New Delhi: The larger union cabinet has been welcomed by business groups impatient for the Narendra Modi government to fulfil campaign pledges to get the economy out of a long slowdown by fixing India's power crisis and overloaded infrastructure.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Modi appointed a separate defence minister in Former Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar to spur military modernization and free Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to focus on the budget and reforms to revive the economy.
"The cabinet expansion sends out a strong signal that the government under Prime Minister Modi is serious about accelerating the reforms process," said Ajay Shriram, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Mr Jaitley had run both defence and finance since Mr Modi took office six months ago, leading to criticism that neither of the key departments could be properly led.
Even though PM Modi relieved Mr Jaitley of defence, the media-savvy lawyer will still have to juggle three ministries, since he now has the additional portfolio of information and broadcasting.
Including junior ministers, Mr Modi added a total of 21 new names into his team including one woman - bringing to eight the number of women in his 65-strong council of ministers.
Jayant Sinha, a Harvard Business School graduate and investment fund manager who is the son of former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, was brought in as a junior to Mr Jaitley.
The expansion went some way towards addressing Mr Modi's reliance on a small group of overworked ministers, but several posts remain vacant.
Mr Jaitley was hospitalised for several weeks in August and September after an operation to treat diabetes. Doctors blamed his workload for delaying his recovery. The opposition Congress party had criticized Mr Modi for turning defence and finance into "part-time jobs."
An ambitious $9.5 billion (Rs 57,950 crore, $1 = Rs 61) privatisation target is well behind schedule, partly because of delays in getting a new team in place in the finance ministry. Mr Jaitley now has a new bench of officials in the ministry, including one of the world's leading economists, Arvind Subramanian, as an adviser.
Together they must revive investment, growth and job creation; the country adds some 10 million people to the workforce every year. The next budget is due in February and investors are hoping for bold decisions on the economy.
"Some reforms are easily possible, some are possible with a consensus, and some are more challenging. I have clearly prioritised most of them...and for the next few months we have our plates reasonably full," Mr Jaitley said on Sunday.
The government has so far taken a series of steps to make life easier for businesses and has reduced subsidies on fuel, spurring a rally in stocks and bond markets after the longest period of low growth since the 1980s. But investment in the economy has not picked up, and industrial output is flat.
Copyright: Thomson Reuters 2014
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