Oil, telecom to figure in UPA meeting with Left

Series of cabinet meetings lined up today.

The government is scheduled to discuss key economic issues, including the recent increase in petroleum product prices and raising the foreign direct investment (FDI) cap in telecom from 49 per cent to 74 per cent with the Left parties at the co-ordination committee meeting tomorrow.

Singh, who returned to the Capital today, is expected to be joined by Cabinet colleagues Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Communications and Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran to iron out differences on economic policies with the Left parties, key allies in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

"It will be a general discussion with the Prime Minister sharing his ideas across a spectrum of economic issues and also hearing the Left's position," said a source.

Singh has a hectic Thursday, starting with a meeting of the Union Cabinet in the morning. The Cabinet meeting will be followed by meetings of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs and the Cabinet Committee on Security.

Cashing in on the discontent within the government and outside, the Left parties are expected to push for a downward revision of petroleum prices at the meeting.

In a tactical move, the Left's mounting pressure over the hike, is being set off by their backing off on FDI investment in telecom. Left leaders said they were open to their note on telecom being discussed on a less busy day since they didn't want the petroleum hike to be overshadowed by other areas of contention with the Government.

The Left parties are conscious that the government wants to increase the FDI cap this month itself. Therefore the Left's note on FDI in telecom written in reply to Chidambaram's response to their initial note has already been delivered along with a note on the objections to the Patents Amendment Bill in its present form. Debate and discussion on the two issues are likely to continue.

The Left parties have criticised the government's decision to raise prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas last week. While the prices of petrol were brought to import parity level, price of diesel was raised to cover 50 per cent of the under-recovery from the auto fuel.

In case of cooking gas, the government had last week decided to immediately raise prices by Rs 20 a cylinder. An increase of Rs 5 per cylinder is proposed every month till import parity price is reached. The under recovery on cooking gas was estimated at Rs 158 per cylinder.

The Left parties were of the opinion that an increase in oil product prices would further fuel inflation, which reached 7.38 per cent last week. Senior Left leaders are operating on the premise that the Government might through agencies, if not directly, bring about a downward revision of petrol prices on November 15, when the fortnightly review of petroleum prices is due.

Given the fact that Left has been hammering home the point through subtle and not-so subtle means, that it alone is responsible for engaging the government to get it to bring down petroleum prices, the scenario is conducive to the Left taking the credit for a decision that the government would have taken any way.

The Left is likely to call the decision a rollback "" in fact all that it is, is an administrative recalibration of prices.

Already there has been talk of doing away with the calibrated increase in the price of LPG. The increase of Rs 5 each month will most likely be scrapped after a couple of months, according to sources. However, the Left has been insisting that the hike in diesel prices has to be contained since it will hurt the common man most hard.

Whether the revision is announced tomorrow or deferred to 15 November, the co-ordination meeting tomorrow with the Left will spell out the quantum of the roll back.