Cabinet approves telecom policy, financial package for sugar sector

The broadband coverage will include deployment of 5 million public wi-fi hotspots by 2020 and 10 million by 2022 through a National Broadband Mission and also seek to implement a ‘Fibre First Initiative’ to take fibre to the home by giving optic fibre cables the status of public utility.

It included provisions to adopt "Optimal Pricing of Spectrum" to ensure sustainable and affordable access to digital communications. High spectrum price and related charges have been main concern of telecom services segment, which is reeling under a debt of around Rs 7.8 lakh crore.

RS Sharma, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chief, said that most of the recommendations that were given by Trai have been incorporated in the telecom policy and said the approval of the policy 'comes in as a huge positive' for the sector.

Sharma said that the new telecom policy will help the companies attract more investments.

"The sector is going to witness really a quantum jump in terms of the newer application, the technologies. We have maintained that telecom is not a mere vertical today, telecom is going to become a fundamental platform of providing digital services in almost every sector. Therefore it is a critical infrastructure for the country. The broad thrust of the policy is to bring in new players, bring in new investments and to bring in new set of applications and technologies. So, everything is geared towards that and these numbers which you talked about $100 billion of investments, many millions of employment and all these numbers they are going to be realised provided this policy is approved and implemented," he said.

The Rs 4,500 crore financial package for the sugar industry includes over two-fold jump in production assistance to cane growers and transport subsidy to mills for export up to 5 million tonnes in the marketing year 2018-19.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the food ministry's proposal that seeks to address the surplus domestic stock of sugar and help mills in clearing huge cane arrears of around Rs 13,000 crore.

This is the second financial package to bail out the sugar industry after Rs 8,500 crore announced in June.

The industry is facing a glut-like situation because of record production of 32 million tonnes (MT) in the 2017-18 marketing year (October-September), resulting in a closing stock of 10 MT at the end of this month.

Under its 'Comprehensive policy to deal with excess sugar production in the country', the ministry has recommended offsetting cost of sugarcane to sugar mills by increasing the production assistance paid to growers at Rs 13.88 per quintal for the 2018-19 marketing year from Rs 5.50 per quintal for this year.

The cabinet reportedly raised the price the government directly pays to cane growers to Rs 138 per tonne in the new season beginning October 2018, according to a government document seen by Reuters, up from Rs 55 in the current season.

With low global prices, the ministry has suggested helping mills to export 5 million tonnes of sugar under the Minimum Indicative Export Quota (MIEQ) during 2018-19 by compensating expenses towards internal transport, freight, handling and other charges.