The Hindu Business Line : FICCI plans social audit; to identify 5-6 Govt schemes for plugging leakages

Industry & Economy - Industry Associations
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FICCI plans social audit; to identify 5-6 Govt schemes for plugging leakages

Ramesh Sharma

Mr Rajeev Chandrashekhar, President, FICCI (right), and Dr Amit Mitra, Secretary General, addressing a press conference, in the Capital on Tuesday. —

Our Bureau

New Delhi, March 11 In response to the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram’s suggestion on industry chambers’ possible role in monitoring Government funded schemes, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) said that it would put in place committees to identify leakages in some of the programmes.

“Out of 1,000 programmes implemented by the Government, FICCI would adopt 5-6 schemes and see how much money reaches the intended beneficiaries,” said Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar, addressing his first press conference after being elected as the FICCI President. He said that if 15 paise reached out of every Re 1 that was being spent by the Government, the industry chamber would help identify measures that could increase the amount to 75-90 paise at the grassroot level.

Last week at a post-Budget meeting, Mr Chidambaram had talked about engaging industry leaders and chief financial officers to audit some of the schemes as a part of their corporate social responsibility. Mr Amit Mitra from FICCI said that the chamber had yet to identify specific schemes that they could track.

“We have got a list of 1,000 schemes now with us. We are writing to the industry and seeking their views. We would identify schemes and states in which we have our network of industry members and business partners whom we can leverage,” said Mr Mitra.

Minimum agenda

Mr Chandrasekhar also said that the chambers planned to draw a minimum economic agenda cutting across different political parties. “There are some basic economic issues like strengthening of institutions, regulators, improving efficiencies in which all political parties share similar idealogy. Business has a stake in delivery. Through a series of interactions with political parties, FICCI would take up these issues.” He declined to comment on specific details explaining that it would evolve in a course of time.

FICCI would also take up issues related to cartelisation and price fixing with its members.