In an interview to a television programme Ru-Ba-Ru, Sinha also said provision of action on fudging of accounts in the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema) bill will be dropped in the wake of the recommendations of the parliamentary standing committee.

"We will certainly move in the direction of introducing a single-rate Vat, which could be around 16 per cent," he said, adding approval of the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) bill and Fema will be the top priorities. Without introducing Vat, "we couldn't make our tax system really at par with international standard," he said, pointing out that apart from IRA and Fema there were lots of progressive bills which could not be passed due to the dissolution of the Lok Sabha.

Asked about themeasures being taken to control fiscal deficit, he said cutting down expenditure, downsizing government and zero-based budgeting are some of the steps where the government has initiated action. On full convertibility of the rupee, he said the government will have to first reduce the current account deficit before moving on to capital account convertibility.