The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has in order to improve service delivery to the Corporate Sector recently taken initiatives for further simplifying procedures under the Companies Act, 1956 and the Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008. These include integration of Director’s Identification Number (DIN) with PAN data base, extension of time in Company Law Settlement Scheme till 15.12.2011 and reducing the time limit of approval of e-forms by Registrar of Companies from 120 to 60 days. Filing of annual statement of accounts by Limited Liability Partnership has now been brought up under the ‘Straight Through Process’ (STP) procedure.

The Government of India unveiled the Draft Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Bill, 2011 for establishing a regulatory oversight mechanism to enforce disclosure, fair practice and accountability norms in the real estate sector, and to provide adjudication machinery for speedy dispute redressal.

Russia's private and state-owned companies continue to expand their operations beyond Russia's borders, even if the rate of this expansion has slowed.

The Vision-2020 documents prepared by the Ministry of Civil Aviation is an assessment of the overall outlook of the sector in 2020. As per the vision-2020, the growth of aviation sector has potential to absorb upto USD 120 billion of investment. Fleet size of commercial airlines sector will be approximately 1000 aircraft, domestic passengers numbers could reach 150-180 million, Helicopter fleet is expected to be another 500 air cargo movement is expected to reach the level of 9 million MT and the sector may have the potential to absorb 3 million jobs directly by 2020.

The Union Cabinet today approved the increase in India’s quota in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a result of the Fourteenth General Review of Quotas.

When the Fourteenth General Review of Quotas becomes effective, it will result in a major realignment of quota shares among members to better reflect the global realities. All the BRIC countries would now be among the 10 largest quota shareholders at the IMF. India’s quota share at the IMF will increase from 2.44% to 2.75%, making it the eighth largest quota holding country at the IMF. Significantly, India’s gain in terms of quota share is the seventh largest in this round of quota review. In absolute terms India’s quota will increase from SDR 5,821.5 million to SDR 13,114.4 million.

The Union Cabinet today approved the enactment of the requisite legislation for establishment of the Regional Centre for Biotechnology Training and Education under the auspices of UNESCO. The Centre proposes to engage students in research by integrating science, engineering and medicine with a view to create high quality human resource in disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas. Further, the Centre would also create physical infrastructure in critical platform technologies to support interdisciplinary education training and research in biotechnology for providing interface between agriculture or veterinary sciences and engineers and environmental biologists, ecologists and engineers for agricultural and environmental technologies in order to help molecular breeding, bio-energy and green technologies.

The Centre will work in collaboration with other Centres of UNESCO and carry out is programmes through grants provided by the Government. The Bill provides for laying the annual report and annual accounts together with the audit report in both Houses of the Parliament.

The Department of Industries and Public Policy of India has released a discussion paper to introduce a system of Utility Models in India. This system will help in protecting grass root innovations which do not satisfy the patentability criteria under Indian Patent Laws. The DIPP seeks specific views and suggestions on Section X of the paper entitled ‘Issues for Resolution’ and any related issues. These issues comprise the requirements, scope, criteria for granting protection and enforcement procedure to be adopted.

Government has sanctioned 21 new Textiles Parks under the Scheme for Integrated Textiles Parks with a project cost of Rs. 2100 crores to be implemented over a period of 36 months. The Scheme for Integrated Textiles Parks seeks green field investments in textiles sector on a public private partnership basis with the objective of setting up world class infrastructure for Textiles industry. The duration for completion of this project will be 36 months. Commerce Industry and Textiles Ministry said that the new Textiles Parks would leverage an investment of over Rs. 9000 crores and provide employment to 4 lac textiles workers. Government would finance common infrastructure with a subsidy upto Rs. 40 crores per Textiles park. The product mix in these parks would include apparels and garments parks, hosiery parks, silk parks, processing parks, technical textiles including medical textiles, carpet parks, powerloom parks.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved setting up 15 new Mega Food Park Projects under the Infrastructure Development Scheme (in addition to 15 ongoing projects), involving a total Government grant of Rs. 787.50 Crore.

The setting up of 15 new Mega Food Parks will result in creation of state of the art infrastructure in major parts of the country with efficient supply chain management from farm gate to retail outlets. The projects are expected to bring about substantial reduction of wastage, value addition, employment generation and increased income for the farmers.

The Scheme will be implemented in a market driven manner commensurate with both global and national demands. Innovative supply chain management will be the key to implementation of this scheme.

The government approved the introduction of a bill in the winter session of parliament, which will help banks improve their debt recovery process and enhance credit to both corporate and retail customers. The enforcement of Security Interest and Recovery of Debts Laws (Amendment) Bill 2011, will also reduce the cost of funds for banks and their customers and reduce the level of non-performing assets. The provision of mandatory registration of subsisting security interest (equitable mortgages) would promote innovation in credit information.