy needs and are also moving to a deficit position in coal," Manmohan Singh said.

"Rational energy policies are critical for rational responses to the threat of climate change. This is a new compulsion. We need to assess whether we are on track in critical aspects of our energy policy."

He said each energy sub-sector in India was the domain of a different ministry, which often meant non-symmetric policy stance. In other words, principles adopted to determine policy in one sector are not the same as in another.

He, accordingly, called for a proper assessment of how the country's Integrated Energy Policy, approved by the government in December in 2008, was being implemented so that changes can be made accordingly.

This is the first meeting of the full Planning Commission since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was voted back and comes against the backdrop of India logging a 6.1 per cent growth in the first quarter of this fiscal but now facing one of the worst droughts in decades.