Caught in the middle of a maelstrom of controversies, the Planning Commission has been accused of being disconnected from ground realities. Its 12th Plan hopes to fix that. A short while ago, the Congress general secretary and scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Rahul Gandhi, remarked that members of the Planning Commission are not in touch with the ground realities in India. He could have been somewhat influenced by his father, former...
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On austerity drive, PM shoots down ministers' foreign trips by Diptosh Majumdar
Indian ministers' foreign travel plans have been grounded by the government's austerity drive. Till July 1 this year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had turned down as many as 24 foreign trip applications from members of his ministerial council, compared to 10 such refusals in the whole of 2010. The change is stark considering that the PM had earlier been obliging almost all his colleagues. In 2009, after the UPA returned to...
More »Bitter pill for Big Pharma by Bhupesh Bhandari
A committee headed by Planning Commission member Arun Maira, the former head of The Boston Consulting Group in India, wants all acquisitions of Indian pharmaceutical companies by foreigners to be scanned by the Competition Commission of India or CCI. The report will now be sent to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Prime Minister Singh is expected to take a final view on the...
More »Affordable medicine
-The Business Standard It appears a committee headed by Planning Commission member Arun Maira examining the case for continued unrestricted foreign direct investment (FDI) in the pharmaceutical industry has opted to oppose the move to change the present regime. The only concession it is willing to make to the health and commerce ministries’ demand that approval of such investment be routed through the Foreign Investment Promotion Board is to ask for...
More »Developing SEZ in backward areas to fetch you incentives like wider tax concessions and lowering minimum area ceiling by Amiti Sen
The government is mulling a raft of incentives for special economic zone developers to encourage them to move away from urban centres and focus on economically backward regions. A senior official in the commerce ministry said SEZ developers might get wider tax concessions if they build economic hubs in underdeveloped areas. The government may also lower the minimum area ceiling to ease land acquisition by them, the official said. These incentives...
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