Package For Telecom Operators By December 30

Planning Commission deputy chairman Jaswant Singh has said that the telecom task force will come up with a package of measures for both basic and cellular service operators by December 30.

Singh said that the report of the infrastructure task force will be available to the government by December 15. He is the chairman of three task forces on infrastructure, telecom and information technology.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum yesterday, Singh said he expected the government to take a decision on the hardware report of the information technology task force within the next fortnight. The government has already accepted the report on software and opened up Internet services as a followup measure.

Singh said the next meeting of the infrastructure task force, scheduled for next week, would work out details of financing the Rs 28,000 crore mega road project which involves construction of 7,000 km of express highway connecting northern and southern and eastern and western regions of the country. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will inaugurate the road construction activity on the December 30, he added. The government has identified 30 points from where the construction is to commence, he said.

Talking on the efforts of the infrastructure task force to identify five locations where airports of world class quality could be set up through 100 per cent foreign investment route, Singh said existing airports might be included in the list of these five airports.

This could be done by offering existing airports to foreign investors who could pour in funds for upgrading them into world class airports. Asked whether construction of the five airports would also begin in this year itself, he said "work on airports is a bit more complicated and we are now going to define the parameters."

Singh said the government has identified 1768 laws which can be scrapped without causing harm to anyone. But they will have to be brought to parliament for repealing them and "parliament has a logic of its own".

In reply to a question from a delegate, Singh said it would not be possible for the government to dramatically reduce the level of subsidies because there were 400 million people below the poverty line who needed support.

He said the Indian bureaucracy are "world champions in saying `no'" and has become more rigid in its approach than what was inherited from the British during independence.