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Thursday,
August 21, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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India
proposes farm reforms at WTO Cartel of
truckers choking Baddi units Apple
unveils fastest PC |
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Hong
Kong drive to attract tourists Coca-Cola
lassi, nimbupani to woo villagers
HDFC
Life launches gratuity scheme
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India proposes farm reforms at WTO
New Delhi, August 20 The joint proposal was presented in Geneva, Minister for Commerce and Industry Arun Jaitley said. Its co-sponsors are China, Mexico and some members of the Cairns group of agriculture exporting countries — Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand and South Africa. Mr Jaitley said the market access commitments sought to be imposed by the European Union (EU) and the USA completely disregard the interests and concerns of the developing countries with regard to agriculture. “Our response proposes the Uruguay Round approach to tariff reduction by the developing countries and steeper reduction by the developed countries using among others, the Swiss formula.” The proposed reform in agriculture in the EU-US proposals to eliminate subisidies — both domestic and export subsidies — and distortions completely fails to meet the requirements and objectives of the Doha ministerial mandate. Therefore, it proposes time-bound elimination of all export subsidies by the developing countries, substantial reduction in all forms of trade distorting domestic support, including elimination of Blue Box measures and capping of specific Green Box measures such as payments decoupled from prices and production. The Blue Box measures are subsidies meant to limit production in the developed countries. Mr Jaitley said the EU-US proposals emphasise the need to build in specific elements of the special and differential treatment requirements of the developing countries such as maintaining and enhancing support programmes for low income and resource poor farmers. The proposals emphasise the need to maintain marketing and transport subsidies on exports by the developing countries, to incorporate the market access instruments of special products for rural development and food security, and new special safeguard mechanism for the developing countries to safeguard price variations, volatility and import surges. The EU-US joint paper on agriculture was presented to the WTO on August 13. Mr Jaitley said the 14 countries which have responded to it produce 60 per cent of rice in the world, 30 per cent of wheat and 57 per cent of sugarcane. The response will be indicative of on-going negotiations, he said. Responding to a question, the minister denied any differences of opinion between the commerce and agriculture ministries. Walk out of WTO, says Govindacharya
Former BJP general secretary Govindacharya said today if the government is unable to protect the interests of the country at the WTO meet at Cancun in September, it should not hesitate to withdraw from the membership of the organisation. “The country should shed its psychological diffidence keeping in mind that it cannot be isolated as it represented one-sixth of humanity,” Mr Govindacharya said, calling upon the government not to give any further concessions at the September 10-14 meet in Mexico. The government should oppose the agreement on agriculture and investment which is against the interest of farmers and small traders. The country should not come down even if it has to walk out of the organisation, he added. On the issue of surviving outside the WTO regime, he said we should not be afraid of isolation which was hypothetical in view of our huge population. We should bargain on our potential market and have the right to pick and choose, he said.
— UNI
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Cartel of truckers choking Baddi units Baddi, August 20 The industry representatives allege that while the state government is wooing investors by offering incentives, hundreds of industrial units here have been facing harassment at the hands of truck unions here. The truckers unions here has been allegedly forcing industrial units to pay exorbitant charges, besides union tax amounting to Rs 500 for hiring container-based trucks from other stations as these are not available with the local operators, they
added. The unions have also not been allowing industrialists to hire trucks from other stations. Mr Deepak Bhandari, senior vice-president, Baddi Barotiwala and Nalagarh Employers Association, said, “The local truck union charges exorbitantly for transporting goods to Chandigarh, Delhi and other places. For instance, from Chandigarh to Baddi, a truck operator charges about Rs 1,200 for transporting goods, but for transporting goods to Chandigarh, we have to pay Rs 2,300. Similarly, for Baddi to Delhi we have to pay Rs 5,600 against Rs 3,000 for the other side.” The truck operators, however, denied these allegations. Mr Bhandari said despite repeated representations to the state government, no action had been taken against them. On the other hand, he said, the Punjab Government, in its Industrial Policy, told its Deputy Commissioners to ensure that truck unions did not interfere in the fixing of freight rates which would be determined by market forces. Mr B.K. Purhoit, senior vice-president, Deepak Spinners, said, “We feel helpless before the truck operators. There is no alternative but to enter into agreement with them. The government must come forward otherwise it will discourage new investors.”
