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Bank rate, CRR unchanged
RBI Governor Y.V.Reddy announces Credit Policy for 2005-2006 at bankers’ meet in Mumbai on Thursday.
Govt plans to nail bank defaulters
FM allays fears on interest hike
Punjab, Haryana have long way to go
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Industry roots for institutional reforms
New Haryana Industrial Policy Gurgaon, April 28 Industry has urged the government to incorporate institutional reforms in its new Industrial Policy to be announced on May 31.
Industry welcomes Credit Policy
TRAI order on price cut set aside
Corporate results
A-I Express launch today
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Bank rate, CRR unchanged
Mumbai, April 28 The central bank also maintained the cash reserve ratio (CRR) steady at 5 per cent in its monetary policy for the current financial
year.
RBI Governor Y. V. Reddy said it was desirable to keep the CRR unchanged following the review of the current liquidity situation though the bank would continue to pursue the mid-term objective of reducing the CRR to minimum statutory level of 3 per cent. Unveiling this year’s policy, Mr Reddy said the apex bank expected the economy to grow at 7 per cent this financial year. Addressing officials of major commercial banks, Mr Reddy estimated inflation to be in the range of 5 to 5.5 per cent. The apex bank expects agricultural growth to remain steady at 3 per cent while industry and services keep up growth despite soaring oil prices. Mr Reddy said the policy would aim at providing liquidity for credit growth and support investments along with emphasis on price stability. He said the focus would be on financial stability and stabilising inflationary expectations. Mr Reddy said the fixed reverse repo rate would be raised by 0.25 per cent to 5 per cent. The RBI, starting this financial year, would also conduct quarterly review in July and January. The mid-term review would be carried on October 25. Focus on SSIs
According to Mr Reddy, the RBI would explore modalities to meet the growing financial needs of small-scale industries. A simplified debt restructuring and rehabilitation mechanism was also being considered for the sector, he added. Mr Reddy added that the Credit Information Bureau of India Ltd was working on a project to provide creditreports on SSIs. The RBI is reviewing all its existing guidelines on financing the small-scale sector, debt restructuring, nursing of sick units with a view to
rationalising, consolidating and liberalising them, he added.
Warning note
Sounding a warning note, Mr Reddy said the spiralling crude oil prices could hamper efforts to achieve a higher gross domestic product (GDP) in the current financial
year. He noted that India’s economy grew by 6.9 percent in 2004-05. The annual inflation rate, as measured by the wholesale price index, stood at 5 per cent as on March 31, 2005, as compared to 4.6 per cent a year ago. Mr Reddy said the an expert group had been set up to formulate a strategy for increasing investment in agriculture. The RBI would also take help of an outside agency to assess customer satisfaction on credit delivery in rural areas by
banks, Mr Reddy said.
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Govt plans to nail bank defaulters
New Delhi, April 28 He was responding to a discussion in the Lok Sabha on a call attention motion submitted by CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta on huge non-performing assets (NPAs) in public banks due to defaulting big corporate houses. Mr Dasgupta had suggested the government should set up special courts to speed up the trials against the defaulters, besides debarring them from contesting elections. “Despite undertaking various measures, the process of recovery has somewhat been eclipsed by the fact that the big industrial companies, borrowers have been the top defaulters to the public sector banks. An amount of Rs 3,908 crore has been outstanding against 10 top companies,” said Mr
Chidambaram. Mr Dasgupta alleged the total NPAs of the public sector banks, including outstanding loans, write off amount, and foregone bank interest had reached Rs 3 lakh crore. He wondered why the government was shying away from taking action against wilful defaulters, besides making their names’ public. “I am surprised how these defaulters become rich after declaring their companies sick. Apart from attaching the properties of the defaulting companies, the Government should make a provision in the Securitisation Act to attach the properties of the group companies as well, besides personal properties of promoters and debar the family members from taking any bank loans,” he said. He alleged over the past 10 years, the public sector banks had written off about Rs 1 lakh crore to bring down their NPA figures.
