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.
Vedika Bhandarkar, managing director & head of investment banking, recounts how even in a supposedly bad year, the bank raised about Rs 1,00,000 crore (Rs 1,000 billion).
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.
RBI Governor D Subbarao explains the rationale for the moves announced in the second quarter review of the monetary policy in an interview with Sidhartha. Excerpts:
According to sources close to the development, finance secretary Ashok Chawla, who is driving the process, is working on a concept note to provide the framework for consolidation.
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.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India is now planning to enable investors to buy and sell mutual fund units through stock exchanges. Fund houses will also be allowed to sell new fund offers (NFOs) through exchanges, helping them to save on distribution costs.
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.
This is in addition to the $3 billion (around Rs 15,000 crore) infrastructure fund being set up in association with the Macquarie group and International Finance Corporation. Though SBI would be a late entrant to the private equity space, Bhatt was confident that it would not be a deterrent.
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.
One indication of this was the fact that many large bond buyers stayed away from the Rs 12,000 crore auction conducted on August 7.
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.
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