The ministry of urban development has asked the finance ministry to lower the duty in order to promote the public transportation system in the country.
Mitra will take over from P V Bhide after January 31.
The government may take the first step towards fiscal consolidation in Budget 2010-11 by partially rolling back tax cuts given to the industry last year. The service tax rate may be restored to 12 per cent, while excise duty could be increased marginally.
As the ministry of finance gets into the Budget mode, its officials perhaps want to tell themselves, "All is well". So, they have none other than Aamir Khan, alias Rancho of recent Bollywood blockbuster 3 Idiots, talking to them this weekend on Cinema and Society.
While Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is aiming for a return to the path of fiscal prudence, various departments of the central government appear to be out of sync.
A fresh $1-billion (nearly 4,600-crore) loan from the World Bank under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), to be routed through the Union government, would be linked to cities adopting certain efficiency parameters.
The government is likely to ease the incidence of minimum alternate tax, or MAT, on infrastructure companies.
It not only wants the ministry of petroleum and natural gas to rework the under-recovery figure for the current year but has also decided to look at the issue of oil subsidies only in February 2010, when the next Budget will be announced.
They want more cash, forex, higher bond coupons and increase in market prices for petrol, diesel, LPG.
The ministry of petroleum and natural gas would be issuing instructions for fresh gas allocation from D6 this week.
The oil and gas industry regulator has never been far from controversy during his five-year tenure.
In an interview with Mihir Mishra and Jyoti Mukul, Nath, who as the commerce and industry minister in the previous United Progressive Alliance government was part of the fire-fighting to minimise impact of the slowdown, says that the current year will be better than the last year.
The department had earlier also examined the option of a direct equity sale but opted for a PPP model because it offered revenue sharing opportunities, fertiliser secretary Atul Chaturvedi said. Chaturvedi explained that whereas the outright sale of equity will mean the government will have to wait for the plants to make profits to get a share of revenue, the PPP mode will help it do so in the first year.
Permission for dual listing would require full capital account convertibility and therefore changes in regulations under the Foreign Exchange Management Act.
Meeting will confine discussion to processes involved in building consensus among members.
India will be pushing for greater capitalisation of the World Bank at the meeting of G20 finance ministers in London next month. The meeting will precede the Pittsburgh meeting of G20 head of states scheduled later in September.
Besides doubts relating to round tripping of investments through Mauritius, the proposal was earlier rejected on the ground that there were no details about the offshore entity.
Work on disinvesting government holdings may gather pace after the first week of August. Administrative ministries of around 15 Public Sector Undertakings have been asked to give feedback on the feasibility of coming out with initial public offers by then.
India has managed to create ripples in the global commodities market with countries like the US and China set to follow its benchmark price for potash, a fertiliser widely used in the country. Breaking a well-entrenched global cartel, government-owned Indian Potash Ltd has managed to negotiate a potash deal with Russian company Silvinit at $460 a tonne
Development plan for K-G basin runs for 12 years, so can't supply to RNRL for 17 years, says RIL.
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