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Wednesday,
July 9, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Pak
delegation urges PM to ease visa norms
EPF to
stay at 9.5 pc: Verma Exports
from Haryana touch Rs 10,000 cr mark |
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Bill to
dilute govt equity in banks
Reliance Industries
chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani speaks on his Reliance mobile network
phone at his office on the outskirts of
Mumbai on Tuesday. Reliance Industries sees profit rising a better-than-expected 25
per cent annually in the next four years, driven by strong domestic demand for petroleum products, Ambani said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.
— Reuters
photo TRIBUNE
FOLLOW-UP
BSNL may
go for IPO
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Pak delegation urges PM to ease visa norms New Delhi, July 8 In a 45-minute meeting with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the visiting Pakistani businessmen urged the Indian Government to ease visa norms to facilitate easier exchange of business visits between the two countries. Leader of the delegation Senator Illyasi Ahmed Bilour termed the meeting with the Prime Minister as “fruitful”. “Visa concessions to Pakistani businessmen were discussed. We want trade between the two countries to grow further”, Mr Illyasi said. Accompanied by the President of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Dr A.C. Muthiah and Secretary General, Dr Amit Mitra, the delegation also submitted a joint memorandum to the Prime Minister. The recommendations, submitted under the aegis of the India-Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (IPCCI), contains a number of suggestions to boost official bilateral trade between the two countries. It says that visas to businessmen of both the countries should be allowed freely for visit to the respective countries and the visas should be valid for at least one year for all cities and without the prior requirement of police reporting and the condition of same point of entry and exit should be waived. The business leaders also said that restoration of transportation and communications links was of paramount importance for promotion of trade and commerce and movement of foods and services and people. “There is an immediate need for restoration/introduction of rail, air, sea and road links between India and Pakistan. Goods transportation and communication facility between the two countries will enormously decrease cost and time of transfer of goods, services and people from both countries”, the joint recommendations said. Moreover, it was important that barring goods and services notified in the tentative list all other items should be allowed for bilateral trade. Underlining the importance of making regional trade blocs more effective, the IPCCI urged both India and Pakistan, the major member nations of SAARC, to make the forum more effective. “SAARC Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), that is awaiting to be signed since 2001, should be signed and implemented at the earliest”, it said.
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EPF to stay at 9.5 pc: Verma New Delhi, July 8 Addressing a press conference here today, Mr Verma said the EPFO could recover over Rs 1,511 crore through its new action packed recovery strategy ‘compliance 04’ and to that extent there would be increase in the income for the organisation, enabling it to pass that on to over 3.2 crore subscribers. The Central Board of Trustees of Employees Provident Fund Organisation had recently cut the interest rate by 0.5 per cent, while doling out a golden jubliee year bonus of 0.5 per cent. It thus virtually maintained the EPF rate at 9.5 per cent for this financial year. Earlier addressing the Assocham, he said the government was considering legislation to enforce workers’ participation in the management of companies, contrary to industry’s plea to make it voluntary. The government intention was to make workers a part of management “so that a feeling a partnership develops,” he said. He said legislation for labour reforms had been pending in Parliament since 1990 though adequate has already taken place. For the success of the programme, the first of its kind, Verma said a separate Directorate of Recovery has been set up to oversee the recovery and the Labour Minister, who is the Chairman of the Central Board of Trustees of the EPF, would himself do a bi-monthly review. The programme was especially targeted at those who have taken “refuge” against enforcement action by resorting to vexatious litigations and dilatory tactics.
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Exports from Haryana touch Rs 10,000 cr mark Chandigarh, July 8 The meet was attended among others by entrepreneurs, industrialists members of various industrial associations and chamber of commerce. While inviting the investors and entrepreneurs of Indore and adjoining areas, the Chief Minister revealed that the number of small scale industrial units had risen from 4,500 to 80,000 and medium and big units from 162 to 1204, since the inception of the state in 1966. Gurgaon alone was exporting computer software of over Rs 4,200 crore annually as against exporting of Rs 400 crore three years ago. All the prominent nationals as well as industrial houses had set up their industries in the state after he had led a high level delegation to various states in the country and abroad. Mr Chautala said that in case the entrepreneurs of Indore had any plan for expansion outside Madhya Pradesh, Haryana had the most congenial industrial climate and world-class infrastructure. He said that he had come to remove their doubts and learn from their rich experience. Mr Chautala said that today Haryana was the fast developing industrial state and Gurgaon town had emerged as an deal Information Technology destination after Bangalore and Hyderabad. Apart from Haryana’s proximity to the national capital Delhi, it had international level infrastructure, good law and order condition, harmonious industrial relation, availability of skilled, motivated and relatively low cost manpower. The Chief Minister said that there had been total change in the world scenario as many of the countries had liberalised their economy and were bridging their gap for improving their relations. He said that steps had been initiated for improving the relations of India with Pakistan and China. He regretted that Pakistan was still following policy of undeclared war on India and many of the Indian soldiers had lost their lives due to skirmishes in Jammu and Kashmir. Mr Chautala said that after his visit to China he had decided to promote herbal parks in the State which was being used to manufacture
Unani and ayurvedic medicines. At present, China was earning Rs 40,000 crore from the export of herbals, he added. The Chief Minister said that Haryana was giving top priority to the power generation in the state and an addition of 792 MW of power had been made in the installed capacity during the past three-and-a half years.
