FM For Relaxing ECB Norms

To promote infrastructure development in the country, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said that the government has identified certain areas in this regard, including relaxing of external commercial borrowing norms.ECB norms for infrastructure must be made flexible, pension and insurance funds should invest more in infrastructure and its guidelines have to be revisited. Above all, create a broad, deep and active corporate bond market. Chidambaram stated that India needed to raise investment in infrastructure from the current level of five per cent of GDP to nine per cent of GDP over the next five years. The finance minister added that initiative for dedicated infrastructure funds were stalled due to the lack of projects.