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FM allays fears on interest hike
New Delhi, April 28 “The assumption that you are making that increase in the reverse repo rate by 25 basis points will have an immediate impact on the bank lending rate is not correct… there is enough liquidity in the market and therefore lending rate will be benign. There are many cases where lending takes place at sub- PLR rates”, Mr Chidambaram told newspersons here. He said that inflation was under control and “there cannot be a knee-jerk reaction on inflation”. Stating that the government would take “every step” to maintain price stability, Mr Chidambaram said that “oil ( prices) continues to be a concern”.
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Industry roots for institutional reforms
Gurgaon, April 28 While the Gurgaon Industrial Association(GIA) has suggested mainly to improve the functioning of the agro-based
economy, textile and handloom, automative, steel and processing units, pharmaceuticals, the Gurgaon Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) has given inputs mainly on institutional reforms. With regard the service
sector, the GIA suggested the setting up an institute in Haryana so that it can identify youths for training so as to make them eligible for jobs in the Information Technology Enabled
Services(ITES). Also, the Haryana State Industrial Development Corporation(HSIDC) should take the responsibility for developing one industrial park for ITES on the pattern of
Chennai/Banaglore. In order to give boost to agro based economy, the
GIA has suggested the creation of an export promotion zone in Karnal, Kurukshetra
and Kaithal districts,-considered to be a rice and wheat belt. The government should also encourage the export of vegetables and fruits from Haryana. The GIA lamented that although Haryana was the leading state in the manufacture of passengers
cars, tractors, two- wheelers, earth- moving equipment, the state has no research and development and common facilities for developing and testing of auto
parts. With regard to the pharmaceutical sector, its view is that although research and development centres like Ranbaxy
Laboratories, Morepen Laboratories, Penam Laboratories, are already in operation in
Gurgaon, The sector has not been exploited fully in Haryana in comparison to
Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.. The GCCI has sought the setting up of an empowered committee under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary to suggest policy initiatives and coordinate with various departments to achieve the
objectives. It advocated easy access to credit and a reasonable rate of interest and preferential treatment in terms of rate of interest to the existing
industry. Also, the state financial corporations must consider providing loans for purchase of land for industry. Seeking reforms in the functioning of the Town and Country
Planning, it suggested that it should be confined to only monitoring compliance of the state policy with regard to purchase of industrial
plots. Also, the government should freely allow the purchase of land by entrepreneurs.
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Punjab, Haryana have long way to go
New Delhi, April 28 These are the findings of a comprehensive report, Power Sector Rating, prepared by the ICRA Ltd and Crisil Ratings for the Power Finance Corporation on the behalf of Ministry of Power. The ministry is studying the report to prepare a long-term roadmap of power reforms in the country and to provide incentives to the state power utilities. Out of 29 states, Punjab has been ranked 13th and Haryana 14th on the parameters power reforms, including reduction in T&D losses, financial management, generation, commercial viability of operations and performance of state electricity regulatory commission till December 2004. In fact, both states could not even sustain the momentum of reforms attained during previous year. As against scores of 46 in previous year, Punjab could attain only 36.82 scores this year and its neighbour Haryana’s score fell from 49.63 to 35.16 within one year. Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi have been ranked first, second and third, respectively. Other states, which have fared better than Punjab and Haryana, include Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Both progressive states may, however, find solace that their electricity boards have done better than their counterparts in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Orissa and North Eastern states. Appreciating the improvement in power load factor
(PLF) in power plants in Punjab, the report has expressed doubts about the sustainability of net profits in the PSEB, Rs 174 crore achieved during 2003-04.
