Disinvestment Process may gain speed
After the initial euphoria over reforms getting a leg-up following the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government surviving a trust vote and freeing itself from the Left’s clutches, reality seems to be dawning upon pDisinvestment process may gain speedolicymakers.
The win at Tuesday’s confidence vote will technically allow the Congress-led alliance to be in power till April next. But as a senior official noted, the ‘window of opportunity’ to push through major reforms exists only till around October, after which Assembly elections would take off in six States.
Any Bill to be passed would have to be taken up in the Monsoon session, starting next month.
“While there is also the Winter session after that, it would be politically difficult to enact any big-ticket .The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on Wednesday, stated that the Government will ‘try’ to take up various pending Bills in the coming session itself.
These pertain to raising the existing 26 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in insurance companies to 49 per cent, removing the 10 per cent individual voting rights cap in banks and conferring statutory status to the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority.
While the Government’s new ally, Samajwadi Party (SP), has indicated that it is open to pension, banking and insurance reforms, “it is risky to rely just on their numbers, more so after all the recent horse-trading allegations”.
The official was also pessimistic on FDI being permitted in retail, even if it involves no legislation per se.