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Apple unveils fastest PC New Delhi, August 20 Top company officials said today that it was ahead of fastest Pentium 4 and dual Xeon-based PC systems at present available. Apple
Asia Pacific product marketing manager Richard A. Ng said the company identified Bollywood as a potential business segment. “We see Bollywood as one of our potential customers. The end-to-end video solutions of G5 will be a bonanza for the Indian film Industry”,
he said. The machine, jointly produced by Apple and IBM, will carry a price tag ranging between Rs 1,74,400 and 2,54,800. The heart of the new Power Macs is the PowerPC G5 processor — designed by IBM Corp — that can handle twice as much data at once as traditional PC microchips. Pointing out that the PowerPC G5 processor, produced jointly by IBM and Apple, will give Mac users dramatically improved performance in the high-end, gaming and graphics markets, Mr
Richard Ng said the new system will be available by the end of this month.
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Hong Kong drive to attract tourists Hong Kong, August 20 The administration has launched an HK $400 million worth of a tourist extravaganza, which includes, besides the gifting of free tickets to guests from around the world, an HK $15 million super draw. The prizes on offer include a deluxe residential apartment, membership to the premium golf club and a luxury car. There are of course many prizes worth HK$ 100,000. As a start of its global campaign to attract tourists the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), along with the Cathay Pacific, organised a “Welcome Day” extravaganza on August 17. More than 3,500 visitors from around the world, including almost 1,000 mediapersons were invited for this one-day special event. The highlight was the unveiling of the Strato-Fantasia— Asia’s first multimedia sound and light stratosphere show which was also the largest yet seen worldwide and which forms part of the overall extravaganza. HKTB officials pointed out that an estimated 1.3 million visitors arriving in Hong Kong in July. This although represented a drop of 5.6 per cent when compared to the same period last year, it was a considerable improvement on the 67.9 per cent shortfall which Hong Kong witnessed in May. June for the first time witnessed the revival with 7.25 lakh visitors arriving in the city. It was but a massive shortfall of 38.2 per cent over the last year. But HKTB Executive Director Clara Chong says this is not enough. The HKTB is determined to increase its tourist inflow to an all-time high by the time the next financial year ends even though it was hit by the SARS for almost three months. In an effort to post an all-time high record of visitors the HKTB has also launched an eight-month programme of mega events as part of the HK$ 400 million extravanganza, with Strato-Fantasia being the first. It will further use the Mid-Autumn Lantern festival from September 1 to September 30 to attract international tourists back to the city. Along with the festival, the line-up will also feature an international musical fireworks competition, a winter festival and an international Lunar New Year night parade. The events will culminate with a grand parade on the first day of the Lunar New Year to celebrate the Year of Monkey. For the first time since its inception in 1996, the parade will be held at night with festive illuminations. The HKTB has also come out with a new theme, “Hong Kong—live it, love it”, to promote the city on the international circuit. a new TV commercial featuring Jackie Chan will also be run around the world from next month to attract tourists.
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Coca-Cola lassi, nimbupani to
woo villagers New Delhi, August 20 “Cola war was dead with 200 ml coke bottle at Rs 5,’’ Mr Sanjiv Gupta, President and CEO of Coca-Cola India said here today. “We are now concentrating at distribution and branding in the rural areas. In times to come new products that can sell in rural markets like ‘nimbupani’ (lemonade) and ‘lassi’ (buttermilk) can be launched,’’ Mr Gupta said at a CII Summit on Marketing here. Going rural is not about taking one-time gamble but creating a long, sustainable business model that can replicate itself. The issues of availability, affordability and acceptability have to be reinforced over and over again.Rural penetration went up from 13 per cent in 2001 to 25 per cent in 2003, Mr Gupta said. “In the case of availability, the tradeoff is between the cost of distribution and the incremental penetration. In affordability there is a volume-value trade off. In the case of acceptability, the trade off is always between customisation and standardisation of the consumer proposition”, he said. Outlining a horse-for-courses strategy for the rural market, he said the “buying pattern of the rural consumer is different from the urban consumer, purchase behaviour is occasion-driven by events such as weddings and harvests”. “I don’t agree with the view that the rural market is a costly distribution proposition.”.
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Oil from Iraq Spice bonanza
Ranbaxy Hero Honda plant Water purifiers Surajkund fest Kinetic bikes Karnataka plan IFFCO plant Hewlett-Packard |
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