KARACHI, March 26: Before 1991 India was a closed economy based on policy of substitution of imports. The banking sector, including its private part, was controlled to finance the priority sectors at subsidised rate , leading to an outstanding effect for the rest of the economy.

Policies of opening to imports and exports were adopted in 1991 and private sector was encouraged, said Head Economist, Centre for Social Sciences and visiting Professor at Jawaharlal University, in his lecture "Has Indian economy changed over last decade."

The lecture was delivered at the National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA) here on Thursday. His second lecture was on "Reforming in public sector of India." Intellectuals, economists, researchers and students of economics and international affairs attended the lectures.

The scholar, however, noted that the process was slow and many things were yet to be corrected there, that is, taxes are still high, openness is slow, and FDI has not much materialized due to administrative complexity, absence/emergence of clear regulation.

The taxes system has not been seriously qualitatively addressed. There is no significant growth in GDP from the reform era. Very reasonable inflation is noticed, but it goes with an absence of growth.

The economy has been mostly left out by the temporary storm of the South East Asia crisis, he said. About the public sector, he said the policy of privatisation of manufacturing and services enterprises has not materialised in an actual privatisation, rather in limited disinvestment. Therefore, he said, FDI has not come for these and they have often been "sold for song".

India remains unchanged on macro-economic plane and the main uncertainly for the future would be linked with WTO signature, he further said. In another lecture, titled "Reforming the public sector of India" the Indian economist said that substantial improvements in the public sector operation can already emerge from internal organizational changes and sectoral studies show that even in privatization scenario preliminary organizational changes help lower the incertitude for investors which facilitates privatization. -APP