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Outsourcing row only till US
poll: Shourie
Unemployment bomb ticking:
Sensex loses 91 points
AC market poised for cool 25 pc growth
Farm boost may hike
GDP: CMIE |
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Ramalingam is AAI chief
Touchtel crosses 6-lakh mark
Cummins to make Euro-III engines
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Outsourcing row only
till US poll: Shourie
New Delhi, March 10 “With elections in US, there is a race to make an issue of outsourcing. The direction will change after November,” the IT and Communications Minister Arun Shourie told reporters after Indo-French Joint Working Group meeting on IT and Telecom here. Mr Shourie said India should position its services in such a manner that American firms realise the benefits of outsourcing services to the country. “Our services should be so competitive given the right combination of skill, cost and infrastructure that American companies should say that not outsourcing to India will hurt their competitiveness,” Mr Shourie said. He said India should also work on complex software and also explore markets like France, Germany and Japan. Meanwhile, overwhelmed by the response of overseas investors, including that for the public offer of ONGC, Mr Shourie today suggested the government should capitalise on the strong sentiments to finance mega projects like interlinking of rivers. Pointing out that there was a tremendous amount of interest and sentiments for India, Shourie said, “We should mobilise these sentiments.”
— PTI
India has no right to oppose law: Zoellick
Washington, March 10 “The Indians,” US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, “have absolutely no right to complain because they don’t belong to the government procurement code” in the World Trade Organisation, which sets obligations for making procurement deals transparent. “...Frankly, they are not that liberal on the services side,” he alleged, adding that India, which is attracting some of the outsourced US jobs, is maintaining “one of the most closed economies in the world”. The services sector, he said, offered increasing opportunities for developed and developing countries to work together for mutual benefit and demanded that more competitive developing countries such as India, China and Brazil open up their markets in order to sustain support for open markets in the USA and elsewhere. “If countries around the world that are emerging economic powers want to get the benefits of the system, they are going to have to contribute to the system.” Zoellick said he would rather negotiate agreements that opened trade in two directions than simply give one way preferential entry to the US market.
— PTI
Global executives upbeat
New Delhi, March 10 Not surprisingly, executives in developing markets are more bullish than their counterparts in developed countries about the benefits, for companies and the world economy, of outsourcing manufacturing and business processes to low-wage countries, says the McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives. ‘’Executives in China and India are the most upbeat by far: 95 per cent and 98 per cent, believe that outsourcing has a ‘very positive’ or ‘somewhat positive’ effect on the world economy,’’ it said. However, in all markets, executives think that outsourcing is better for the global economy as a whole than for individual companies.
— UNI |
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Unemployment bomb ticking: Mckinsey report New Delhi, March 10 Speaking at the ‘Young Indians’ inaugurated here today, Mr Pramath Sinha, Principal, McKinsey and Co. said, “India may be shining today, but the shine will wither away soon, if steps are not taken to address the issue of unemployment immediately.” He said at the current growth rate, only 25 million jobs would be created by 2010, leaving 16 per cent of labour force without jobs. The country will have to achieve over 10 per growth rate to generate at least 75 million jobs by 2010 to keep unemployment under control.” Despite the India shining campaign, he said, unemployment had reached alarming proportions. It would have serious social and economic implications for the ongoing reforms and the sustainability of the growth, he said. Mr Sinha wondered if China could sustain 10 per cent growth rate over a decade, why India could not do this. He said as per the latest McKinsey report, there was a vast potential in the manufacturing and service sector, including tourism, education and health care sector besides IT and BPO services. Earlier, the Planning Commission Member, Mr N.K. Singh, put a question mark on the sustainability of 8 per cent growth unless serious efforts were made to bring rural people into the mainstream economy. He said the corporate sector would have to make efforts to increase income levels of rural population to create an additional demand for their products. The country was facing a challenge, he said, to provide employment to its vast youth population. The large-scale deployment of technology was already resulting in displacement of labour, he said. The speakers at the Summit called upon the government to initiate reforms in the education sector apart from tax, labour and legal reforms to generate new employment opportunities.
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Sensex loses 91 points
Mumbai, March 10 The Sensex which opened 17 points lower at 5,833.19, which itself was the high and dipped below the 5,800-barrier to touch a low of 5745.56 points, closed at 5759.29 points, shedding 91.32 points from its Tuesday’s close of 5850.61 points. Technology stocks sank deeper into the red, hurting badly by the continuous fall in their US counterparts, the anti-outsourcing stand by the US as well as the rising rupee against the dollar, a broker said.
FMCGs stocks also succumbed to the ongoing price war between FMCG majors Hindustan Lever and Procter & Gamble (P&G) in detergent markets. HLL was forced to reduce price of Surf Excel Blue and Surf Excel after P&G reduced the price of its detergent brands like Ariel and Tide.
