Days before Mondays Cabinet reshuffle,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,along with Finance Minister P Chidambaram,cleared an eight-week road map with over a dozen action points aimed at giving the economy a fresh boost. The measures include coal pool pricing with an assured 80 per cent coal supply to close to 78,000 MW worth of power projects,regulators in coal,railways and roads sectors,a new FDI policy with a likely increase in the caps in telecom and aviation and a creation of an infrastructure investment fund from the surplus being held by central public sector entities. These decisions,with specific deadlines in some cases,were taken at a June 13 meeting chaired by the PM and attended by the finance minister,deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia,chief economic advisor Raghuram Rajan and principal secretary to Prime Minister,Pulok Chatterji,among others. Some of the deadlines are: * Coal pool pricing in which Coal India Ltd will provide an assured 65 per cent coal supply and power producers will be allowed to import another 15 per cent through CIL or on their own two weeks,Cabinet like to take up matter on Friday. * Allocation of over 14 coal blocks and decision on a new coal block auction policy by July-end. * Coal regulator in two weeks. * New gas pricing policy in two weeks. * Railway Tariff Authority by next week. * Regulator for the road sector by mid-July. Besides these,other decisions to be implemented over the next eight weeks include: * A new FDI policy which will look into further increasing caps in sectors where FDI is allowed. Telecom may go up to 100 per cent. Cap in civil aviation also likely to be increased. * Setting up a infrastructure investment fund from PSU surplus. This is expected to be a huge amount crossing more than Rs 1 lakh crore,given that Coal India alone is sitting on Rs 40,000 crore. * Constituting a group to take charge of big railway infrastructure projects,which will be a given a month to identify measures to speed up these projects. * Examine disinvestment of BALCO and Hindustan Zinc. n Harmonise issues related to preferential market access in one month. * To take a call on road sector equity take out. While much of this determination appeared diluted by the appointment of ministers such as Mallikarjun Kharge and Oscar Fernandes in key infrastructure ministries,insiders insisted that there will be no negative impact because the PM has decided on taking direct control over key issues. In particular,sources said,the PMO will closely monitor all major railways and roads projects through the Cabinet Committee on Investment. This will include the eastern and western freight corridors as well as the three industrial corridors for which massive foreign investment is expected.
