Washington: Analytical work carried out by the World Bank (WB) has added momentum to India's attempts to dismantle the country's planning apparatus, particularly at the state-level, the Bank has said.

In its analysis of the role and effectiveness of development assistance and lessons from World Bank experience, the world body says that analytical work conducted by it in 1980's and 90's, helped the of India government as it began to dismantle the highly protectionist regime then in place.

The Bank notes that throughout the 1960s and 1970s, India was weakly integrated into the international economy, and relied heavily on physical planning and licensing internally.

Consequently, the rates of economic growth and poverty reduction were unimpressive.

Though the growth accelerated in the 80’s, it was largely based on unsustainable public spending and foreign borrowing, leading to a fiscal defecit and balance of payment crisis.

Finally a new reformist government was formed in 1991, which was helped by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Bank to design and implement fiscal and trade reforms to stabilise and open up the economy.

More recently, it says, "The Bank has been collaborating with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on a survey of private firms to assess India's investment climate in terms of bottlenecks, corruption, harassment and infrastructure weaknesses."

The results of this work have already been widely disseminated and quoted in the press and have added momentum to government's efforts to dismantle the planning apparatus in India, particularly at the state-level."

PTI