China top of agenda at CII council meet

NEW DELHI: The proverbial ghost, China again tops the agenda for India Inc. The national council meeting of CII this week includes a session on lessons from China for the manufacturing sector.
Apart from discussions on the mid-year economic review and tax reforms as suggested by the Kelkar committee, the meeting has on its agenda the status and issues in telecom sector and IT in rural development.
Interestingly in the telecom sector the industry feels it has had an overdose of competition combined with what it calls impotent regulation.
The key point to be discussed in the meeting will be China and discussions will surround the findings of the CII-McKinsey study.
Current status of telecom sector and issues therein is the other point marked in the schedule.
Matters of concern revolve around the number of court cases and legal issues straddling the sector, overcapacity on long distance circuits, license fee structure, need to increase FDI limit and effective spectrum management.
Other items on the agenda include the role of industry in rural development. Here the e-choupal initiative of ITC will be the focus point and Y C Deveshwar, chairman of ITC Ltd will lead discussions.
The quarterly meet of who’s who of Indian industry is being held at Kolkata this week and will be addressed by Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
Among the industrialists present will be Rahul Bajaj, Arun Bharat Ram, KN Shenoy, Sanjiv Goenka, JN Godrej, Dhruv Sawhney, AM Naik, Azim Premji, Vijay Kirloskar, B Muthuraman, MS Banga, DS Brar, Sunil Mittal, Alex Von Behr, Raghupati Singhania and David Friedman.
The last national council meeting held in September debated Gujarat rehabilitation initiative, issues governing the financial sector, VAT, electricity and labour.