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| Thursday, July 25, 2002, Chandigarh, India   
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India’s
poor likely to be halved: report
Winding up
of tubewell corporation criticised RIL
accuses govt of discrimination Ind-Swift,
Unichem tie up to market anti-depressant drug Markfed
for product-specific export zones Cotton
Corporation suffers heavy losses |
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Tata
Telecom grows 43 pc Connect
cuts ISD tariffs Lufthansa
most punctual
ACC net
falls 54.85 pc
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India’s poor likely to be halved: report New Delhi, July 24 “To halve the share of people living under one dollar a day, optimistic estimates suggest 3.7 per cent annual growth in per capita income in the developing countries. But over the past ten years only 24 countries have grown this fast. Among them are India and China, the most populous developing countries”, the report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) here today, said. Rapid growth in the two largest countries — China since the 1970s and India since the late 1980s — has enabled them to catch up to some extent with the rich countries. “Since 1975 China has improved its per capita income relative to OECD countries from 1/21st to 1/6th, while India has improved from 1/14 th in 1980 to 1/10th”, the report said. Many developing countries have already achieved or are on the track to achieve universal primary education. Given the importance of education to so many other areas of development, this bodes well for accelerating progress towards other goals, the Report said. “Most developing countries have also achieved or are on the track to achieve the targets for eradicating hunger and
improving water supplies. But more than 40 countries, with 28 per cent of the world’s people, are not on track to halve hunger by 2015. And 25 countries, with 32 per cent of the world’s people, are not on track to halve hunger by 2015”. However, much of the world, generally the poorest countries, seems unlikely to achieve the goals. Although 55 countries, with 23 per cent of the world’s people are on track to achieve at least three-quarters of the goals, 33 countries with 26 per cent of the world’s people are failing on more than half. “Especially extraordinary efforts will be needed in sub-Saharan Africa, where 23 countries are failing and 11 others do not have enough data to be assessed — a possible indication that they are even further behind”, the report said.
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Winding up of tubewell corporation criticised Chandigarh, July 24 Interestingly, different ministers and MLAs in the government, say insiders in the corporation, including Mr Jagmohan Singh Kang from Morinda, Dr Ramesh Dutt from Anandpur Sahib and Mr Kewal Krishan have asked the corporation to install about 100 new tubewells in the Kandi area. The corporation has so far installed 1615 deep tubewells and lining of 33,500 km length of water courses, creating an additional irrigation potential of 4.32 lakh hectares. Talking to The Tribune, Mr
A.S. Chatha, Chairman, Chief Minister’s Advisory Committee on Industrial Growth and Development of Relevant Infrastructure, opined, “The government should impose user charges to partially recover the maintenance charges incurred on deep tubewells and canal system.” Mr Adarsh Kumar Sharma, General Secretary, Sub Divisional Engineers Association,
PSTC, Punjab, said, “The corporation had been set up to install deep tubewells and maintain water courses by availing financial aid from the World Bank, Nabard and other financial institutions. However, the flow of these funds was stopped by 1990 due to waiving off irrigation charges worth Rs 600 crore. The association, in a memorandum submitted to the Disinvestment Commission, pointed out that the government’s experiments to handover deep tubewells to the gram panchayats and water user societies had failed since they lacked technical expertise in that
area. It has suggested that the PSTC should be made a nodal agency for installation works of all types of tubewells and
ground water research and to provide commercial consultancy.
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RIL accuses govt of discrimination
New Delhi, July 24 Senior advocate Arun Jaitley, appearing for RIL, said the CNG supply to his client’s Hajira power plant had been reduced by about half following the Supreme Court direction that a priority be given to transport sector in supplying the non-polluting fuel. Mr Jaitley told Mr Justice Manmohan Sarin that only RIL and Essar had been singled out for reducing the CNG supply by the Gas Authority of India Ltd though the apex court in its order of April 5 had kept the power sector in the “prefered” category after the transport sector. Cutting the supply by 0.40 MMSCD to company’s power plant that has an investment of over Rs 12,000 crore has affected its efficiency and will
cause a huge financial loss to the company as well as revenue loss to the government.
