The Economic Survey has reiterated that the government should raise output by privatising the oil fields and hence reduce dependence on imported crude oil. India, which spent $48.389 billion to import its crude oil needs in 2006-07, has already spent $48.02 billion on crude imports in the first nine months of the current fiscal because of rise in international oil prices. The pre-budget survey that was tabled in Parliament, suggested selling old oil fields to private sector and for application of improved and enhanced oil recovery techniques. Besides stepping up domestic production, the remaining deficit would have to be bridged by entering into strategic geo-political alliances to access energy assets in the region, the Survey said, pointing to the need of making investments in energy chain in West Asia and Africa. Reducing incremental import dependence of the country's energy requirement requires tapping of coal reserves, accelerating exploration of oil and gas, fully exploiting the nuclear and hydro potential for power generation and expediting programmes for energy generation through renewables, the survey stated. While production from old fields declined, the award of 162 new areas for exploration under New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) since 1999 have led to 46 oil and gas discoveries to add 600 million tons of oil equivalent hydrocarbon reserves. As on April 1, 2007, the investment made by Indian and foreign companies in NELP blocks was $ 3.887 billion, out of which only 30 per cent was by the national oil companies.

India's growth is unlikely to slip below the 9% rate in the next few years, says the finance ministry's Economic Survey, but the downside risks have become stronger this year. Among those risks are the international subprime crisis and a slackening of growth in agriculture and manufacturing within the country. The other is the political opposition, because of which the Survey tabled in Parliament by finance minister P Chidambaram on Thursday has had to tuck away its 12-point list of reforms in a box, outside the main narrative. The more significant of these reforms are in the financial sector: allowing the public float of at least 10% in all public sector units, permitting FDI in retail, raising the FDI cap in insurance, besides 100% foreign investment in greenfield rural agricultural banks. The Survey says if the current growth trend persists "

While pointing out that the overall performance of the infrastructure sector of late has been

Not only is the United Progressive Alliance far from delivering on its National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) promise of allocating six per cent of the Gross Domestic Product to education but the allocation also dipped in percentage terms in 2007-08 compared to the preceding year. According to the Economic Survey 2007-08, the Budget Estimates of the expenditure on education stood at 2.84 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal. In 2006-07, the expenditure as per the Revised Estimates was 2.88 per cent. Though the expenditure on education as a percentage of the GDP in the past two years was higher than the first two years of the UPA rule, it still falls short of the 2.9 per cent achieved in 2002-03 during the National Democratic Alliance regime. In the NCMP, the UPA pledged to raise public spending on education to at least six per cent of the GDP in a phased manner. Starting lower than 2.74 per cent of the GDP in the last year of NDA rule (2003-04), the allocation in 2004-05 was 2.67 per cent. Though it went up to 2.69 in 2005-06 and stood at 2.88 per cent in the Revised Estimates for 2006-07, the allocation is still below the halfway mark of the promised target. Last year the Planning Commission, in fact, said India could hope to achieve the target