Sixth Meeting

Competition and Regulation in India ? A Status Report 2007
New Delhi, India, November 22, 2007

CUTS organised the sixth meeting of PARFORE in New Delhi to discuss the outcomes of its study report ?Competition & Regulation in India, 2007? under the project entitled, ?India Competition and Regulation Report? (ICRR).

Important issues which were discussed at length during the meeting included: adoption and implementation of a National Competition Policy; importance of harmonisation of state level and central regulatory agencies during the process of implementation of regulatory reforms; and systemic reforms like selection of regulatory authorities and their functioning needs.

Responding to the recommendations of CUTS? report, Natchaippan, MP, Rajya Sabha suggested that systemic issues could be taken up to the Parliament. He suggested that CUTS can prepare papers on issues especially related to judicial reforms and personnel as well. Natchaippan, being the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee, assured to take up such issues personally, which can be presented in the Parliament.

Referring to CUTS? recommendations, Robert Kharshiing said that Parliamentary Selection Committee for regulators should be formed and selection process of members on such committee also should be neutral and fair. For example, he explained the selection committee could comprise the PM and opposition leader for fair selection process of regulators. CUTS recommended that the Regulators should be directly accountable to the Parliament.

Addressing the meeting Pradeep Mehta suggested that as a adoption of XIth Plan document by National Development Council (NDC) is in process, important issues, such as lack of capacity building, improvement in the debt market, large number of public-private-partnership (PPP) projects and contract design or implementation should be addressed. Further highlighting the need for competition policy, Mehta said that although the process is gradual, implementation of competition policy in other countries show substantial increase in their economies, for example, in Australia, competition policy has helped five-six percent growth in its economy.

Apart from media persons from PTI, DD News and Senior journalist Mythili Bhusnurmath, S Deepa from British High Commission, New Delhi participated in the discussion.