Saturday, January 22 2005 15:38 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Congress leaders today (Jan 22, 2005) asked Finance Minister P Chidambaram to focus on five key areas of agriculture, employment, rural infrastructure, health and education in his forthcoming budget.

"We discussed five issues. They are agriculture, employment, rural infrastructure, health and education, which are the key areas of the National Common Minimum Programme of UPA (United Progressive Alliance)," Congress MP Jyotiraditya Scindia said after the pre-budget meeting of party leaders with the Finance Minister.

He said Chidambaram focussed on these five areas in his last budget. "Today, we discussed how to take them forward in the next budget." This is the first ever pre-budget meeting of the Finance Minister with Congress office bearers in several years.

Scindia said that the party leaders highlighted the importance of employment generation, the expectations of the youth and their forward looking outlook and asked the Finance Minister to promote two sectors -- agro processing and tourism.

Agro processing and tourism have high direct to indirect job ratio of 1:5 and 1:8, respectively, which means that promotion of these two sectors would lead to employment generation in other sectors as well.

The party leaders stressed on social security schemes under the National Employment Guarantee scheme and said it should be taken at the district and taluk level.

They also highlighted the importance of micro finance schemes to boost credit to the poor on the lines of Gramin Bank of Bangladesh.

Congress leaders asked Chidambaram to implement the ambitious scheme of restoring water-bodies as the irrigation facilities in the country are inadequate.

Asserting that UPA was committed to reforms, Scindia termed the meeting as historic.

The Finance Minister is consulting all sections of the population and each of their expectations might be reflected in the budget, he said.

The interaction between Congress leaders and Chidambaram at AICC (All India Congress Committee) headquarters in New Delhi assumes significance as it is being held a month before the presentation of the Union Budget for 2005/06.