70 percent of India's imports of oil and oil products are imported from abroad. There is uncertainty about supply. There is uncertainty about prices. And that hurts India's development.

We are a mixed economy. We will remain a mixed economy. The public and private sector will continue to play a very important role. The private sector in our country has very ample scope and I am confident that India's entrepreneurs have the capacity, and the will to rise to the occasion.

When I became finance minister in 1991, I discovered that the wealth tax rates income - there was taxation on wealth. It was so atrocious and so high that actually nobody could accumulate money in an honest way. I removed that tax, and the result was that Indian companies for the first time acquired an incentive to grow big, to grow rich.

Let me say that I think the economic history of the last 150 years clearly shows that if you want to industrialize a country in a short period, let us say 20 years, and you don't have a well-developed private sector, entrepreneurial class, then central planning is important.

The Chinese economy is growing at the rate of 9 percent; the Indian economy growing at the rate of 8 percent - enormous I think opportunities for two-way flow of trade, technology and investment.

I have to do my duty, whatever task is allotted to me.

Economic policy and decision making do not function in a political vacuum.