PM Modi reviews ministries’ progress

New Delhi: With an eye on the impending expansion of the Union Cabinet, the Prime Minister on Saturday undertook a review meeting of his council of ministers to gauge their performance in the last six months.

According to highly placed sources, several ministers are learnt to have made presentations before Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighting the works of their respective departments. Secretaries of Union ministries were also present in the meeting.

It is being speculated that Mr Modi may soon expand his Cabinet and the review would give him a clear picture regarding how his ministers are placed performance-wise. Their continuance would depend on the outcome of this meeting.

The finance ministry headed by Nirmala Sitharaman has been under the microscope, considering the economic recession being faced by the nation and the various measures announced by the department to provide relief to critical sectors like manufacturing and real estate, are said to have been reviewed during the meeting, sources indicated.

The meeting was held at a time when Indian economy is facing a recession and the growth rate for the July-September quarter was a disappointing 4.5 per cent — a six year low.

Also for the April-September period of the current fiscal, the growth was a mere 4.8 per cent, compared to the corresponding period last year, when it was 7.5 per cent.

There is a likelihood that more bail out packages could be announced by the finance ministry for various other critical sectors soon, as a way out of the depressing fiscal scenario.

With the Union Budget scheduled to be presented on February 1, 2020, the review meeting becomes all the more significant, as the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to give out a message to the corporate sector that everything is not lost on the economic front.

On December 20, the Prime Minister had tried to assure members of an industry body that making India a $5 trillion economy by 2025 was an ambitious but achievable target.