Finance minister Yashwant Sinha told The Financial Express that the commission will give a series of reports and the government was ready to take quick decisions on the recommendations of the commission.

"The platform is already in place. The government exercised a very tight control over expenditure in 1999-2000. Non-plan, non-salary expenditure went up by only 1.8 per cent over the previous year," Sinha said.

He added that a lot of action was expected on the expenditure control front in coming months and the commission was expected to provide a road map in this regard.

Finance ministry officials said that the recent success of the government in pushing through the subsidy cut proposed in the budget has not only strengthened the opinion of the finance minister Yashwant Sinha that sensitive expenditure contrl issues can be sorted out through dialogues, but has also earned unequivocal support of the PMO for the whole exercise.

The officials added that the government would continue to reason and plead through dialogues with its constituents for pushing through the expenditure control measures so that the fiscal deficit could be brought to a sustainable level.

The expenditure reforms commission under the chairmanship of former finance secretary KP Geethakrishnan would devise an effective strategy for cost recovery through user charges, and review all subsidies, explicit and implicit, so as to maximize their impact on the target population at minimum cost.

It will suggest a road map for reducing functions, activities and administrative structures of the central government, keeping in view the evolving role of the government and the need to avoid overlap of functions.The commision will also review the critical issue of adequacy of staffing and rationalizing the staff and cadres of different services, arrangements for redeployment and retraining of surplus staff.

Measures for effecting improvement and reducing budgetary support for government funded autonomous institutions is the other area of commission's attention.

The commission has former financial advisor in the defence ministry VS Jafa, expenditure secretary CM Vasudev, and eminent economist Kirit Parekh as its members. JS Mathur, secretary in the finance ministry, is the member-secretary of the commission.