Montek moves out of MoFNEW DELHI: Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who played a pivotal role in formulating and steering the economic reforms policy as secretary department of economic affairs and later as finance secretary, handed over charge to chief economic advisor Shankar N Acharya, the only old-timer who managed to withstand the political storm that swept the bureaucracy. He could not hand over the baton to the secretary-designate Vijay Kelkar as the latter is in the US and would be arriving shortly to hold the reigns.Ahluwalia took over as the member in the Planning Commission. As the only member in the Planning Commission, with the exception of the member-secretary, Ahluwalia will look after industry, telecommunications, mines, Indo-Japan study group, information technology, post, information and broadcasting, energy, surface transport, energy, power, petroleum, railways, research and development and non-conventional energy sources. In fact many of the areas are those which have beentraditionally looked after by the member-secretary.The other important secretary who left the North Block after a period of about eight years was revenue secretary N K Singh. He handed over the charge to the new incumbent J A Chowdhary. Singh has moved on to the prime ministers' office (PMO) as secretary. For keen observers, Singh has inched a step closure to the cabinet secretary's post, the ultimate dream of a serving bureaucrat. Singh, a career bureaucrat to the core, joined the finance ministry as joint secretary in the department of economic affairs in early 1991.RIBs mop $ 2.76 bMUMBAI: State Bank of India (SBI) mopped up US dollar 2.76 billion till yesterday under the Resurgent India Bonds scheme. The collections in a single day yesterday from non-resident Investors (NRIs) was $ 50 million, SBI sources said.Considering the response from NRIs, State Bank of India expects the aggregate collections to be around $ 3.5 billion by the time the issue closes on August 24.
