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New Delhi : Union Finance & Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on June 13, 2019, held her fourth Pre- Budget Consultation Meeting with the stakeholders from Infrastructure and Climate Change Sectors here. The main areas of discussion during the meeting included issues relating to bringing in more capital to the infrastructure sector such as high -ways, railways, telecom, auto-mobile including incentives for electric vehicles as well as for the Green Sector including renewable energy among others.
Along with the Finance Minister, the meeting was attended among others by Anurag Thakur, Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Subhash C. Garg, Finance Secretary, Girish Chandra Murmu, Expenditure Secretary, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Revenue Secretary, Atanu Chakraborty, Secretary, DIPAM, Sanjeev Ranjan, Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Ravi S. Prasad, Additional Secretary, Climate Change, V K Yadav, Chairman, Railway Board, Pramod Chandra Mody, Chairman, CBDT, P K Das, Chairman, CBIC, and Dr K V Subramanian, CEA.
With an eye on creating sustainable and stable opportunities, suggestions from the representatives of Infrastructure Sector and experts of climate change included containing the rising cost of infrastructure projects, rationalisation of various levies in infrastructure sector, introduction of tax-free bonds to boost investment, streamlining of land acquisition process, creation of Green Technology Acceleration Fund, incentivising domestic manufacturing of solar energy equipment, fiscal incentives for development of Electric Vehicles industry, user development fee for up-gradation of railway stations, inclusion of telecom towers in plant and machinery category for GST purposes, promotion of non-fossil fuel based energy, redevelopment of wasteland and greater emphasis on recycling/up-cycling of waste material, imparting Infrastructure Status to Renewable Energy sector, provisions related to scraping of old vehicles and incentivising higher investment in R&D in automobile sector among others, according to a PIB release.
Stakeholders of Infrastructure Sector and experts on Climate Change attending today’s meeting included Nagendranath Sinha, Chairman, NHAI, Sanjeev Kumar Lohia, MD & CEO, Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation, Praveen Kumar, Additional CMD, Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), Mahendra Singhi, President, Cement Manufactures’ Association, T K Malhotra, President, Automobile Association of Upper India (AAUI), Ajay Mathur, DG, TERI, Gautam Chikermane, Vice-president, Observer Research Foundation, Shibani Ghosh, Centre for Policy Research, and Rajesh Chharia, President, Internet Service Providers Association of India.