Government may get support from BJP on much debated FDI raise in insurance if it reaches out to the opposition. The government is willing to raise FDI raise from existing 26% to 49% to push reforms in insurance sector.
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In reply to a question, former finance minister and senior BJP leader Mr. Yashwant Sinha said, “We will see. They have to reach out to us with their concrete proposals. We’ll look at it. If we find it worth supporting, we will certainly support.”
In an interview with Karan Thapar, Mr. Sinha was replying to a question whether BJP would support the government if it comes out with a proposal that goes up to 49 per cent FDI in the insurance sector the way the BJP-led NDA government had proposed earlier. He replied, ““Well, you are asking me a hypothetical question. When I had discussed it earlier with the then finance minister, he agreed with us that it should be restricted to 26 per cent.”
“They will have to reach out to us“, Mr. Sinha replied when asked, if there is room for BJP to support the government if it goes up to 49 per cent in the way the BJP thought of 49 per cent.
It is surprising that during the NDA government, BJP had proposed to raise FDI to 49% in insurance if the balance of 23 per cent equity was given to NRIs, PIOs, OCBs, FIIs, but the largest party of UPA version-2 coalition Congress had opposed it then and demanded 26 per cent FDI instead.
Further, the former finance minister criticized Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He accused him of being ‘dishonest’ by trying to distance himself from the actions taken by the finance ministers in his Cabinet. He also said the current economic situation in the country is very serious and it is worse than it was in 1999. He blamed current finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and his predecessor P Chidambaram for the situation.
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