Shortage of funds key challenge in job creation: Economic Affairs Secretary

New Delhi, Feb 10: Asserting India's fast economic growth is not without generation of jobs, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said the country actually faces shortage of capital more than the scarcity of jobs.

While most Indians have a job and are earning something, the problem is that many of them may be earning lower wages or may not be employed according to their qualifications, he said.

"In fact, we have the constraint that we don't have as much capital and funds to invest so that we can do more (create more employment). The government has invested Rs 3.5 lakh crore in capital expenditure. If we have more funds, we can invest more," Garg told IANS in an interview.

He said generating jobs relates to economic activity, which is producing goods and services, and the surest ways to generate employment is to make the economy grow and ensure the government takes up more programs of investment in the country.

"The government has carried out innumerable programmes of investment in the rural areas whether it is the 'Prime Minister's Awas Yojana' where crores of houses are being constructed or large programmes of roads in rural areas and National Highway. Every house results into employment generation. There is a large programme for expanding the LPG connections and fuel delivery. All of them have the potential of generating jobs," he said.

India is at a developing stage and there is lot of developmental work to do like construction of roads, houses and infratsructural facilities.

"It can provide a lot of demand for many, many years to come," he said while referring to the demand for workers in the construction industry.

The construction labourer or the mistry, too, has got skills to get employed in any kind of construction work and get a job.

"If the economic activity continues, these jobs will remain. We are scratching just the surface. We need to create thousands of cities. The city infratsructure is nowhere," Garg added.

The Secretary said India has had the highest economic growth in the last four-five years and the growth was accompanied with job generation.

Rejecting the criticism that India was experiencing jobless growth, Garg said it would only be true if the corporate profits were increasing very high compared to the proportion available to the workers. And, the growth in corporate profits was very normal, he said.

"It's difficult to come across people who are literally unemployed. It may be a case of lower wages, more than the case of unemployment. Raising economic activity through the private sector and via government expenditure should give boost employment," he said.