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. |