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Women who made it
Chandigarh, April 28 Poonam’s is a rare story of a girl brought up in an orthodox environment making it to the top while fulfilling her duties as daughter, wife and mother. Married at 17, mother of one at 19 and mother of two at 21, she gave up her studies to look after her children and resumed them when the pair reached the pre-school age. Daughter of Anjali and Gurbaksh Rai, whom old timers will remember as a Director of Public Relations in UT, Poonam did her initial schooling at Sacred Heart Convent here. When her father was posted to Delhi, the family moved with him and she passed out from Presentation Convent there. “I was back in the Government College, Chandigarh, for a year but soon after, my marriage was arranged to Sudhir Dhawan, who was doing his doctorate in electrical engineering at Austin.” Her husband encouraged her to continue with her studies and she joined courses in marketing and information systems. These had to be interrupted midway and finally she graduated from the University of Austin in Texas, with specialisation in database administration. Soon enough her very special skills in this area started showing results. Her flair for marketing technologies came to the fore when she proved to be an active team member responsible for taking Pervasive Inc (acquired by IBM) to a successful IPO. She oversaw the applications management solutions at Tivoli Systems Inc (acquired by IBM). She is the founder of GeoMosaic, a company that provides consulting services in strategy, marketing and business development for companies in the USA and India. At present, she is also an advisor to Sun Microsystems on their global software marketing strategy. She has also authored a technical book titled, Managing SAP. What was her experience of climbing from one rung of the ladder to the other? “It was very challenging. I was making space for myself in a male-dominated area. I followed the rule of being persistent and thus succeeding. I went about things in a professional way. Instead of making a noise about glass ceilings, I set about piercing them,” replies Poonam. She adds that she got tremendous support from her husband. “One day, late at work, I called up home and asked him, ‘Hey! What’s for dinner?’ Pondering over my own question, I realised had he not helped out at home I would not have achieved my aims.” Now that their son Nikhil is doing his medicine and daughter Anisha is following her mom’s footsteps, studying in a marketing school, the couple is planning to come back and settle down at Chandigarh within the next three to four years. “We feel we have worked hard and known success and now it is time to return home. Of course, Poonam says that she will continue with some work here too for she feels very “uncomfortable in her comfort zone”. But the work will be of another kind. Perhaps she will help out with the residential school her father set up at Dalhousie and also write more poetry. Interestingly, at present she is compiling her poetry in an anthology. What goes into her verses? To the query, this multi-faceted woman’s answer is: “I write about life and this includes my experiences, people and what goes on in my mind.” She was in the city for a US tie-up of regional companies as president of the Austin chapter of TiE. “TiE as The IndUS Entrepreneurs signifies the South Asian roots but I feel TiE also stands for Talent, Ideas and Enterprise,” she
says.
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Industry welcomes Credit Policy
New Delhi, April 28 CII President Sunil Kant Munjal said the proposal to increase the credit limit to farmers through the produce marketing scheme from Rs 5 lakhs to Rs 10 lakh and for micro- finance agencies to access external commercial borrowings up to five million dollars will encourage growth in the agriculture and informal sectors. FICCI President Onkar S Kanwar said the monetary stance adopted by the RBI would provide sufficient liquidity and credit flow to industry to sustain investment for capacity expansion and growth. The increase in the reverse repo rate would give time to industry to adjust to the emerging situation, he said. PHDCCI President K. N. Memani said that despite large access to liquidity in the system, interest rates had moved upward due to firming up in global interest rates and increase in domestic demand for credit.
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TRAI order on price cut set aside
New Delhi, April 28 TRAI had lowered international bandwidth prices by up to 70 per cent projecting that the move would help tariff reduction of the Internet and broadband services, besides boosting their penetration. Setting aside TRAI’s order, TDSAT asked the regulator to have a relook at the entire exercise and share the full facts and basis of calculation with VSNL in a transparent manner. VSNL, a major bandwidth provider, had challenged the order saying international bandwidth prices cannot be looked at in isolation and had questioned TRAI’s methodology on arriving at the price ceilings. According to VSNL, the price ceiling set by TRAI was below the basic cost of the company. When contacted, D P S Seth, Member, TRAI, said “we shall study the order once we receive it and take appropriate action.” Meanwhile, the international bandwidth price order, which came into effect from April 1, 2005, has been scrapped retrospectively.
— PTI
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Corporate results
New Delhi, April 28 “We have invested Rs 17,000 crore till now. This year, we plan to pump in another about Rs 4,000 crore. Part of the investment will be in existing towns to decongest the traffic while rest of the money will go to toll out services in new towns and cities,” Sunil Mittal, CMD, Bharti group, said. Clocking a turnover of over Rs 8,000 crore in the year gone by, Bharti continues to be the market leader in the GSM based cellular services with a share of 26.8 per cent. On the proposed American Depository Receipt (ADR) issue, Mittal said with the completion of annual results exercise the company would now approach its shareholders for their participation in the process.
