The Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) will now make centralised payments to newspapers for advertisements issued on behalf of different ministries, Union I&B Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said today.
He made the announcement after meeting with a seven-member delegation led by Indian Newspaper Society (INS) here.
The Union Minister told the delegation that the earlier decision of payment of bills to newspapers for advertisements by respective Central ministries has been revoked and DAVP will now make centralised payments for the same.
The delegation, led by Akila Urankar, Deputy President and K Balaji, Vice-President of INS, welcomed the move and thanked Naidu for acting quickly on earlier representation of the newspaper body in this regard, a statement released here said.
Naidu assured the delegation that print media was an important partner in public communication and some of the issues have already been taken up with ministries concerned.
The Information and Broadcasting Minister enquired from the delegation about the share of government advertisements in the revenues of newspapers, difference between commercial and DAVP rates for advertisements, methodology of fixing DAVP rates etc, adding that all these will be looked into.
He said the concerns of the newspaper industry relating to GST rates, service tax and wage board have already been referred to the Ministry of Finance for consideration. On the issue of Wage Board, he said it required wider consultations, given its implications.
The Union Minister added that measures were being taken to ensure that government advertisements were issued to only those publications, which were being regularly published based on production of evidence of the same.
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