kumarv@paul.rutgers.edu (kumar vadaparty) (06/27/91)
=============== AP News summary kumar vadaparty =============== NEW DELHI, India: The new finance minister promised Tuesday to get India through a severe economic crisis by easing state controls. Manmohan Singh told a news conference, ``I want to free the economy from the webs of unnecessary control.'' State control and a burdensome bureaucracy have kept multinational companies and foreign capital from investing in India's vast market of 843 million people. Succeeding governments avoided easing controls, saying India would be detoured from its socialist path. ``This problem can't be solved by emotionalism. We have to take drastic steps and good decisions,'' Singh said. ``We can do business with the multinational, '' he said, without elaborating. Singh, a former governor of the Reserve Bank, was named finance minister by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao when a new government took office last week. India has sharply restricted imports this year to stem depletion of its hard currency reserves. News reports say India has asked its major creditors _ the United States, Germany and Japan _ to reschedule loans to avoid defaulting. The government has asked donor countries to expedite aid already committed. India's outstanding foreign loans stand at more than $46 billion. Hard currency income was devastated by a big drop in tourism and a cutoff in workers' remittances from the Middle East because of the Gulf War. A $1.8 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund, approved in January, has already been depleted. A second loan request for $2 billion is delayed by a late budget. The IMF says it wants to see the budget, as well as how India is going to tackle its economic ills, before granting the loan. Finance officials said Singh has written to IMF managing director Michael Camdessus, outlining India's economic situation and needs. ``I am going to use this crisis to begin a process of structural change,'' Singh said. ``We will look at all existing control that comes in the way of exercising creativity.'' He did not say which controls he might lift. End of article ==============