NEW DELHI, Dec 10: Industry Minister Murasoli Maran announced today that the Government had ``substantially accepted'' the Vittal Committee report which had recommended that the numerous administrative guidelines that govern the life of public sector units be reduced. As many as 696 regulations out of the total 892 have have been deleted and only 196 have been retained.

Maran said this list would be further pruned after considering the recommendations of justice Mohan committee on guidelines pertaining to salaries and allowances. The report is expected to be completed by March 1998.

The 696 deletions pertain to policies regarding finance, construction management, personnel, wages and salaries, dispute settlement and corporate communication. For instance, some guidelines decided the type of creche facilities a PSU could provide while others outlined the amount of space which should be utilised for building offices.

``This is the third wave of PSU reform after navratna and miniratnas,'' Maran said. Citing the example of multinational Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), which controls 1,200 national companies and has only 18 page guidelines for operation, Maran said that even the administrative ministries were not aware of most of the existing guidelines.

Maran said by deleting the guidelines issued by the erstwhile Bureau of Public Enterprises and its successor, the Department of Public Enterprises, the Government was trying to ensure that a PSU had operational freedom. The chairman of the Public Enterprises Selection Board, N Vittal, along with Indian Oil chief M A Pathan and the chairman of PSU apex body, SCOPE, Uddesh Kohli, had earlier in August submitted their report suggesting deletion of 762 of the guidelines.

Maran said the Government was also expected to come out with decisions on employees' share-holding and evolving a safeguard mechanism for decision-making by PSU managements.

Elaborating, he said the Government wanted to finalise a pre-investigation arrangement for scrutinising commercial decisions taken by PSU management before any case is referred to the CBI or other investigating agencies.Stating that the Government had initiated this exercise two months ago, the minister said the arrangements were expected to be announced soon, ``before the notification for the general elections.''

The Government has finalised the non-official directors for Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL), Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in accordance with the Navratna autonomy package, Maran said today. The names of directors for Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) and Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) had not yet been cleared by the Telecommunication Ministry.

Non-official directors for the five oil PSUs - Indian Oil (IOC), Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum, Gas Authority of India (GAIL) and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) have been okayed by the Petroleum Ministry and are expected to be sent to Industry Ministry later this week.

For Indian petrochemicals (IPCL), the administrative ministry had already cleared the names of non-official directors, he said.

"Sachs works for free"

Industry Minister Murasoli Maran said today that Professor Jeffrey Sachs of the Harvard Institute was not taking any money for the study he was doing as he had entered into a MoU with the Foreign Investment Promotion Council to outline a strategy for export led growth. Maran also agreed with Finance Minister P Chidambaram that FIPC had failed. He was, however, enthusiastic about the investment flow and said $ five billion worth of investment was expected between January-December 1997.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.