PTI
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Ind-Swift, Unichem tie up to market anti-depressant drug Chandigarh, July 24 Ind-Swift Ltd will market Citalopram under brand name Lopram whereas Unichem will promote the drug under brand name ‘C-Pram’ . Ind-Swift will manufacture this drug for Unichem at its GMP compliant plant at Parwanoo (HP). Ind-Swift, which recently received DCGI approval for the drug, is among the first few to receive the said approval. The API will be supplied to Ind-Swift by its group company Ind-Swift Laboratories Ltd. The total market for anti-depressant drug stands at $ 10 billion and is growing at 14 per cent annually. However, Citalopram is growing much faster at 33 per cent. Mr V.K. Mehta, Director, Ind-Swift said, ‘This is a welcome development in the company. Co-marketing would help it launch new products and widen its reach in short span of time”. He further added that “We would look at garnering a market share of 12 per cent at the end of the second year when the estimated market size would be over Rs 20 crore.” Mr Mehta said the company is close to finalising a similar arrangement with one of the top 10 pharma group of India for promoting the Citalopram.
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Markfed for product-specific export zones Chandigarh,, July 24 Paradoxes of agricultural prosperity of Punjab has spawned a debate in academic, political and policy circles, as much about the sustainability of production, storage, marketing, processing as incomes to farmers. And in the government, there are as many agencies doing the same tasks, as there are problems; all leading to multiplicity of functions and funds. There is no single agency or a policy yet in sight to navigate crisis-ridden agriculture. Markfed is the latest to join the queue for carving out produce-specific export zones and has already signed some MoUs with export/financial agencies concerned. It has even made the Chief Secretary, Mr Y.S. Ratra, to write to the APEDA Chairman, Mr Anil Swarup, to allow Markfed establish a Wheat-special (Durum) zone. Egypt, says the Food Corporation of India Chairman, is a favourite destination for Durum wheat. Both Markfed and Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, can join hands to capture that market and encourage farmers to grow this variety at home. Work has begun on this venture. Mr Ratra has informed APEDA that steps have also been initiated by Markfed to establish a ‘State-of-the-Art’ laboratory to facilitate “identity preservation” of wheat, which will help fetch better price in the world market. Markfed demands the Ministries of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution to create ‘stock points’ at ports and Railways to give special category status to move wheat for export at a par with movement of food grains. A federation of 3000-odd member cooperative societies, Markfed, is also keen on a Potato Export Zone for which financial and technical tie-ups have been made. The zone is to be set up in two phases, costing Rs 10.41 crore and Rs 102 crore, respectively, in Bathinda, Patiala, Ludhiana and Jalandhar districts. The project envisages to take care of potato production and processing. Markfed has successfully exported 10,58,678 tonnes wheat, earning Rs 483 crore foreign exchange, between April 2001 and June 2002. An other wheat export order worth Rs 70 crore is pending execution. While on exports, Managing Director, Mr S S Channy, chuckles as he refers to palate-tickling “ready to eat” export-oriented food items on which Markfed is focusing at present. Services of famous chef, Jiggs Kalra, have been requisitioned to prepare recipes for the exotic and traditional items that include Sarson-ka-saag, Alu-warri, Alu-methi, Chatpatta-channa, Tinned potato, Mutter-paneer, Palak-paneer, Dal-makhni, Lobia, Rajmah and Curry-pakora. Jiggs is using traditional ingredients to spice up the taste to suit foreign markets. Nevertheless, Markfed has persuaded the Chief Minister, Capt. Amarinder Singh, to write to the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, seeking his intervention to have Markfed’s pending claims released from the Union ministries and the Food Corporation of India. Markfed’s locked up money is Rs 545 crore, on various accounts. But how about the money that the state government owes to Markfed? The recoverable sum is Rs 160 crore. Who will write to Capt. Amarinder Singh on these dues? Punjab’s huge grain stock of 200 lakh tonnes, as on May 31, 2002, with 95 per cent in the open and Markfed heading the list, is as much susceptible to vagaries of weather as vulnerable to human greed. It is time all agencies, like Markfed, stop expansions to integrate and consolidate their functions and finances.
