Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared on Sunday that the National Democratic Alliance government, if re-elected, would continue on the reforms path, focussing particularly on infrastructure development. Vajpayee said the NDA would help the textiles, infotech hardware and heavy engineering industries to become more competitive globally.

"Our government will continue to implement the agenda of reforms that we have set out in our manifesto. Our priorities will be infrastructure development, especially water and power," he told PTI in an interview.

When asked about the priorities of the next Budget of the NDA government, if elected, Vajpyee said: "It is premature to talk about the next Budget."

Vajpayee said the government's vision was to make India a global hub for manufacturing. "Not long ago, several experts had written off India's capabilities in manufacturing. However, in recent years many sectors of our economy have successfully restructured themselves to attain global competitiveness," he said.

Referring to Indian companies that have inducted new technologies and management practices to popularise the "Made in India" brand around the world, Vajpayee said, "We would like to help Indian industry replicate this success in many more areas such as textiles, infotech hardware, heavy engineering, etc."

Vajpayee described as "unfounded" the criticism that the high economic growth does not percolate to the poor. "This criticism is coming from those political quarters who are always opposed to economic reforms and whose own economic policies are a prescription for stagnation and the worsening of poverty."

The prime minister said statistics show that the number of people in India below the poverty line has come down by nearly 10 percentage points in a decade or so and is less than 25 per cent now.

"Could this have happened without our economy consistently growing at a high rate?  Higher growth on a sustainable basis means faster reduction in poverty," he added.

Vajpayee denied that the NDA manifesto had spoken of creating 10 million "jobs" a year. "We spoke of employment and self-employment opportunities. There is a difference between jobs in the traditional sense of the term and the nature of employment and self-employment opportunities that are being created."

The opposition criticism of the government on this issue was both baseless and lacked credibility. "We succeeded in reaching a figure of 84 lakhs (8.4 million) on an average annually. If the Opposition does not believe in these figures, it should present facts and arguments, rather than merely denying official statistics," he said.

"I have a counter-question for the Congress party. You refute our claim that employment opportunities are being created in the economy. You also deride India's ability to achieve an 8 per cent GDP growth rate, then what is the basis for your own manifesto promise of 10 million employment opportunities annually," the prime minister said.

On the divestment programme, Vajpayee said there had been complete transparency in the way the government conducted it.  The principal aim of this programme was to unlock the huge wealth hidden in the public sector undertakings and to enhance their productivity and competitiveness.

Prime Minister said outsourcing from India should not be seen as a threat by anybody and those countries favouring free trade cannot object to it.

"Outsourcing from India should not be seen as a threat by anybody....Those who have been preaching the philosophy of free trade cannot possibly object to outsourcing," he said.

Vajpayee said after initial concerns in western countries, there was now greater appreciation of the inevitability as well as the benefits of outsourcing.