"The cabinet meeting held on Tuesday has agreed in principle to entrust industrial security to the APF," said Commerce and Supplies Minister Rajendra Mahato. He informed myrepublica.com that the deployment of APF, however, has been arranged as an intermittent step to improve security situation in the industrial sector and will ultimately replaced by the Industrial Security Force (ISF). [break]
This arrangement has been made mainly as the government needs additional time to enact a law, recruit manpower and equip them with logistics, and complete all necessary procedures for implementing the ISF.
"Now APF will work out a detailed action plan on how it will assume the new responsibility," said Mahato.
The meeting, which was held after the industrialists met with the Prime Minister earlier on the day, also decided to supply diesel and the industrial fuel at the import price to the industries.
Once implemented, the industries will receive fuel at about Rs 58 per liter, which is about Rs 3 cheaper than the market rates.
"We expect this to cut the cost of operations for the industry," said Mahato, adding that it would also ease investors to install thermal power generators to maintain uninterrupted power supply.
In a bid to encourage the private sector jump into power generation, the government on the day also decided to buy excess electricity if the private sector operated generator of more than 50 MW capacity.
Likewise, the meeting also decided to open exports of aggregates, but with quantitative restriction.
"Quantitative restriction has been imposed because we wish to streamline and monitor the operations of the crusher industries," said Mahato.
The cabinet decision, however, has not specified the extent or volume of exports to be allowed henceforth. According to Mahato, Ministry of Commerce and Supplies will soon coordinate with other concerned ministries and set the permitted export quantity for the crusher industries.
"While doing so, we will also make sure that environmental and other concerned authority will keep close eye on their operations and monitor the environmental impact now and again," said he.
The government had restricted ban on the export of aggregates on instruction of Natural Resources and Means Committee of the parliament. The committee had taken decision after experts reported crusher industries of flouting their operating norms and leaving grave impact on environment.
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