Monday, May 26, 2003
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Andhra Pradesh
By Our Special Correspondent
The Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, as the chairman should head the council and it should have four Ministers (preferably Ministers in-charge of Industry, Finance, Energy and Revenue), the chief secretary, four representatives of gas producing industries, a representative of the Central Government and three experts as its members. The secretary, Natural Gas, should act as the member-secretary to the council, the committee said. In its report submitted to the Chief Minister on Saturday, the committee said that given the current economic and administrative environment, the State Government should provide all the required facilitation for the rapid and orderly development of the gas industry. This would require a close coordination with gas developers and gas users by a number of Government departments and agencies. "The most important and immediate step to be taken by the State Government is to set up competent and effective coordinating arrangements at the State-level to deal with all the existing and anticipated policy and operational issues which may arise in future with regard to exploration, exploitation and related issues,'' the committee said. Towards this end, the committee recommended a two-tier set-up for effective coordination wherein a separate and exclusive "Natural Gas Development Secretariat'', functioning directly under the Natural Gas Development Council, should be set up for implementing the decisions of the council and carry out day-to-day field and secretariat work. The secretariat should be headed by a secretary to the Government with a tenure of at least three years and supported by technical, managerial and administrative staff. The functions of the NGDC, the committee said in its report, should be to formulate relevant State-level policies regarding promotion, development, facilitation and regulatory mechanism of gas industry, institutional arrangements and process parameters. The council will evolve appropriate strategies, monitor progress and evaluate results of the works done by various agencies involved in the natural gas industry development. It would be the agency which identifies issues that would be taken up with the Central Government authorities concerned for the development of the industry. The natural gas secretariat, on its part, would receive references on behalf of the council, process cases and submit them for consideration by the council. The major task of the secretariat would, of course, be to help speed up implementation of projects for natural gas development by networking and interfacing with other departments and persons concerned. It has to inter alia, deal with revenue, finance, commercial taxes, industries, energy, irrigation and water resources departments, municipalities and other local bodies, besides preparing an agenda for natural gas development, the committee said. It also made recommendations like constitution of a task force for the hydro-carbon highway, setting up of a natural gas development fund and constitution of a State-level regulatory body to ensure a level-playing field and fair competition for supply of natural gas to the people at reasonable prices.
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