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Supreme
Court upholds Infosys
to set up $ 20m US consulting arm
$24 m
pact—that’s Nokia’s ‘Idea’ NDA
pledges 8 to 10 per cent growth in its manifesto Curb
bio-piracy, govt urged |
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Devaluation
of dollar wipes off profit margin BPO
seminar on April 24 Ranbaxy
scores victory over GSK Bank of
Punjab, Western Union plan roadshows Connect
slashes STD, ISD rates Graphic: STATE-WISE FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT
Price gap narrows
between Maruti 800
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Supreme Court upholds Securitisation Act New Delhi, April 8 A Bench comprising Chief Justice Mr V.N. Khare, Mr Justice Brijesh Kumar and Mr Justice Arun Kumar, however, struck down Section 17(2) of the Act, which provided for depositing 75 per cent of the loan money with a bank by the defaulting company when legal proceedings were initiated against it. The Act passed in 2002 had armed the banks and financial institutions powers to take punitive action against the defaulters and also attachment of their properties. The Act was initially challenged by Mardia Chemicals against whom ICICI Bank and other financial institutions had initiated attachment proceedings. Following this nearly 40 other companies had filed the petitions against it. During the arguments, the government had stated that the Act had helped in bringing down NPA by nearly 20 per cent. The NPA was considered to be a major stumbling block in the growth of the economy. The petitioners companies had challenged the Act on the ground that it had given overriding powers to the authorities to attach and sell the assets of the companies who failed to repay the loans due to various factors. After the Act came into force, the financial institutions had initiated legal proceedings against 15,000 companies for recovery of loans worth Rs 20,000 crore. Reacting to the apex court’s judgement, the bankers said this would help them fasten the recovery process and reduce the NPA which had badly affected the financial health of many banks and financial institutions.
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Infosys to set up $ 20m US consulting arm
Bangalore, April 7 Infosys has plans to hire 500 persons in three years for the new venture. “This plan will offer us the highest chance of success and lowest risk to business,” Infosys CEO and Managing Director Nandan M Nilekani told reporters. Infosys, he said, has hired four global experts in consulting business from rival firms to head the business and compete with the top IT consulting firms like EDS, Accenture and Deloitte Consulting. Infosys Consulting CEO Stephen Pratt said the firm would hire about 75 persons in the US in the first year, adding more in next two years to bring the workforce to 500. “We will build the world’s most competitive consulting firm by providing onsite consulting and offshore delivery. This is the first company to establish the new generation model,” Pratt, who was the CEO of Deloitte Consulting, said. The thrust of the business, heavily dependent on Infosys development centres for delivery, is to offer lower overall price to customers, taking into account the cost arbitrage India offers. Nilekani said: “Infosys has created local jobs in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and China and is hiring more people in local countries” where the firm has development centres. The setting up of an American subsidiary comes a week ahead of Infosys annual results. The company is likely to announce next week either a stock split or issue of bonus shares to its shareholders. Mr Nilekani said Infosys had a chance to build a next generation consulting firm marrying the advantages of a good consulting team and a strong back delivery model, “which the existing consulting firms lack, despite having a brand access and domain knowledge”.
— PTI
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$24 m pact—that’s Nokia’s ‘Idea’
New Delhi, April 8 With this deal, Nokia becomes the sole supplier of Idea’s GPRS network. Deliveries have begun and the project is scheduled for completion before 2004 end. “Nokia’s global leadership in GSM/GPRS and its proven technology roadmaps put Idea at the forefront of providing high quality and innovative mobile services to our customers,” Idea Cellular Ltd CEO Vikram Mehmi said. Nokia will expand Idea’s GSM network for the Delhi and Andhra Pradesh circles, while extending the present GPRS core beyond Delhi to all four circles — Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Nokia has been working with Idea since 1996, providing turnkey services for the operator’s GSM infrastructure over this period. “Through this agreement, Idea’s data network capability will be enhanced to handle the expected growth in data services while ensuring a smooth and efficient GSM evolution path,” Mr. Ashish Chowdhary, Country Head, India and South Asia, Nokia Networks, Asia Pacific said. “Together with Nokia, Idea is well-positioned to provide high-quality mobile services to its fast expanding customer base as the Indian mobile industry grows at unprecedented rates,” he added. Under the expansion deal, Nokia will supply the complete range of Nokia GSM/GPRS equipment such as base station subsystems, switching sub-systems, GPRS core network, short message service system, multimedia messaging centre expansion and Nokia download solution. They will also provide the Nokia Connect Site base station, which is a part of the Nokia Connect GSM solution for new growth markets server, local applications and market consulting support. Nokia is also providing an extensive set of services including IP planning support, network element installation and commissioning, as well as maintenance services. With the acquisition of Escotel, Idea Cellular has enhanced its footprint to cover around 60 per cent of India’s population and over 65 per cent of the potential telecom market. Idea now has presence in 11 circles across the country. A few days back Idea-Maharashtra became the first ever circle in the country to hit the one million subscriber mark.
