Return
to Story Page
To print: Select File and then Print from your
browser's menu
EEB & AGENCIES
NEW DELHI, OCT 25: The Union cabinet is likely to clear the Information Technology Bill at its meeting on Tuesday. Moreover, in a bid to give a concrete shape to the package on infrastructure sector, the cabinet secretary has called a meeting of the secretaries concerned on Tuesday.
The IT Bill, which will be tabled in Parliament shortly, will put in place cyber laws to facilitate e-commerce. The Bill proposes appointment of a controller as head of the elaborate machinery for licensing and monitoring cyber laws. Also a cyber regulations appellate authority will be set up to hear appeals from the decisions of the adjudicating officers. The IT Bill, it may be mentioned, could not be cleared by the cabinet last week because of paucity of time.
The government is planning to give a big push to the infrastructure industry by giving it a host of initiatives. The cabinet secretary has called a meeting of the secretaries concerned on Tuesday. Among others, the meeting will be attended by finance secretary PGMankad.
This will be followed by another meeting on Thursday to take stock of the steel sector. The government has called a round table conference of captains of industry and financial institutions to firm up an action plan for rejuvenating the industry. The meeting, convened by the steel ministry, will be attended by the captains of industry in the public and private sector and representatives of the finance ministry.
Several ministries have already submitted the set of steps to be undertaken by the government for giving a big boost to the infrastructure sector. On top agenda, sources said, was the speedy implementation of the ambitious east-west and north-south corridors project announced by prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee as head of the earlier government.
On the agenda of the round table conference on steel sector, will be the fiscal incentives like rationalisation of the customs duty for steel products and imposition of anti-dumping duties on certain items the import of which are adverselyhitting the industry. In addition, the government is also working on a specific package for the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL). The steel ministry, as advised by the finance ministry, will soon be coming out with a fresh set of steps for resuscitating the public sector steel giant.
The government is also contemplating an integrated transport policy with sole purpose for accelerating the development of road network in the country. A dedicate road fund is proposed to be set up for funding the sector.
For the development of ports, the focus will be to improve the efficiency of the existing ports, remove the bottlenecks in way of the corporatisation of major ports and lure private participation in setting up of new ports.
In case of civil aviation, a new policy is on the cards to cater to the needs of the 21st century aviation and tourism. This will be in addition to the efforts for modernisation of the airports through private sector participation. The privatisation, sources said, was proposed to beimplemented in a time-bound manner.
The reform package for the power sector will include time-bound corporatisation of the state electricity boards. On agenda is privatisation of the transmission and distribution of power. Tariff reforms is proposed to be put in place and generation, transmission and distribution of electricity will be unbundled and made separate activities.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
------------------------------------------------------------