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Cotton Corporation suffers heavy losses Bathinda, July 24 Giving up hopes for any support from concerned state governments for revival of industry, most of the ginning and pressing mill owners, have converted their units into marriage palaces, schools, hotels, restaurants, open plinths for storage of foodgrains and residential colonies while the other section of cotton mill owners have shifted to other trades after closing down their units. Information gathered by TNS revealed that in Muktsar and Kotkapura the owners had converted their units into rice mills, some owners had converted their mills to open plinths for storage of food-grains, in Hanumangarh, one owner had converted his mill to marriage palace while the other had converted into a school. In Fatehabad town of Haryana, one owner had converted his unit into marriage palace and banquet hall, one mill had been converted in hotel in Bathinda town while in Rampura and Abohar towns, a numbers of mills had been converted into residential colonies. Due to repeated failure of cotton crop in this region, about 300 cotton and ginning pressing mills had been closed down in the past six years rendering more than one lakh persons, who were in direct and indirect employment, jobless. The drastic fall in the cotton production and subsequently closing down of mills had also caused fall in revenue of concerned state government worth crores of rupees every year on account of sales tax, market fee and rural development fund
(RDF). More than 25 per cent of total cotton production of India was grown in 120 km radius of this town which constituted about 1/8 of total area under cultivation in the country. Information further revealed that due to drastic fall in cotton production, almost all the three branch offices of Cotton Corporation of India
(CCI) based at Bathinda, Sirsa and Sriganganagar, had been incurring losses to the tune of crores of rupees every year as their per annum turn over of business transactions had been declining and so the profit while the expenditure on the establishments and other things had been going up. Sources in CCI said that about 10 years ago, the CCI used to transact business of about three bales of cotton in Punjab per year, which had now come down to mere 12,500 in 2001-2002 despite the fact that staff position remained the same. Only a handful of employees took voluntary retirement. The local CCI office transacted the business of 62,000 bales in 2000-2001. Though the senior officials of CCI did not confirm it, a move was afoot to shift the operations of Bathinda and other branches in this zone to Maharashtra where Maharashtra Cotton Federation was planning to break its monopoly over the cotton trade in two zones and allow other party to indulge in same. Apart from it, about 75 branch offices of Mumbai and Punjab based mills and traders, which had been doing roaring business and had provided employment to thousands of people, had also closed down. The remaining 15 offices, which were still working, had been doing little business, to make their token presence in the market. Mr Ashok
Kapur, Director, Export Panel, Northern India Cotton Association, pointed out that most of the branches of various Mumbai and Punjab based cotton traders, had carried out retrenchment of about 90 per cent of its employees and had been carrying the business with skeleton staff. He added that state governments of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan had to take certain corrective measures to revive the cotton industry in this zone. The revival of cotton crop and subsequently ginning and pressing industry would also fetch hundreds of crores of rupees as revenue to these states in shape of various taxes
also.
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Tata Telecom grows 43 pc
New Delhi, July 24 The profit before tax at Rs 2.64 crore has gone up by 78 per cent, compared to Rs 1.48 crore for the previous corresponding period. The profit after tax is Rs1.59 crores as against Rs 1.18 crore for the previous corresponding period. The above results were taken on record by the Board of Directors on July 19, 2002. Mrs Niru Mehta, Vice-Chairman, Tata Telecom Ltd, said, “ We continued to enhance our product portfolio by providing converged communication solutions covering voice, data and video networks. Another important contributing factor has been our new role of becoming an ‘enabler’ for the contact center market so as to propel this burgeoning industry.” During the course of the first quarter of 2002-03, Tata Telecom continued to strengthen its market leadership in the call center segment.
UNI
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Connect cuts ISD tariffs Chandigarh, July 14 “All Connect PCO owners will have to make the relevant changes in their respective PCO meters (ePROMS) and charge customers according to the new rates. The tariffs have been clubbed into four different groups. For members of the South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation (SAARC) and other neighbouring countries a one minute call will now cost Rs 21.17 compared to the old rate of Rs 22.80 during peak hours (8 a.m. to 7 p.m). The rate of off-peak hours (7 p.m. to 8 a.m.) is Rs 18 per minute. For countries in Africa, Gulf, Asia and Oceania, peak hour rates stands reduced at Rs 24 compared to the old rates of Rs 32.40. The off peak hour rates are Rs 21 per minute. The same tariff scheme is applicable to European countries except that the peak hour timings are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. For countries in the American continent and other places in the western hemisphere the new peak hour (6 p.m. to 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. to 12 p.m.) rate will be Rs 24 per minute against the old rates of Rs 40.80 per minute. Off-peak hour rate stands at 21 per minute.
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Lufthansa most punctual
New Delhi, July 24 |
rc
ACC net falls 54.85 pc Mumbai, July 24 Lupin Lab Lupin Laboratories has reported a 25.86 per cent jump in net profit for the first quarter ended June 30, 2002 at Rs 20.28 crore as compared to Rs 16.11 crore in the same period of previous year. Sales during the year under review rose by 7.86 per cent to Rs 251.43 crore as against Rs 233.1 crore in the previous fiscal. Exports during this period also rose by 51 per cent to Rs 9.23 crore, it said.
Clariant Clariant (India) Limited, a manufacturer and supplier of dyes and speciality chemical products, has recorded the net profit of Rs 5.11 crore for the first quarter,2002-03, marginally up by 1.79 per cent compared with Rs 5.02 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal. Sales turnover of the company has been at Rs 75.4 crore for the first quarter of current financial year 2002-2003 marginally up by 3.3 per cent over the same period in the previous year.
Agencies
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