2 Panels To Assess Lpg As Auto Fuel

Announcing this at the 36th annual session of the Association of Indian Automobile Manufacturers in New Delhi yesterday, Devi Dayal, additional secretary to the ministry of petroleum & natural gas, said the ministry will make unleaded petrol available in all major cities by December 1998 and all over the country by March 2000.

Plans are afoot to make desulphurised diesel (0.25 per cent sulphur content) available all over the country by April 01, 1999, and achieve benzene content of 3 per cent by the year 2002, he said.

There are plans to set up another 300 retail petrol/diesel outlets in the country in 1996-97, Dayal said, adding that price rationalisation in the petroleum-fuel segment was the need of the hour.

 

Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) chairman & industry secretary N Mohanty indicated an increase in the cess fund of Rs 9 crore set aside for the road sector. The matter is on the agenda of today's meeting of the development council.

Surface transport minister T G Venkatraman, in his inaugural address to the session, said his ministry was in talks with the law ministry to simplify land acquisition. National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) chairman Yogendra Narain announced that the authority was preparing a legislation to ban illegal construction near roads & highways.

Narain said NHAI had invited bids through international tenders for a by-pass project in Durg, Madhya Pradesh, and a city bypass project in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, which is being evaluated by IL&FS.

Contracts for two bridges