"Private airlines will be allowed to fly abroad. We are going to the Cabinet and need not wait for the new civil aviation policy to be finalised," Patel said after receiving the second and final part of the report of the high-powered Naresh Chandra committee on civil aviation in New Delhi.

"The process (to send notes to various ministers) is already on. A decision may be taken in a month's time."

The Naresh Chandra committee, in its report, has recommended that the government should 'expedite liberalisation of air transport services, beginning with allowing domestic airlines to utilise the unused entitlements in the present air services agreements, especially with regard to all destinations with high traffic.'

The minister said several of the recommendations, made in the first part of the report submitted in December last, had already been implemented 'on a stand-alone basis.'

These included reduction in excise duty on aviation turbine fuel, abolition of inland travel tax and foreign travel tax, lowering of landing and navigation charges, liberalisation of charter policy and restructuring of Delhi and Mumbai airports.

Similar would be the case to allow private airlines to fly abroad and the government might not await the finalisation of the new civil aviation policy, which was expected by December, he said.

Patel said the Indian carriers, Air-India and Indian Airlines, were at present utilising only 30 per cent of their bilateral entitlements and the foreign airlines were using the rest.

Under the proposal, the private carriers could be allowed to fly abroad by using the unused bilateral air traffic rights, provided they were granted 'designated carrier' status by the countries they wished to fly to.

Besides this proposal, the panel has also suggested holding of reverse auction for private airlines to fly to uneconomic but socially important domestic routes.