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Saturday,
May 3, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Netherlands seeks extradition of Senthil
Study finds India most attractive
Talks on to sell 1 lakh Simputers
Abolish VAT, demand traders
Brothel shares on demand
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$ 11b Asian trade hit by SARS: Ficci
ACC net profit slips
ICICI Bank ties up with Amway
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Netherlands seeks extradition of Senthil
London, May 2 After hearing from the solicitor representing the Netherlands Government that Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service has received the documents, the Bow Street Magistrate’s Court Judge Workman put off the hearing of the case for May 15. Senthil Kumar was arrested and sent to Brixton Prison for a week in March following an Interpol alert over a complaint filed against his company in Amsterdam that 14 of his employees were working in the Netherlands without proper work permits. He has been accused of involvement in providing false references for a number of company employees to Holland. The i-flex CEO, who was released on a bail of 20,000 pounds and asked to surrender his passport, was present in the court today along with his Barrister Hugo Keith. Senthil Kumar has the option to contest any extradition move and if he challenges it, the Magistrate’s court will de facto become a trial court to inquire into the charges against him. The i-flex office in Mumbai has claimed that the visa documents of all employees in Amsterdam were in order. They were on business visa while their work permits were being processed. All the employees had returned to India since the Netherlands Government lodged the complaint. The Indian Government had slammed the arrest and accused the Netherlands of practising “neo-protectionism” by hampering the free flow of professionals and services under the World Trade Organisation.
PTI
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Study finds India most attractive
Washington, May 2 The study by A T Kearney found that top US companies, including General Electric, GE Capital, Citigroup and American Express have nearly 15,000 employees in India alone and there are plans to add another 5,000 by year-end. Corporate chiefs list India as the most attractive country overall for offshore business processing, followed by China, the Philippines, Canada, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Hungary and Russia. While a company has to pay $ 20,000 to a call centre executive working in the USA, the same work will cost just 2,500 if done in India, says the study. Similarly, a Wall Street researcher with a college business degree and a few year’s experience can earn as much as $ 250,000 a year in the USA as compared to $ 20,000 in India. By going off-shore, annual savings for the financial services industry alone is $ 30 billion, the study says. About 8 per cent of total industry employment will shift abroad in the next five years, it says, adding offshore job transfers have primarily focused on back-office functions like data entry, transaction processing and call centres. The study is based on interviews in February and March with executives from 100 of the largest US banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies.
PTI
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Talks on to sell 1 lakh Simputers
Bangalore, May 2 Encore Software, one of the two licence holders for the Simputer launched two years ago, is also in talks with two firms from Japan and one from Singapore for the supply of a similar number of the cost-effective hand-held devices that promises to bridge the digital divide. "The memorandum of understanding will be signed in the next two weeks with the Indian software company that does work for others," Vinay Deshpande,CEO, Encore Software, told IANS. "And the Chairman of a Japanese company with whom we are in talks has sent his approval of the current product," he added, though declining to name any of the companies with which Encore is holding talks. This the first time since the Simputer was launched in 2001 that either of the licence holders, Encore and PicoPeta Simputers, has been in talks for the supply of 100,000 units. Most of the orders have been in the 500-1,000 range, primarily for testing purposes or use in government initiatives like e-learning, electricity bill collections or micro-credit in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh. The delay in the Simputer reaching the tech showroom prompted several people in the industry and academia to raise questions about the product that has been hailed as the most innovative the world has seen in the past decade. "It's finally positive, though I will celebrate when we deliver all units. But, yes, there have been delays because we worked on the useful feedback that we received on the initial model that had been sent out for testing," Deshpande said.
IANS
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Abolish VAT, demand traders Chandigarh, May 2 Disclosing this in a joint press conference here today, Mr. Sanjay Sethi, convener of the Haryana VAT Sangharsh Samiti and Jagdish Arora, president of the Chandigarh Beopar Mandal has appealed to all traders of Chandigarh and Haryana to close their shops on June 2 in protest. Mr. Sethi said the Centre has deferred the implementation of VAT due to the political compulsions. He demanded that if the government was serious in protecting the business of small and rural units, the government should abolish VAT. Lashing out at Jaswant Singh, he said Mr Jaswant Singh had totally failed as a Finance Minister. He feared that VAT is likely to be implemented soon after the elections of the Lok Sabha, scheduled in next year. He said small and rural traders, earning lower than Rs. 6,000 per month, fear the closure of their business due to VAT as they would have to spend at least Rs. 1,500 per month on VAT-related accounting, filing returns and other procedural liabilities. Meanwhile, Mr. Arora said hundreds of small traders in Chandigarh had been uprooted of their business after the Rent Act notification since November, 2002. “It means long-established businesses will come on roads by losing their entire earnings ”, commented Kamaljit Singh Panchhi, Vice- President of the Chandigarh Beopar Mandal. He said, “The eviction of traders starts mentally when he receives a simple notice of eviction and feels uncertainty of his future”, he added. The traders demanded that the representatives of trade, industry and consumers should be involved in framing up of a new taxation system that would have its positive impact in reviving the nation’s economy.
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Brothel shares on demand
Melbourne, May 2 "How can you go wrong with sex?" Fleiss asked while visiting the city of Melbourne for the launch. Shares at The Daily Planet brothel were offered at US $ 0.31 each, and opened 40 per cent higher at US $ 0.43. By late trading, shares were up 90 per cent to US $ 0.59 each. The Melbourne-based brothel, open since 1975, raised US $ 2.2 million in its initial public offering with one of the 600 new shareholders forking out US $ 627,000, Chief Executive Andrew Harris said. Brothels are legal in the Victoria state, where Melbourne is located. Harris said the company had plans to franchise the business in other Australian cities, and build a "mega" brothel in Sydney. "Prostitution is completely decriminalised in Sydney and we are going to build a monster," the Harris was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
AP
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$ 11b Asian trade hit by SARS: Ficci
New Delhi, May 2 Of the 108 companies from India and ASEAN countries surveyed by the federation, 54 per cent had witnessed an adverse impact due to SARS. While the impact of SARS on India ASEAN trade had been moderate, more than half of the respondents were adopting wait and watch policy on doing business in the region, the survey said. The extent of impact, however, had been less than 10 per cent in terms of decline in revenue and pressure on profit margins, said the respondents. Regarding the impact of SARS in near future, 54 per cent of the companies said there would be a moderate affect on revenue growth in near future whereas 45 per cent said there would also be a moderate impact on the extension of present activities. The SARS outbreak could be viewed as providing the country with an opportunity to enter into this market if the developed countries cut down their outsourcing requirements from this region prematurely.
TNS
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