December 17, 1995

The Cabinet has approved the names of members who will be on the board of the proposed insurance regulatory authority (IRA) The IRA will be set up soon and the matter is before the Cabinet, the Union Finance Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, told newspersons on Saturday. On the issue of unincorporated finance companies collecting public deposits, Dr Singh said such bodies could not be administered by the Reserve Bank of India and promised to “have a close look” at this and the point raised on such companies advertising on Doordarshan.

NHB credit rating for developers

The National Housing Bank (NHB) is planning to tie up its assistance to State housing board projects with a credit rating system for developers taking up the projects The rating is expected to change the poor public perception of the quality of housing board constructions. The idea of the rating system was initiated by NHB and Crisil. Crisil launched the system in April this year and has so far rated around nine companies in the country.

Work on Patents Bill amendment begins

The select committee of the Rajya Sabha has finally decided to examine the Patents (Amendment) Bill, 1995, following the Government’s decision to withdraw the nomination of two Congress MPs, Mr Vmod Sharma and Mr. Bhubaneswar Kalita. With this, the strength of the panel has come down to 19 and the preliminary work on examination of various aspects of the Patents Bill has started. The first meeting of the committee was held here on Thursday and two senior bureaucrats — Mr V S. Ramamoorthy, Secretary, Science and Technology, and Mr Tejendra Khanna, Secretary, Commerce — briefed the members.

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