Economic Reforms and Industrial Growth

Economic reforms were mainly intended to remove obstacles so that investment in industry may be accelerated. With this end in view, industrial licensing was abolished in all but 15 industries. Consequently, the reform process was able to dismantle the system of industrial licensing so that industrial production growth could be accelerated.

Despite all this, facts do not support any sharp acceleration of industrial production. Rather, they indicate that the index of industrial production which showed a growth rate of 7.8 per cent in the pre-reform period (1981-82 to 1990-91), decelerated to 5.8 per cent during the post-reform period (1993-94 to 2002-03).