Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announces commercial mining of coal to open the fourth tranche of her outlining of the Rs 20 lakh crore ‘relief package’ announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier.
- Incentives for quick mining
- FM says aware coal is “not so environment-friendly”; incentive for gassification.
- Says regulation is required to meet scarcity. No scarcity of coal in India; should exploit deposit.
- Open-market sales to be allowed.
- Entry norms to be losened.
- Some 50 new blocks to be auctioned.
- Only an upfront payment will be charged with a ceiling.
- No eligibility criteria for miners.
- Rs 50,000 crore for creating evacuation infrastructure.
- 500 mining blocks to on offer.
- Bauxite and coal mines to auctioned together.
- No difference between captive and non-captive mines.
- Stamp duty to be “rationalised”.
- A mineral index to be formed.
- FM talks of ‘Make in India’ for defence.
- Import of notified defence items to be banned.
- List to be increased every year.
- Corportaisation of ordnance factory boards.
- Long-term goal of listing them on stock markets.
- Foreign direct investment cap in defence raised to 74 per cent from 49 per cent.
- Airspace availability to be increased.
- Six airports to be up for auction for functioning via public-private partnerships.
- Airports Authority of India to get downpayment of Rs 2,300 crore.
- More to be opened up in future.
- Brings up Budget proposal of making India an MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) hub.
- Says defence aircrafts can also benefit.
- Power distribution companies nin Union Territories to be privatised.
- Rs 8,100 cr for social infrastructure
- 30 per cent viability-gap funding for social infrastructure investments.
- Indian Space Research Organisation facilities to be available for testing to private players.
- Future planetary travel projects to open to private sector.
- FM talks of liberal geo-spatial data policy.
- PPP model for radiation tech in food.
- India’s totaly tally of cases positive to the novel coronavirus was at 85,940 on May 16 morning, according to the Union health ministry.
- This is more than the tally of China, from where the COVID-19 outbreak started. Only 10 countries have more cases.
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