He said his ministry is also considering further delegation of powers to state governments with a view to improving the investor climate.

Already, states are empowered to grant mineral concessions with regard to 15 minerals including barytes, dolomite, gypsum and tungsten, for which approval from the Central government was required earlier.

The new exploration guidelines permits aerial prospecting of areas upto 5,000 sq kms for a single licence, he said, adding so far 36 proposals covering an area of about 52,000 sq kms have been approved in the states of Rajasthan, Bihar, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Out of these, aerial prospecting in an area of about 22,000 sq kms in Rajasthan has already been completed and the data is under process, he said at a meeting with speaker of South AfricanGauteng province, Trevor Fowler, here.

Maximum of these proposals are from Australia (18) followed by United Kingdom (11), Canada (6) and USA (1), he added.

Apart from creating the right environment for attracting private investment, the government has also taken initiative to privatise and disinvest the existing public sector units in the mining and mineral sector, Tandon said.The disinvestment commission has made recommendations in respect of four of public sector undertakings in non-ferrous sector namely Balco, Nalco, HZL and HCL, he said.

Fowler said South African economy is in transition and coming to terms with greater liberalisation, new institutional relationships and tighter monetary and fiscal policies.

The GDP of South Africa is showing a declining trend and in 1997 it grew at a rate of 1.6 per cent compared with 3.2 per cent the previous year, he said, adding primary sectors like agriculture and mining however grew strongly by 29 per cent. South Africa has all the ingredients of a dynamiceconomy with a free market, decreased tariff protection, WTO compliance, financial liberalisation, decreased Budget deficit, tax reductions, fiscal constraint and tight monetary policy. However, the GDP growth has been declining due to currency speculation.