Nagpur: BJP on Sunday made a strong plea for protection of the small-scale sector and a transparent approach to disinvestments so that the interests of the workers in public sector enterprises is safeguarded.

In its economic resolution taken up for discussion on the opening day of the two-day national council under the president-ship of Bangaru Laxman, the party suggested, 13-point action plan to streamline the economy with the guiding principles being self-reliance and decentralization.

It called for speeding up efforts to increase government revenue and ''drastically curb unproductive government expenditure. There is a need to reduce the size of departments and offices that are either over-staffed or obsolete, both in the center and in the states.''

The resolution emphasized on the need to ''pre-actively defend India's interests before the WTO by cutting down inter-ministerial procedures and delays and enact laws in this regard,'' and stressed on the need for special cells in the Ministries of agriculture and small scale industry to continuously monitor the production and market situation and ensure effective anti-dumping measures on their own.

It appealed to the government to assess the impact of globalization in general and liberalization of imports in particular on the country's economy and take corrective steps on time.

The resolution urged the government to prepare a crash program to remove all bottlenecks in power generation, transmission and distribution with the active involvement of state governments.

It drew the government's attention to the challenges that the small-scale sector is facing after the removal of quantitative restrictions (QRS) on imports or the commitment to the WTO made by the previous congress government.

''Unless effective steps are taken, the removal of QRS is likely to have an adverse affect on many domestic producers, especially in agriculture and small scale industries,'' it said.

PTI