Ms. Roopshree Nair is finance correspondent with news agency Press Trust of India (PTI). Her job is to keep close eyes on Finance Ministry. She covers Dept. of Economic Affairs and Dept. of Revenue.
New Delhi, Oct 13: The government has accepted most of the recommendations of an expert panel on allocation of natural resources that favours a move towards market-linked solutions, according to sources in the Finance Ministry.
The committee headed by former Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla was formed earlier this year to suggest and recommend ways and means for distributing natural resources like minerals in a transparent manner.
The Group of Ministers (GoM) has accepted all recommendations of the Chawla Committee, except one, that relates to seeking permission of the Supreme Court to evolve guidelines for de-reservation of land currently classified as forest land.
Recognising that the proposed Mines and Mineral Development and Regulation Act (MMDRA) is a significant step towards modernising and reforming India’s mining industry, the panel has recommended that sections on bidding should be broad-based and allow states to move towards clear and appropriate bidding processes.
The proposed Act should not preclude any form of open, transparent and competitive bidding, it said.
The committee has also recommended making amendments to the draft MMDR Act such that an independent regulator is tasked with reviewing licensing systems and towards designing a more competitive bidding process.
The panel also calls for the incidence and structure of royalty to be reviewed “through a transparent process” to represent a fair value for the mineral, as it is the primary source of revenue.
The panel has also suggested that for large mining leases, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) as in the case of ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) could be established in which all preliminary clearances for mining can be embedded.
It also recommends that for minerals likely to be found as surfacial deposits without making use of high technology, state governments should be incentivised and enabled to take up exploration so that adequately prospected ore bodies can be put to bid.
Besides, on the petroleum sector, the panel recommends expediting the creation of a National Data Repository (NDR) by linking databases of National Oil Companies (NOCs) and other private firms to share the data for blocks for which information has been submitted to the government.
All other information with the Director General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) can be structured as a common database, it added. On the issue of de-reservation of land which is currently classified as forest land, the government is understood to have said that this may not be accepted because the Supreme Court has in a past order clarified that forest will not only include forest as understood in dictionary sense, but also any area recorded as forest in the government record irrespective of ownership.
Moreover, sources added, many areas which are currently barren are important and unique wild life habitats. The sectors examined by the panel include land, mining, coal, petroleum, natural gas, telecom, forests and water.
No comments:
Post a Comment