India’s union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday tried to quell criticism for his government and blamed the coalition politics for a slow pace of reforms.

He pointed out that it time for the government to take some hard decisions for implementing much needed reforms in the country. He said that he is optimistic that three major reform proposals on pension, banking and insurance will be passed this year.

He stressed that government is fully committed to economic reforms and has already initiated the process of legislative and administrative changes on various matters for boosting growth in the economy.

“We are now at a juncture when it is inevitable to take some hard decisions. And this has been our approach, as I outlined in the proposals for the Union Budget 2012-13 recently,” he said. He was speaking at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, which had organised an event in association with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

He said that the government ahs began the legislative process for the Pension Fund Regulatory Act, the Insurance Act and the Banking Amendment Act. However, he said that there are some more refrms that might face opposition due to complexities involved in coalition politics.