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Govt hasn't given up on divestment: Maran

BS Economy Bureau in New Delhi

The government has not abandoned the divestment programme, Commerce and Industry Minister Murasoli Maran said in New Delhi on Sunday.

Speaking on the sidelines of a two day meeting of Directorate General of Foreign Trade port officials, Maran said divestment was one of the government's success stories. Indicating his support for the process he said: "In my stint as industry minister, I had created the divestment commission."

Maran also announced setting up of an informal group to reorient and further fine-tune the functioning of the DGFT in the light of the present liberalised trade regime.

The 3-member in-house committee headed by former commerce secretary, PP Prabhu, would include Shyamal Ghosh, former telecom secretary and SB Mahapatra, textile secretary.

It would aim to simplify and eliminate layers of decision making, wherever required, in order to ensure greater transparency, Maran said.

The committee will aim at "making the process speedy, simple and transparent and making it more export-friendly so that even an inexperienced village artisan can export without difficulties and bureaucratic impediments," he added.

Describing the 2-day interaction as a part of a mid-term analysis of the current Exim Policy with a view to sustaining and further accelerating exports, Maran said that on the basis of the trends so far he was confident that the export growth target of 12 per cent set for the current year would be achieved.

Referring to the electronic data interchange scheme as a critical area, the minister complimented the port officers for having successfully implemented the one-day licensing scheme and added that the next step would be on-line payment and the use of digital signatures to mark the successful culmination of the computerisation of the entire gamut of operations of the DGFT.

He further said that port officers would be consulted while formulating the Exim Policy.

Speaking on the occasion, Director General of Foreign Trade, L Mansingh pointed out that the basic objective of the 2-day meeting was to take stock of the implementation of the current Exim Policy.

All the parameters of trade through ports would be discussed and procedures simplified to help achieve the target of doubling the country's exports by the year 2007, he said.

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