London: India has said that it was confident of pushing through reforms in the insurance sector to allow greater foreign ownership as also the pension sector, as it seeks more overseas investments to sustain high growth.

Finance minister P Chidambaram told the Indo-British partnership network in London yesterday that the government was confident of mustering broad-based support for the pension fund regulatory and development authority bill as well as a bill for allowing greater FDI in insurance.

"Given patience and time, these bills will become law," Chidambaram said, adding that the government had to move cautiously in view of reservations expressed by some coalition partners.

The government wants to reform the pension sector to allow the Employees provident Fund Organisation, which manages the pension fund contributions, to invest five per cent in equity markets to earn better returns for its over 40 million subscribers.

The move becomes necessary as the current pension fund returns of 8 .5 per cent per annum would lead to a deficit of Rs450 crore while the employee unions want it raised to 9.5 per cent.

Along with this bill, the government also plans to move a bill to raise foreign direct investment limits in the insurance sector from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. However, the Left parties that support the UPA coalition are opposed to reforms in both these areas.

Chidambaram said India would need $320 billion for its infrastructure sector, of which $200 billion would be raised internally.

He also said that the government expects $24 billion in FDI every year and that India was poised for an investor boom, ensuring that the country would achieve nine per cent sustained growth over the next 15-20 years, from the average of 8 per cent over the last three years. In the first half of 2006-07, the country recorded 9.1 per cent growth.

He said achieving that growth level was a huge challenge, but the country had a natural advantage in services sector led by software and it was now becoming a manufacturing hub for steel, petroleum products, leather, textiles, automobile, machine tools and watches.

On the reforms required to enhance agricultural productivity, the FM said that reforming India`s agriculture sector, which has lagged over the years, was one of the greatest challenges facing the country. "India depends on agriculture and there are about 100 million farm households. It has been neglected and it deserves highest attention," he said.

The finance minister also addressed investors at the London Stock Exchange.