Industry brass invited for PM's roadmap meet

Industry captains have been invited for a meeting tomorrow to discuss a roadmap for improving the infrastructure sector in the country.

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia is expected to discuss a roadmap for improving the railway and aviation sectors with members of the Council on Trade and Industry.

This is the second time in a week that members of the council have been invited by the Prime Minister's Office for a meeting. The previous meeting, called on Saturday and chaired by Singh, focused on macro issues.

This meeting would be followed by another meet on December 10, at which the presentations, along with any revisions, on revamping the two sectors would be made before the Committee on Infrastructure chaired by the prime minister.

The committee has as members Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Road Transport and Shipping Minister TR Baalu, Power Minister PM Sayeed, Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar besides Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel.

Representatives of the Council will tomorrow hear presentations on the railways and civil aviation sectors and ask for their inputs on how to improve the state of affairs in these sectors.

The presentations which are expected to list out the steps required to be taken to revamp these sectors, along with a time frame in which they need to be done, will be made by Ahluwalia.

The Planning Commission acts as the secretariat to the Committee on Infrastructure.

This is likely to be the first in a series of meetings at which industrialists would hear the government's proposals on how to bring about a quantum jump in the quality of infrastructure. Other sectors to be covered at a later stage include power, petroleum, coal, shipping and roads.

Singh is unhappy with the performance of various ministries, especially on the pace of work in the infrastructure related sectors, said an official.

The presentations before the Committee on Infrastructure were initially scheduled to be made in the first half of November, however, problems in ironing out issues between Planning Commission and infrastructure ministries took time.