Ranbaxy revenue dips
Tough competition in the US generics market, higher costs and lower domestic sales dented Ranbaxy’s net profit, which fell 63 per cent to Rs 70.8 crore in the first quarter ended March 31, 2005, from Rs 191 crore in the same period last year. India’s largest drugmaker said its revenues also declined 13 per cent to Rs 1,138 crore in the January-March quarter. Ranbaxy said the first quarter was an unusual quarter for the company with a number of events in its key markets such as the introduction of VAT in India, USA Quinapril litigation and the phasing of European first day launches that impacted sales and profits.
Raymond’s profit down
Raymond today reported a 37 per cent decline in net profit at Rs 83.15 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005 as against Rs 132.29 crore in FY-04. However, the company’s total income went up to Rs 1211.71 crore in the year ended March 31, 2005 as compared to Rs 1125.61 crore in FY 04. The company board has recommended a dividend of 40 per cent for FY05, adding if approved by AGM on June 16 will be paid the next day or thereafter. The company’s net profit declined by 44.6 per cent to Rs 22.89 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2005 as compared to Rs 41.33 crore in the corresponding period of FY-04. Its total Income decreased from Rs 338.27 crore in Q4-04 to Rs 336.75 crore for the quarter ended FY-05.
Dabur net rises
FMCG major Dabur India Ltd today said its net profit rose 55 per cent to Rs 41.23 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2005 from Rs 26.59 crore in the same period last year, and announced a final dividend of 150 per cent for 2004-05. Total income has increased from Rs 293.52 crore in Q4-04 to Rs 317.33 crore in the January-March quarter, 2005. Dabur said the company has posted a net profit of Rs 148 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005 as compared to Rs 101 crore a year earlier. Its total income has increased from Rs 1,159 crore in FY-04 to Rs 1,280 crore in 2004-05.
Profit for NDTV
NDTV today reported a profit after tax (PAT) of Rs 10 crore during the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2005 against a loss of Rs 2 crore in the year-ago period. The Board of Directors has recommended 20 per cent dividend. Revenues increased 77 per cent to Rs 50 crore in the reporting quarter over Rs 28 crore in 2004, a company statement here said. Earnings (PBIDT) in Q4 stood at Rs 16 crore, marking an increase of 385 per cent over Rs 3 crore in the same quarter last year. For the last financial year, NDTV’s PAT was Rs 35 crore versus a loss of Rs 50 crore in FY 04. Earnings Per Share for full fiscal stood at Rs 5.98. Its revenues increased by 152 per cent to Rs 180 crore from Rs 71 crore last year while earnings (PBIDT) stood at Rs 56 crore compared with a loss of Rs 33 crore in FY 04.
Leyland payout 100 pc
Ashok Leyland Ltd today posted 63.49 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 142.76 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2005 and announced a 100 per cent dividend on the company’s equity shares. The net profit in the corresponding quarter in 2003-04 stood at Rs 87.32 crore.
— Agencies
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A-I Express launch today
Mumbai, April 28 Air-India Express, with a fleet of three aircraft, will operate 40 services a week from five points in India-Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Kozhikode, New Delhi and Mumbai — to four destinations in the Gulf — Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat and Al Ain, an AI official said here today. The aircraft in single class configuration would have 181 seats and offer highly affordable fares to spur growth in travel, he added. Air-India Express has, for its aircraft, selected a contemporary design with the tail reflecting various Indian cultural motifs.
— UNI
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Alliance Air
New Delhi, April 28
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Mumbai, April 28
When city-bred Poonam Dhawan started making a mark in the male-dominated arena of management and marketing of hi-technology in the US, a Texas newspaper featured her accomplishments with the heading: ‘Himalayas to high-tech Austin: One woman makes a difference.’ Recalling this in an interview last evening, Poonam said with a laugh: “In the West, India is Himalayas even though I was born in the very modern Chandigarh, located in the plains of Shivalik foothills. But this article in ‘Austin Statesman’ did make my parents so happy. They brought clippings back home to show them to their friends and relatives.”
