Government today approved Defence Ministry guidelines for its public sector units (PSUs) to establish joint ventures,JV , with private firms to increase opportunities to obtain advanced technologies from foreign sources.

The decision was taken in a Cabinet meeting held in New Delhi under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.The guidelines will help in enhancing fairness and transparency in the selection of the JV partner by the DPSUs while ensuring a well-defined nature and scope of the tie up.

As per the guidelines, DPSUs will retain the affirmative rights for taking key decisions in the JV company.The guidelines contain provisions for important matters that are critical from a national security perspective.

It is expected that the guidelines will foster better and deeper partnerships between the DPSUs and private partners, in order that substantive self-reliance is adequately achieved in the synergised environment .

In another decision, cabinet today approved the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP-2012) to facilitate access to central government owned shareable data and information. The data can be shared in both human readable and machine readable formats through a network across the country.

Our correspondent reports, the NDSAP policy is designed to promote data sharing and enable access to central government owned data for national planning and development.

The government also approved setting up of a national centre for cold chain development and allocated a one-time grant of 25 crore rupees for its corpus fund.The Union Cabinet today gave its ex-post facto approval for registering National Centre for Cold Chain Development (NCCD) as a society under the Societies Registration Act. The centre will be run by a 22-member governing council from different fields under the chairmanship of a secretary.