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New Delhi , Dec. 9

THE Standing Committee on Finance has pulled up the Department of Economic Affairs and Expenditure for not taking "a serious view of the existing shortfalls of coins" in the country as this is borne out by the slow pace of modernisation of projects of mints undertaken so far.

In its 48th report on the subject, tabled in Parliament by its Chairman, Mr N. Janardhana Reddy, the House Panel said the current combined production capacity of the four mints at Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Noida is 3,700 million pieces of coins (MPCS).

IGM, Noida, has a potential to produce 2,000 million pieces in two shifts. At present, Noida mint is running in single shift, while the Government has approved the second shift for IGM with additional 129 posts with a view to doubling the capacity from 1,000 MPCS per annum to 2,000 MPCS per annum.

After the second shift start at IGM, Noida, the production of four mints would gradually reach the level of 4,700 MPCS per annum. The total production of mints during 2001-02 was 3,593 and 3,628 during 2002-03.

Based on the RBI projections, a scheme for meeting the full demand for coins was prepared which was approved in-principle by the then Finance Minister and it was sent to the Planning Commission for meeting the expenditure under the Plan head.

The Planning Commission has stated that the expenditure might be met from non-Plan head. The matter has accordingly been taken up with the Budget Division of the Finance Ministry to meet the expenditure under the non-Plan head and the total estimated cost of the scheme would be Rs 311.15 crore.

The Standing Committee further informed that the Cabinet approved a modernisation project on February 24, 1989 at a cost of Rs 118.28 crore which was revised to Rs 301.82 crore and approved by the Cabinet in June 1994 with the rider that the project should be completed within 30 months by November 1996.

But the implementation was delayed for various reasons and the scheme was finally completed in June 2001. In August 1999, the Cabinet while according the approval of the RBI proposal for import of 2.5 billion pieces of coins, had directed that a plan for modernisation of mints should be prepared.

The Committee was informed that with the implementation of the scheme the anticipated availability of coins would go up from 4,100 million pieces in the current fiscal to 5,500 million pieces by the end of the Tenth Plan period with the additional capacity of 1,000 million pieces to be added in the last year of the Tenth Plan. This would further reach 7,000 million pieces by the end of the Eleventh Plan, i.e., 2011-12.

However, the House Panel said that though another scheme for modernisation had been approved in August 1999 to meet the full demand of coins, it is still incomplete.

Hence, it re-emphasised the expeditious completion of modernisation of projects so that the country could attain self-sufficiency. It further directed that the modernisation of mints should not be unnecessarily delayed.

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