— UNI
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NDA pledges 8 to 10 per cent growth in its manifesto New Delhi, April 8 The NDA manifesto released by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee promises to reduce tax evasion and corruption will be reduced through administrative measures and end-to-end computerisation of the entire tax system. Promising to launch the Second Green Revolution on Independence Day this year, it said the aim would be to double the income, particularly of small and marginal farmers by 2010 and reduce the cost of cultivation. It also promises to double the rate of growth of public and private investment in agriculture, make India’s eastern states, which have fertile land and plenty of water, a new food basket of India and make India the “Food Factory” of the world by producing high quality processed foods for global markets. Besides carrying out fiscal reforms and restructuring of states’ debts, the NDA agenda for development said revenue deficit in every state would be wiped out by 2006 and political consensus would be evolved to reduce unproductive expenditure and enhance states’ own resources. “A Monitoring Committee for Elimination of Regional Disparities will be set up to focus on developmental imbalances between and within States,” it said. While pledging to that the NDA Government would continue to defend India’s interests, especially the interests of our kisans, at the World Trade Organisation, the agenda promised a separate Ministry for International Trade to capture opportunities in global trade and promote Special Economic Zones and multicommodities exchanges and remove internal trade
barriers. Promising completion within the next six months all currently proposed financial sector reforms in banking, insurance, foreign investment, and capital markets, the NDA agenda said “consolidation of PSU banks will be encouraged”. Apart from formulating new open skies and civil aviation policies within 30 days of the Government formation, the NDA said 10 cities would be developed as global cities with world class airports. New international airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad would be completed in the next three years and carry out fleet acquisition for Indian Airlines and Air India within this year, it said. On the fiscal front, it said tax-GDP ratio would be improved through widening and deepening tax base apart from rationalisation and simplification of tariffs and removal of most exemptions within two years. For the small and medium enterprises, NDA promised to enact SME Development Act and set up a Rs 1,000 crore Infrastructure Incubation Development Fund, apart from restructuring the Credit Guarantee Fund Scheme for increasing the limit to Rs 50 lakhs.
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Curb bio-piracy, govt urged New Delhi, April 8 Since the present World Trade Organisation (WTO) regime lacked effective mechanism and safeguards to save the traditional knowledge of developing countries, the MNCs were trying to get patents through questionable means. Recent patent controversies over neem, haldi and basmati rice were the latest examples of exploitation of farmers of the developing world. These views were expressed by the experts who had gathered here to participate in the second conference on biotechnology for Asian development. The conference was organised by the Research and Information System for the non-aligned and other development countries (RIS). Addressing a press conference after the conclusion of two-day workshop, Dr Nagesh Kumar, Director-General, RIS, asserted: “Like patents for other products, the developing countries should seek ‘royalty from the MNCs and developed world’ for farmers and rural communities for using their traditional knowledge.” The Commission on International Patent Rights, he said, had also recognised the importance of protection of traditional knowledge of farmers. Countries like India had rich bio-diversity that was facing risk in the new patent regime. Mr Balakrishna Pisupati, head, Regional Biodiversity Programme, Asia, said the Government should coordinate with other developing countries to raise this issue at the World Trade Organisation in the next meeting. He said the impact of intellectual property rights on regional cooperation was critical and needed urgent attention. The workshop emphasised on need for private and public sector partnerships in the biotechnology sector.
