Jaitley sets timetable for himself

After bagging ministries of law and commerce and industry, Arun Jaitley has set a timetable for himself. With law already being his forte, h...

After bagging ministries of law and commerce and industry, Arun Jaitley has set a timetable for himself. With law already being his forte, he has decided to spend more time to understand the main issues related to commerce and industry.

Jaitley plans to spend his morning hours in the law ministry and the post lunch period at the commerce and industry ministry. While talking to the newspersons after assuming office, Arun Jaitley said that 8216;commerce and industry is a very large department and has big policy dimension and lot of study needs to be done8217;. Thus he asked for few days saying that 8216;I will not make any comment until I examine the subject thoroughly8217;.

Regarding his priorities at the commerce and industry ministry, Jaitley said he would immediately familiarise himself with the nitty-gritties of the World Trade Organisation. 8216;8216;There are areas which require extensive study particularly things related to WTO for which I had preliminary discussions today8217;8217;, he said.

His learning process started from Thursday itself when he was briefed by the senior officials of the ministry immediately after taking over the charge in the afternoon. Firstly it was the industry secretary V. Govindrajan who familiarised him about the current issues, followed by Commerce Secretary Deepak Chatterjee, who explained about the WTO related issues, forthcoming Exim Policy, export promotion councils and PSUs under the ministry. Commenting on legislative system he said that these are being influenced both by economic reforms and technology. 8216;We also must try to improve the regulation system which are going to increase in number.8217;

Stating that the new legislations were mainly as a result of the thrust on economic reforms, he said efforts are being made to remove controls and at the same time to create mechanisms.

Admitting that he was a reformist, Jaitley said when he had initiated the disinvestment process, there were jargons such as 8216;selling of the family silver8217; that had been used in Parliament and other places. These, however, got transformed over a period of time, he said.