— UNI
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AC market poised for cool 25 pc growth New Delhi, March 10 LG,
Samsung, Voltas and Videocon, the major market players, have already announced the cutting down of the prices of ACs and launching of new product ranges in the market. LG has come up with the Whisen brand, a new range that will have additional features like oxygen generator and mirror splits. Samsung and Voltas, with an annual sale of about 1 lakh each, are also coming up with new ranges of ACs, besides attractive finance schemes. Mr Salil Kapoor, Country Head-Airconditioner Division, Sales and Marketing, LG, disclosed that the domestic airconditioner market, which had registered a growth rate of 12-13 per cent last year, against 20 per cent the previous year, was expected to grow by over 25 per cent this year due to a cut in excise duty, lower prices and reduced interest rates. Companies are offering attractive finance options varying from zero finance to 6-7 per cent interest rate. He said, “The annual AC sale this year is expected to reach 10.5 lakh figures as against about 8 lakh sales achieved last year. However, as compared to the 14-15 million airconditioners market of China, Indian market is still a small one. We are expecting that at the current growth rate, the domestic market size will double in the next three years.” According to industry estimates, LG enjoys about 35 per cent market share of the domestic AC market and the second position is shared by Samsung and Voltas with each holding about 11 per cent market share. Hitachi, Carrier, Blue Star are other players in the market. The industry experts claim that over 60 per cent of the AC market is confined to seven metros, excluding Bangalore. The manufacturers have still to penetrate in the small and medium size towns in addition to vast rural market. Since the effective excise duty on ACs has come down from about 40 per cent to around 15 per cent over the past three years, the prices have come down from Rs 23,000 to around Rs 17,000 for the entry level ACs. According to a study of the National Council of Economic and Applied Research (NCEAR), the AC penetration is just 1.2 per cent as against about 4.5 per cent car penetration in Indian households. The AC manufacturers can make efforts to sell at least one AC to each car owning family. Mr
M.Rafi, Deputy Manager, Product Planning, LG Electronics, said, “Besides other
regions, we are expecting a fast growth in the sales especially in Punjab, Chandigarh and Haryana region. The company has plans to introduce one tonne AC with ‘no frills’ in the price range of below Rs 10,000 in the next two years. Once it’s launched it would create a huge market for
ACs.”
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Farm boost may hike GDP: CMIE
Mumbai, March 10 “The direct impact of incorporating a 14 per cent rise in agriculture in calculating growth would lead to a real GDP estimate of 9 per cent in 2003-04,” CMIE said in its monthly review (March) released here today. The Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) has indicated a growth of 8.1 per cent for the current fiscal, which is broadly in line with CMIE's growth estimate of 8.2 per cent. However, it is likely that these estimates could undergo changes due to the Second Advance Estimates of the Agriculture Ministry which implies that crop production would grow by over 19.5 per cent as against the earlier estimate of 14 per cent, it added. The economic think-tank said, “If we incorporate the estimates contained in Second Advance Estimates, the agriculture sector would grow by about 14 per cent in 2003-04 as against our earlier estimate of 10.7 per cent.” Union Finance Minister Jaswant Singh had last month announced there was a 8.9 per cent GDP growth in third quarter ended December 2003.
— PTI
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Ramalingam is AAI chief
New Delhi, March 10 The move comes after weeks of uncertainty that followed Mr S. K. Narula’s retirement on January 31. Joint Secretary at the Civil Aviation Ministry S. N. Zaidi was asked to take over as acting chairman of the AAI for 45 days. Mr Ramalingam has been member for planning and operational activities of the AAI. Officials said he is likely to formally take over tomorrow. His appointment comes at a time when the government is moving ahead with the corporatisation of the Delhi and Mumbai airports, to infuse private capital and management for improvement in services.
— UNI
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Touchtel crosses 6-lakh mark New Delhi, March 10 Touchtel, an arm of the diversified business conglomerate, the Bharti Group, is offering fixed line and broadband services in Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. In Delhi and Haryana, the company has 1,65,000 subscribers of which 87,545 are in Delhi and 78,492 are in Haryana. President of Bharti Infotel Badri Agarwal said that to “understand the needs of the customers”, the company was launching an
“on-the-customer-doorstep” initiative. “This particular initiative has been undertaken after it was seen that even though the services of Touchtel are better than that of MTNL and BSNL, the customers were not aware of it. A team of 350 people has been set up to visit customers and advise them about services features and products offered by Touchtel”, Mr Agarwal said. Touchtel has positioned itself as an integrated end-to-end communication solutions provider.
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Cummins to make Euro-III engines
New Delhi, March 10 Under the MoU, both parties will shortly sign a comprehensive licence and supply agreement enabling CIL to manufacture the CWI natural gas B-series engines in the range of 145-230 hp. CWI will license its lean burn spark ignition (LBSI) technology and supply gas-specific components for the B Gas International (BGI) engine to be manufactured at CIL’s facilities in Daman. These engines will be mainly for automotive application having lower life cycle-cost solution and will meet emission norms up to Euro-III. The project is expected to go live in early 2005 and will cater to the growing market for natural gas vehicles in India, CIL said in a statement here.
Nicholas profit to dip The profit before tax of Nicholas Piramal (India) will be lower by Rs 5 million because of the price cuts announced by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) on various drugs and formulations. Nicholas Piramal has informed the BSE that the NPPA has, vide its notifications dated March 3, 2004, and March 9, 2004, announced price cuts on a number of bulk drugs and formulations. The products of the company that will have to take price cuts as per these NPPA Gazette Notifications are Bulk Drugs — Vitamin A Palmitate 1.7miu/gm — Vitamin A Acetate 1.0 miu/gm, Dry Vitamin A Acetate 500 and Formulations — Aerovit (Vitamin A chewable tablets), Mazetol (Carbamazepine).
Aventis sues Dr Reddy’s Aventis, which is in the midst of trying to fend off a hostile bid from smaller rival Sanofi-Synthelabo, said today it has filed additional patent infringement lawsuits related to its allergy drug, Allegra. Aventis has, along with AMR Technology Inc, filed additional patent infringement lawsuits against Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL) and four other companies currently seeking approval to produce and market generic versions of Allegra (fexofenadine HCl).
— UNI
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