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Devaluation of dollar wipes off profit margin Chandigarh, April 8 He expressed concern over the tremendous pressure building on the profit margins of the exporters, who are feeling the pinch with rupee appreciation against the dollar in recent times, especially on account of the fact that the currencies of competing countries like China are either pegged or are also depreciating against the dollar. The meeting was attended by twenty exporters of the region, who have chalked out few suggestions and will take them up with the government as continuous appreciation of the rupee is expected to hit export in the coming months. Mr Malwinder Singh, MD, Agro Dutch Industries Limited said that devaluation of dollar is going to wipe off upto 50 per cent profit margins of big exporters. Of late, India has been seeing large inflow of dollars on account of increasing exports, greater inflows of foreign direct and portfolio investments, private transfers by NRIs etc. To stem the appreciation of rupee against the dollar, the RBI has been buying the dollars from the open market and undertaking sterilisation operations but now RBI seems to have adopted a policy of keeping inflationary pressures in check even if it leads to erosion in export competitiveness, he said. Summarising the discussions, Mr P.K. Verma, Resident Director of PHDCCI said that exporters were of the view that to tide over the crisis the rupee should be made
fully convertible and imports should be allowed freely to protect their interests. |
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BPO seminar on April 24 Chandigarh, April 8 Though it has not been officially confirmed, yet sources say that April 24 has been fixed as the tentative date for the event. The theme will be Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and the doyens of the IT world are to deliver lectures on the benefits of outsourcing for India. Mr Vivek Attrey, Director, IT, UT Admn., when contacted confirmed that the one-day event is due to take place in Chandigarh. “Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies) and TiE (The Indo-US Entrepreneurs), are collaborating for the seminar,” he says. Nasscom officials in New Delhi when contacted did not confirm the date and schedule. Chandigarh will host an IT event “pretty soon,” is all they said officially, without specifying the date. India is being seen as a country with a lot of outsourcing and BPO potential and this industry is projected to grow at an annual rate of 35 per cent, with the revenue touching $ 148 billion by 2012, according to a recent study.
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Ranbaxy scores victory over GSK
New Delhi, April 8 GSK brought the matter before the US District Court for the District of New Jersey in October 2000 against Ranbaxy’s product. The District Court originally granted GSK a preliminary injunction that initially kept Ranbaxy from marketing its antibiotic. However, in 2001, Ranbaxy prevailed on its appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Ranbaxy commercially launched its product after that Court vacated the preliminary injunction. Now, after a full trial, the district court determined that Ranbaxy’s product does not infringe GSK’s patent rights and Ranbaxy is not required to pay any damages to GSK.’
— UNI
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Bank of Punjab, Western Union plan roadshows Jalandhar, April 8 The Executive Director of Bank of Punjab, Mr Tejbir Singh and Business Head of Western Union, Mr Shekhar Nair, while addressing a press conference here, disclosed that Rs 90,000 crore was being transferred to India from all across the world per year mainly from the USA, Canada and England. “Since, the Punjabis are settled abroad in large numbers in major western countries and in North America, they send money back to their family members and relatives here. The roadshows will help the customers to know about the availability of money exchange and transmit facilities. This will encourage legal money transmit system in Punjab,” Mr Nair added.
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Connect slashes STD, ISD rates Chandigarh, April 8 “Connect has reduced STD rates for calls beyond 200 km to Rs 3.60 per minute from the present Rs 4.80 per minute. The pulse rate has also been changed to 20 seconds from the current rate of 15 seconds for this distance slab,” said Mr Jayant Keswani, General Manager Connect. The new tariff will also be applicable to the PCO segment. The new rates will be applicable from April 10. Connect has also announced up to 25 per cent reduction in ISD tariffs. Calls to US and Canada would now cost Rs 7.20 per minute instead of the existing rates of Rs 9.60 per minute. Calls to Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong will now cost Rs 9.60 per minute as compared to the earlier tariff of Rs 12 per minute. Calls to UK and the rest of Europe would continue to be charged at Rs 7.20 per minute and Rs 9.60 per minute respectively. For all other countries, call rates have been reduced to Rs 18 per minute.
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