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Bill to dilute govt equity in banks
Bangalore, July 8 “The Standing Committee on Finance is considering a proposal to dilute the government’s holding in banks from 51 to 33 per cent. Depending upon its decision, the Bill might be taken up for consideration during the monsoon session of Parliament,’’ Mr Asdul told reporters here. He clarified that there was no move to merge the associate banks of State Bank of India with the parent bank as individually each of them were performing well. Mr Asdul said the government was also considering removal of dual control on cooperative banks and make them answerable to RBI directly. “This would help reduce scams in the cooperative sector,’’ he added. Mr Adsul, who was here to review the performance of the public sector banks in South, said their overall performance was far better when compared to the other regions. The non-performing assets had been reduced from 12 per cent to 4.6 per cent in the region and lending to the priority sector was well above the limit of 40 per cent.
— UNI
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RIL to spend Rs 4,500 cr on product pipelines
New Delhi, July 8 RIL, which is setting up 5,849 petrol stations across the country, will lay 5,895 km of product pipelines to feed the retail network. A formal proposal to this effect has been submitted to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, official sources said. Gas Transportation and Infrastructure Co, a wholly-owned subsidiary of RIL, has proposed Rs 1,640 crore Jamnagar-Patiala pipeline, Rs 1,780 crore Jamnagar-Kanpur pipeline, Rs 460 crore Goa-Hyderabad pipeline, Rs 325 crore Chennai-Bangalore pipeline, Rs 110 crore Kakinada-Vijayawada pipeline and Rs 260 crore Haldia-Ranchi pipeline. The 1,580-km Jamnagar-Patiala and 2,540-km Jamnagar-Kanpur pipelines will feed petrol stations in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh directly from the Jamnagar refinery in Gujarat. RIL is most likely to transport petrol and diesel from its refinery in Gujarat to ports in Goa, Chennai, Kakinada and Haldia through ships. From the port cities, four different pipelines will evacuate the products for feeding petrol stations in Karnataka, parts of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Bihar and Jharkhand, they said. The sources said RIL will construct the pipelines on common carrier principle with 25 per cent excess capacity than it needs, which will be offered to any firm willing to share the capacity on firm take or pay clause. RIL proposes to finance the pipeline projects, likely to be commissioned in 36 months, on a 2:1 debt-equity ratio. However, the financing may vary depending upon how much capacity other interested parties are willing to share. Other companies wanting to share the excess capacity will have to bear the pipeline construction cost in proportion to their interest, the sources said. The 19.3 million tonnes per annum capacity Jamnagar-Patiala pipeline will have tap-off points in Abu Road, Jaipur, Rewari, Patiala, Delhi, Ghaziabad and Muradabad while the 9.78 million tonnes per annum capacity Jamnagar-Kanpur pipeline will have tap-off points at Ahmedabad, Indore, Bhopal, Kanpur, Kota, Gwalior, Nagpur and Raipur.
— PTI
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TRIBUNE FOLLOW-UP Kumarhatti, July 8 The state government has asked the HPMC to run the plant on the old terms and conditions. Moreover the HPMC authorities has also decided to depute the 12 employees of Him Process who were laid off due to the closure of plant. The decisions has been taken following a report carrying woes of the laid off-staff was published in these columns of The Tribune. The plant had been lying closed since July 15 last year following a notice by the Him Process to the HPMC to vacate the plant. The plant that was inaugurated on August 26, 1976, by the then Chief Minister, Dr. Yashwant Parmar, had leased by Him Process to the HPMC in 1996, and had been lying closed since the HPMC left it. Mr J. R. Gachtha, Managing Director of the HPMC, has confirmed the new developments today. Elaborating the works to be done to restart the plant, he said there was an urgent need to install an effluent treatment plant that was the requirement as per the guidelines of the Pollution Control Board. In the past the board had sent many notices to the HPMC in this regard. The water and electricity connections of plant would be restored. The machinery would be repaired and there were also plans to replace this outdated machine with the new one, he pointed out.
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New Delhi, July 8
