Speaking at the economic editors' conference, Sinha said that rolling back of certain duties would not result in higher fiscal deficit. He argued that more than Rs 5000 crore were expected to be raised by way of disinvestment in the current fiscal.

Apart from offloading of shares of Concor, GAIL, IOC and VSNL, the government was working on various other proposals for putting the privatisation of public sector undertakings on a fast track. Thus, finance minister hopes that the yield would be more than the budgeted amount of Rs 5000 crore.

On the revenue side, he said, direct taxes were doing well and excise was likely to pick up during the busy season. As far as customs, were concerned, their might be some shortfall particularly due to oil prices.

The finance minister hoped that theexchequer would be more than compensated through realisation from the Kar Vivad Samadhan scheme the receipts for which had not been credited in the budget.

Accruals from the Samadhan scheme launched on September 1 would be a "bonus", he added. The scheme is aimed at tapping a part of the huge amount locked in tax disputes.

Speaking about the industrial slowdown, Sinha said that the biggest problem was that of the sentiment. He added that a series of events starting from the nature of the coalition government, nuclear explosion, US sanctions, Moody's downgrade of rating by two notches and unfavourable review of the budget added to the problem of sentiment. The attempts, he said, would be to restore the "feel-good" factor and also the confidence of common investors into the capital market.

In the coming months, he said, the proposed increased in public expenditure would fructify and would lead to increase in demand. Having nearly completed its borrowing programme, he said, the government would remain outof the market so as not to crowd out private sector from the debt market.

The minister also clarified that the government did not intend to borrow more than the budgeted amount from the market.The other area of concern, the minister said, was price rise, but added, "one silverlining is its nature which has been mainly due to increase in prices of agricultural commodities", he said adding that arrival of kharif crops next few weeks was bound to have a sobering effect on prices.

He further clarified that his optimism about a fall in inflation rate stemmed from the fact that there has not been any appreciable increase in the prices of manufactured goods in the country.

With good agriculture season forecast this year he saw no reason why the seasonal factors responsible for soaring prices would be taken care of.The finance minister also had a dig at the previous governments by stating that the fast track power projects were conceptually wrong. He added, "we tried to do the best out of a bad job" and signedthree counter-guarantee agreements. The implementation of these projects too would contribute its bit for generating demand.

As far as the external sector was concerned, he stressed that India never defaulted on its international commitment nor the country sought rescheduling of loans and in this background the decision of the rating agencies was not justified.

Later during the question-answer session, Sinha said that the decision of Tatas to withdraw from the airline project was "out of their own sweet will" and added that it would not affect investment climate. The minister also defended the decision of the revenue department to appeal against the decision of Cegat decision in the ITC case in Supreme Court. Finance secretary Vijay Kelkar, during his interaction with the economic editors, said that the special purpose vehicle (SPV) was one of the possible ways for privatisation of the public sector enterprises.