Addressing the first media meet in Chennai after becoming the CII president, Bajaj said provisions for buyback of shares should be relaxed for negotiated deals. Also margins against shares in debentures should be reduced from 50 to 5 per cent. He also wanted that charitable trusts and FIIs be allowed to invest in mutual funds.

Calling for a boost to venture capital initiatives, he said venture capital funds (VCFs) should be allowed to invest in convertible debentures and preference shares of target companies. VCFs should be allowed to invest 10 per cent of their funds corpus in listed companies, he said.

Urging for greater fiscal discipline, he said MoUs on fiscal reforms already signed with four states should be extended to other states. Government should also reduce revenueexpenditure through downsizing, restructuring and rationalisation of departments, reduction of staff and general cost cutting.

According to Bajaj, CII estimates fiscal deficit for the year 1999-2000 to be 6.8 per cent without taking into considerations of the impact of Kargil operations. Other projections on economic performance were: GDP six per cent, industry six per cent, agriculture three per cent, services eight per cent, inflation six per cent, savings rate 27 per cent, imports 10 per cent, exports five per cent, and forex reserves $ 35-36 billion.

Bajaj said globalisation was inevitable and so there was a need to evolve a competition policy and adopt a competition law to meet challenges posed by WTO norms. Also India and other developing countries should get together and work together towards common goals of increasing exports to developed countries.

He defended that majority of the 3700 CII members were honest although some were unscrupulous and majority were paying high rate of interest forborrowings from financial institutions and banks. Liquidation and relocation procedures were time consuming and laws in regard to corporate NPAs and bankruptcy need to be looked into afresh and debt recovery procedures should be strengthened.

On subsidies he called for improved delivery mechanism, focussed and targeted subsidies so that income tax payers are excluded from PDS and phasing out of subsidies on fertilisers, food, water, public transport, education etc. Government must move towards user charges and market price.

The CII president wanted at least 74 per cent equity in PSUs to be disinvested and empowering of the Disinvestment Commission to oversee strategic sales. Calling for autonomy of PSUs, he said the boards of PSUs must be allowed to decide on issues relevant to their working without having to refer these to the ministries.