PM pushes for 100 small airports

Small destinations in the country will have air connectivity with a network of more than 100 airports planned to meet the expected passenger load capacity of 30 crore by 2020, PM Manmohan Singh said on Saturday. The first such airport will come up in Kishangarh town in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district, he said after laying the foundation stone for the development of the airport which is scheduled to get operational by 2016.
“An ambitious scheme to develop a network of 100 smaller airports in the country is being implemented. Focus earlier was on developing airports in metro cities and now more than 100 airports will be set up in small towns and cities,” Singh said. “This will enhance air connectivity in the country. Kishangarh airport will be the first project under this scheme,” he said, adding that it will also meet requirement of increasing passenger load which is expected to be around 30 crores by 2020.
The PM said the Kishangarh airport, to be set up at an estimated cost of 161 crore in first phase, will accelerate economic activities and growth in the area. 

Jairam Ramesh on NaMo & GST

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has accused Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of "single handedly" derailing the ambitious tax reform - GST - a brain child of the BJP-led NDA government, and championed by his Bihar party colleague Sushil Modi.
"The man who is the most powerful proponent of Goods and Services Tax (GST) today is Sushil Modi. But the most powerful opponent of GST is Narendra Modi...in many ways GST owes a lot to Sushil Modi. But the other Modi did not allow GST to happen. (It did not happen because of) single handed opposition of Narendra Modi to GST. So one Modi created GST, the other Modi made sure it did not happen," Ramesh said.
Sushil Modi, as the then Bihar Finance Minister and Chairman of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers, had played a key role in evolving consensus for implementation of GST.
GST, which seeks to subsume various indirect taxes like excise, sales and service tax, was proposed by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and subsequently supported by Congress led UPA government.
However, Ramesh said the "revolutionary change in economic policy" has not turned into a realty because of opposition by the Prime Ministerial candidate of BJP.
"He (Narendra Modi) communicates on everything under the sun, I would like him to communicate to the country why he is opposing GST, why he is opposing his own party, why he is opposing Sushil Modi...Sushma Swaraj...Nitin Gadkari... Yashwant Sinha...Let him explain," the Rural Development Minister said.
He further said there is a universal consensus on GST and all industry associations and corporates who are supporting Narendra Modi are in favour of GST.
"All industrialists who appear on TV singing the praises for Modi want GST. His party is responsible for GST, his party manifesto say GST, his party leaders want GST but this one man has single handedly derailed the entire introduction of GST," he said.

Economix

CBI Closes DA Case Against Mulayam

The CBI has closed a seven year-old probe into SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and his family’s alleged disproportionate assets, citing “grossly insufficient evidence”. The closure of the case came within a fortnight of the end of Parliament’s monsoon session. The SP, which lends outside support to the Congress-led coalition at the Centre, has repeatedly bailed out UPA in Parliament.
The closure report says the exclusion of Yadav’s daughter-in-law, Dimple, from the ambit of the probe, as per a Supreme Court order of last December, necessitated a reassessment of the entire case. The CBI has also admitted glaring mistakes in its own calculations in 2007, when it pegged the entire Yadav family’s DA at Rs.2.63 crore while filing a status report before the SC and then demanded prosecution of the SP chief and his son Akhilesh. This figure was arrived at without taking into account the “defence” of Yadav and his family members who did not join the CBI inquiry in 2007, the agency has said in the report. After duly collecting and examining various documents, the report says, the CBI did not find sufficient evidence to support allegations of possession of any ill-gotten asset, jointly or individually, by Yadav or his family members.
The report refers to a house in Yadav’s native village of Saifai built at Rs.1.41 crore, but says Yadav and his son Akhilesh contributed “less than 10%” to the property while Sughar Singh from Yadav’s extended family actually built the house.

Shock Therapy

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan shocked the market by raising interest rates in his first monetary policy announcement, giving a clear signal that inflation was his primary target, that he would be his own man when it came to setting the central bank’s agenda, and that he was no populist pushover.
In confounding expectations by raising the repo rate, he came across as starkly different from US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who seemed to blink when it came to going ahead with stimulus tapering. Rajan, on the other hand, bit the bullet. He was forthright about why he did so. Sooner or later, Fed will need to take hard decisions and there’s a window of opportunity before that happens. “Let us remember that the postponement of tapering is only that, a postponement,” Rajan said at a press briefing. “We must use this time to create a bulletproof national balance sheet and growth agenda, which creates confidence in citizens and investors alike.”
But lulled by Fed’s non-action on Wednesday and positive sentiment around the new governor’s advent, the markets had built up hopes about further easing of recent liquidity tightening measures. The announcement of the rate increase, wholly contrary to expectations, hit the markets hard. The Sensex fell 1.9% to 20,263.71 and yield on the 10-year government bond surged 39 bps to 8.58%.

Somewhere in Chennai....

Hyderabad ITIR

Paving the way for the development and consolidation of the information technology sector in the city, the Centre has approved the setting up of a 202-sq km Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) in and around Hyderabad with an investment potential of over Rs 2.19 lakh crore and potential of creating 15 lakh direct jobs.
“The Government of India (Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs) has considered and approved the proposal of the state government for setting up of an ITIR in an area of 202 sq kms (50,000 acres),” ITE&C department release said.
The ITIR would comprise areas such as Cyberabad Development Authority (CDA), including Gachibowli and Madhapur, Hyderabad Airport Development Authority (HADA) area including Mamidipalli, Raviryal, Adibatla and Maheswaram as well as the Uppal and Pocharam belt.
The ITIR has the potential to generate direct revenues of over Rs 3.1 lakh crore, IT exports of Rs 2.35 lakh crore as well as 53 lakh indirect jobs apart from 15 lakh direct jobs, the state ITE&C department said
A chunk of the investment to be pumped into the ITIR towards external and internal infrastructure development in two phases over a period of 25 years will come via the public-private partnership (PPP) mode.
While the estimated cost of putting up external infrastructure will be Rs 4,863 crore, including provision for metro rail connectivity, power sub-stations, widening of national highways and radial roads from Outer Ring Road (ORR) to the periphery of ITIR clusters, the estimated cost of internal infrastructure like roads, water, electricity and sewerage lines within the ITIR clusters is Rs 13,093 crore. The government has sought support from the Centre for infrastructure development.
The ITIR, which would include Special Economic Zones (SEZs), industrial parks, Free Trade Zones (FTZ), warehousing zones, export-oriented units, growth centres, existing settlements/ industries and estates/services, will be developed in two phases over a period of 25 years. It will be a combination of production units, public utilities, logistic, environmental protection mechanism, residential areas and administrative services, the release said.