The guidelines also point out that it is not advisable to form 50-50 JVs, since such a company is regarded as a private company and functions as such, even though the PSU is an equal shareholder. In many cases these entities are not accountable to Parliament or the state assembly.
A bitter battle between the finance ministry and the Department of Telecommunications over their jurisdiction might force the latter to withdraw its decision to waive licence fees for fixed-line service operators in rural areas.
The government's plan to restructure Air India, the loss-making state-owned airline, includes a proposal to rework the troubled productivity-linked incentive scheme, which accounts for over 45 per cent of the company's Rs 3,000 crore wage bill.
DIPP seeks automatic approval, has Plan panel and DEA's support.
Non-resident Indian businessman C Sivasankaran's Sterling Infotech group is in talks with the Seychelles government to lease an island for 99 years, on which it plans to build an integrated mega township and tourism project.
Civil aviation minister Praful Patel, who held this portfolio in the first government of the United Progressive Alliance, too, has so far followed a liberal open-sky policy, sharply increasing the number of seats offered to West Asian airlines on flights connecting India. According to internal figures available with airlines, the total number of seats offered to West Asian carriers rose from 2.5 million in 2004 to 7.5 million last year.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) under the Ministry of Commerce has called a meeting on July 10 to discuss the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy in the cigarette industry.
Truck rentals are set to rise 6 to 12 per cent after diesel prices were raised by Rs 2 a litre on Thursday.
If the Indian Railways, therefore, wishes to implement its expenditure plans as outlined in the Interim Railway Budget, it has to look for alternative sources of funding. One option under study is to adopt the PPP route to implement new projects. Mamata Banerjee's first Railway Budget in the United Progressive Alliance government, therefore, may outline major PPP initiatives for several new projects, say railway officials.
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