The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved amendments to the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority, PFRDA Bill 2011 before presenting it in the forthcoming Winter session of Parliament. It also agreed to the proposed 26 per cent foreign investment in the pension sector.

It, however, the amendment does not mention providing assured returns to subscribers. The meeting was presided over by the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in New Delhi. An official spokesperson said, the government is of the view that FDI cap in the pension fund should be at 26 per cent at par with the insurance sector.

In another important decision, the Cabinet approved the official amendments to the Prohibition of Unfair practices in Technical Educational Institutions, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill, 2010. Students stand to benefit by the enactment of a legislation to curb unfair practices in admission and other areas of higher educational institutions.

The Cabinet further approved amendments to the Export Import Bank of India to enable increase in the authorized capital of the Exim Bank, besides strengthening its management structure.

The bill seeks to increase the authorized capital of the Exim Bank from 2,000 crore to 10,000 crore rupees and make a provision for appointment of two whole-time directors, other than the Chairman and Managing Director. The bill also seeks to empower the Centre to further increase the authorized capital of the Exim Bank without any more legislative changes.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), in its meeting today approved a compensation of 600 crore rupees for NTPC’s Loharinag Pala hydel project in Uttarakhand which got scrapped last year over environment and religious issues.

The CCEA also approved the implementation of the North East Rural Livelihood Project at an estimated cost of 683.2 crore rupees. This comprises a soft loan from the World Bank of 614.8 crore and central government fund of 68.4 crore rupees over a period of five years.

The Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region will implement the North East Rural Livelihood Project in Aizwal and Lunglei districts of Mizoram, Peren and Tuensang districts of Nagaland, South, West and 15 poorest Panchayat Wards of East district of Sikkim and West and North districts of Tripura.

The project will cover nearly three lakh households in 1624 villages of 58 blocks falling in the four States. The project will improve rural livelihoods especially that of women, unemployed youth and the modest disadvantaged in the four North Eastern States.

CCEA also approved augmentation of the existing outlay of backward and forward linkages component of Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme, PMEGP by 131 crore rupees.

An estimated 1.73 lakh people are expected to be benefitted by this decision. The fund augmentation will meet residual liabilities of erstwhile Prime Minister’s Rojgar Yojana and Rural Employment Generation Programme within the already approved overall plan outlay of 4735 crore rupees for PMEGP.

CCEA also gave directions to state-run National Aluminium Company (NALCO) on the scope of value addition for export of aluminium rather than alumina in its second phase of expansion. It further approved mandatory use of jute for packaging in 2011-12 besides.