Indian new finance minister pledged Monday to push ahead with economic reforms and fiscal consolidation at the same time as promoting agriculture and manufacturing growth and cutting unemployment.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, seen as the architect of India's economic reform drive in 1991, named Palaniappan Chidambaram, 58, late Sunday to take charge of Asia's third-largest economy of more than one billion people.
"The continuity (of reforms) is pretty clear because we're going back to the days of the original reformer (Singh)," said Chidam-baram, who succeeded Singh as finance minister in 1996, and is also known as a staunch reformer.
The communist-backed Congress government would focus on agriculture and manufacturing to generate employment. Congress and its allies were swept to power on what analysts said was a wave of anger among India's millions of poor about being left out of a booming economy.
"These sectors (agriculture and manufacturing) require massive investments, both public and private, and it will be my endeavour to promote investments that I believe are key to growth of jobs," he told his first news conference.
Unemployment is officially pegged at eight percent but economists say the figure is far higher and add many Indians are "underemployed."
The economy is in "a resonant mode in terms of growth, inflation and balance of payments. I'm confident there's scope for consolidating growth momentum."
India logged third-quarter growth of 10.4 percent, helped by a bountiful monsoon in the farm-dependent nation.
At the same time, he pledged to keep a lid on the fiscal deficit, a concern to financial ratings agencies, which sees it as a brake on economic growth.
"We're going to find the money for public investment and we're bound by the will of parliament (to cut the deficit)," he said. "With some effort and some correction, it's possible to achieve both objectives."
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