Ap Plans Bonds To Mop Up Rs 2,000cr

The Andhra Pradesh government plans to raise around Rs 2,000 crore through a bond issue to fund infrastructure development projects.

Announcing this at a function here, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said his vision was to turn the city into `a transit hub' between Europe and China instead of Singapore and other points in South-east Asia. On Suturday, Naidu had a discussion with the civil aviation ministry on the city's international airport project.

Work on the project is expected to start in six months. Naidu's plans for the city include a six-lane outer ringroad and a four-lane inner ringroad and flyovers. The Chief Minister said he has called a meeting on September 10 to discuss the strategy for making the state "green and clean".

He also said that rationalisation of taxes, especially commercial tax, would be taken up soon. " It is better to rationalise the existing taxes to ensure better compliance than to impose new taxes that are not collected", he said. Naidu also said that all discretionary powers vested in the government would soon be dispensed with. This was being done to check corruption.