Govt Approves Blueprint For Disinvestment

The government yesterday approved the blueprint for disinvestment during the current fiscal year and also signalled immediate downsizing along the lines proposed by the Expenditure Reforms Commission and the recommendations of the Fifth Pay Commi- ssion and the paper prepared by the ministry of planning and programme implementation. Minister for disinvestment and planning and programme implementation Arun Shourie told Business Standard that the government will appoint global advisors for the remaining two public sector undertaking, shortlisted for disinvestment, during the next week. "The remaining 13 units for which in principle clearance has been given will come up immediately after that," said Shourie. The Prime Minister also asked Shourie to build a consensus on lContinued on Page 8 the disinvestment programme and has asked him to meet heavy industry minister Manohar Joshi and petroleum minister Ram Naik, two opponents of the process, during the next week. At the meeting convened by prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to review economic progress, the government also decided to chalk out strategies to increase the flow of funds into India, Shourie told reporters after the two-hour long meeting. "The prime minister had asked me to brief him and other ministers about the disinvestment programme in wake of the discussion on disinvestment in the two houses of Parliament. The prime minister is also scheduled to meet central trade unions to dispel doubts about reforms and disinvestment is one of the issues," he said. In order to improve the inflow of funds "" foreign direct investment, aid from multilateral agencies and NRI and other investments "" the ministry of PPI had identified a number of bottlenecks in a paper presented at the meeting. The prime minister has asked ministers to devise ways to remove the bottlenecks. At the meeting it was also said that the PPI ministry will soon circulate a cabinet note to standardise certain processes like land acquisition norms to speed up the process of project implementation. Reserve Bank of India governor Bimal Jalan was also invited to the meeting to give an assessment of the problems to increase FDI and FII inflows into India, Shourie said. He added that the meeting did not discuss the issue of depreciation of the rupee. He also said that the government will take a fresh look at the process of downsizing of government. "There is a need for swift follow-up of the recommendations of the Expenditure Reforms Commission. It was decided that the government will reassess the issue in wake of the ERC reports, recommendations of the Fifth Pay Commission which had said that the size of the government should decrease by a certain amount over the next 10 years and we will also look at the paper prepared by ministry," the minister said.