The Hindu Business Line : State to seek special powers to regulate movement of cement

Hyderabad, April 24 The Andhra Pradesh Government has decided to seek special powers from the Central Government to control the movement of cement from the State.

“In order to control cement prices and movement, we will seek powers to be delegated to the State Government. The Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, will write to the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, the Industries Minister and all the other Ministers concerned today itself,” Mr K. Rosaiah, Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister, said after a meeting of the cabinet sub-committee with the Chief Minister on Thursday.

He also said that the Chief Minister has asked the committee to continue to look into the aspect of importing cement at a cheaper cost.

The committee also decided to request the Union Government to ask anti-monopoly watchdog MRTPC to probe into the hike in cement prices.

“The Union Government has recently asked the MRTPC to study the recent hike in cement prices. The State Government will send a request to the Prime Minister to ask the commission to jointly look into the hike in the cement prices in the State also,” Mr Rosaiah said.

The Government has decided to issue notices to mining lease holders who have not yet begun activity in the area allotted to them. “From the time the leases have been taken, the installation has to be completed within a period of three years. If this is not adhered to then the leases will be cancelled. But since the cancellation cannot be done on a suo moto basis, the Mining Department has been instructed to give notices to individual lease holders,” Mr Rosaiah said.

The committee also found that a couple of companies were not adhering to their commitment of supplying cement to the various housing programmes of the State.

“The companies had agreed to supply around 18.5 per cent of their production to housing schemes in the State.

But after the initial couple of months we found some slackness as companies were only supplying between 10 per cent and 10.5 per cent.

So the committee has decided to direct the companies to ensure that the backlog is cleared and also to ensure the future commitments are met,” he said.

The State has called for a meeting with industry representatives to hear their version on the issues on Friday.

More Stories on : Cement | Regulatory Bodies & Rulings | Andhra Pradesh

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