However, deteriorating fiscal health, decelerating industrial growth, poor exports and lacklustre capital markets are going to be major areas of concern.

The survey will underline the urgency of streamlining and narrowing down subsidy benefits to the needy. Open-ended subsidy has added to the deteriorating fiscal position of the Government.

On the sectoral front, the survey will emphasise on stepping up sector-specific reforms to tackle existing lacunae in the design and implementation of policies.

As far as GDP growth rate was concerned, it would account on the performance of agriculture sector. The industry has continued to plummet despite repeated efforts of the BJP-led government to inject a host of fiscal doses.

Industrial production during April-December1999 has been 3.5 per cent compared with 6.7 per cent in the corresponding period last year. This was likely to be mentioned as one of the major areas of concern in the survey.

However, things have not been very bad on the monetary front as the Government has been able to keep inflation under acceptable limits. The year, however, was marked by sectoral and supply-side problems on the price front especially onions. The manufacturing sector, on the other hand, did not witness inflationary pressure.

The slowdown in industrial output, coupled with problems on the export front, had its fallout on the fiscal side. Mounting debt burden of the past and firm expenses like servicing of interest rates and, higher wage bill because of the pay commission added to fiscal management problems. On the revenue side, indirect taxes performed poorly and proceeds from the divestment of shares of public-sector enterprises failed to provide timely succor.

The survey is likely to take note of the fact that the Centre duringthe first nine months of the fiscal has run a fiscal deficit of Rs 73,434 crore, revenue deficit of Rs 36,408 crore and primary deficit of Rs 28,757. The last being the most important as it is a pointer to the performance of the Government without taking into account the interest which it had to pay on past borrowings.

Finance minister Yashwant Sinha in his budget promised to keep the fiscal deficit at 5.6 per cent of the GDP. Although in between, the Central Statistical Organisation revised the methodology of national accounting, which significantly pushed up the GDP estimates for the year. Still, the finance ministry will not find it easy to rein in the fiscal deficit at 5.6 per cent of the GDP.

As in the past, this time too the survey was likely to focus on fiscal discipline and more specifically subsidy management. This aspect of expenditure control has been repeatedly emphasisied by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Sinha at various fora including the National Development Councilmeeting.