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Planning Commission cuts
Anil offers Rs 231 for RCL share
FinMin to set targets for banks
Airbus keen to put lid on A-I purchase issue
Advances to Haryana SSI units increase
Delayed rains no big worry: NCAER
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Qatar keen on IT
Patel cautions low-fare players
Vanaspati industry at crossroads
Indian breaches MS anti-piracy software
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Planning Commission cuts investment in crucial areas
New Delhi, June 21 The sectors identified by the National Common Minimum Programme as thrust areas for boosting economic growth and investments will now get only Rs 3,582.2 crore in the remaining two years of the Tenth Plan as against the original allocation of Rs 4,081.5 crore. The Mid-Term Appraisal of the Tenth Plan has reduced the public investments by 19 per cent to Rs 981.1 crore from Rs 1,209.3 crore. “...public investment has fallen seriously short of targets in the first two years of the Plan, especially in agriculture, manufacturing, electricity, and public administration, community, social and personal services, and it appears unlikely that these backlogs can be made up in the remaining three years,” the MTA said justifying its reduction. The MTA would be placed before the National Development Council for approval at its meeting scheduled for June 27-28. It said that investments in manufacturing and power sectors were low, mainly due to the inability of the PSUs concerned to generate requisite amount from internal resources, while in other areas it was the lack of sufficient budgetary resources. However, investments in two infrastructure sectors — mining and quarrying and communications — “have been, and are expected to be nearly as high or even higher than originally targeted”. This would be due to an increase in internal resource generation by the CPSUs concerned.
Govt to amend Act
The government has decided to amend the Act under which it had acquired two sick companies to create the Tyre Corporation of India Ltd before going ahead with its disinvestment. The Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises (BRPSE) had recommended disinvestment of the Tyre Corporation and the Department of Heavy Industry under which the company functions, and referred it to the Department of Disinvestment. The Department of Disinvestment had returned the case with the advice of seeking the opinion of the Attorney-General on the question whether the public sector companies created through an Act of Parliament could be disinvested without going back to Parliament. After receiving the opinion of the Attorney-General the Department of Heavy Industry has decided to approach the Parliament to get its nod for disinvestment of the Tyre Corporation of India. Apart from the Tyre Corporation, the Department of Heavy Industry has decided to seek amendments to the Acts through which it acquired Andrew Yule, Bharat Wagon, Burn Standard and Company, Praga Tools and Richardson and Cruddas. It has already approached the Law Ministry in this regard. The approval of changes in the Act governing these companies would ensure that the government is not caught on the wrong foot if an objection is raised on the means to revive these companies.
— PTI
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Anil offers Rs 231 for RCL share
Mumbai, June 21 Anil and AAA Enterprises Pvt Ltd (AEPL) are making an open offer to acquire additional 5.14 crore shares at Rs 231 per share, but RCL’s scrip is now being traded at over Rs 290 a share. The offer would open on August 11 and close on August 30, Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, manager to the offer, said in statement here today. Going by the current trend, market sources said RCL might not get a good response. Of course, August is still long way to go as far as the markets are concerned, and if something drastic happens and the RCL scrip value goes below Rs 231, the open offer may enthuse shareholders, they said. On June 19, the RCL Board had agreed to issue six crore preference shares of the finance company to Anil Ambani and AEPL, also owned by Anil, at Rs 228 per share totalling Rs 1,368 crore and aimed at making RCL the third largest financial house in the country. After purchasing these preference shares, Anil Ambani and AEPL would acquire maximum 32.03 per cent voting rights in the finance company. RCL has also proposed to issue up to 2.90 crore equity shares of Rs 10 each to the financial investors not connected with acquirers. The acquirers consider RCL as a strategically important entity in the financial services sector and do not have any plans to dispose of assets of RCL in the next two years. Meanwhile, an RIL spokesperson has debunked reports that RIL had any plans to enter consumer retail business. “Reliance strongly denies any such plans,” a RIL spokesperson said in response to queries whether the company had plans to invest up to Rs 30,000 crore to set up a retail chain across the company.
— PTI
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FinMin to set targets for banks
New Delhi, June 21 “It (the targets) won’t be same for all. Each bank will have individual targets, which have to be fulfilled at the end of the fiscal,” a Finance Ministry official told PTI today. The financial parameters that would be the basis to judge the performance of banks include net profit, growth in business (both deposit and advances), non-performing assets, capital adequacy ratio, net interest margin, intermediation cost, cost to income ratio, earnings per share, return on average assets and networth. The government would also insist on sticking to the priority sector lending targets, including credit to the farm and SSI sectors. The ministry had also set six qulitative targets that include compliance with Basel-II norms, improvement in risk management, use of technology, HRD and career planning, new product innovation, special efforts in reaching out to the poor. A draft of the MoU was circulated when Finance Minister P. Chidambaram met bankers on June 3. “There may be some modification. The agreements may be in the form of statement of intention, instead of an MoU,” an official said, adding that it had to be signed on June 30. According to the draft agreement, banks have to clearly state the actual figures of previous fiscal and the target for the next fiscal.
— PTI
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Airbus keen to put lid on A-I purchase issue
New Delhi, June 21 Mr Kiran Rao, Senior Vice-President (Sales) of the European aircraft manufacturer, said here that whatever ‘has happened has happened’ and that now since Airbus has emerged as the preferred choice for the airlines in India, the company would be focussing more on the future. He was reacting to a specific question on whether they still stood by their demand for an inquiry into the Air-India Board’s decision to select an all-Boeing fleet. Referring to the recently concluded Paris Air Show, he said his company had bagged orders for supply of 320 aircraft worth $ 33.5 billion compared to 146 planes of US manufacturer Boeing worth $ 15.3 billion. Indian carriers had led the aircraft buying spree with Air Deccan ordering 32 A-320s, Jet Airways 10 A-330s with buying option for another 10, Kingfisher 15 aircraft including five double-decker A-380s and start-up airline InterGlobe placing orders for 100 A-320s, Mr Rao said. In all, Airbus will supply 125 aircraft in deals valued at $ 13 billion to Indian aviation giants. Reacting to another specific question on reports that the company was offering its aircraft to some other airlines at a lesser price than it did to Indian Airlines, Mr Rao said the Airbus had responded to this and Indian Airlines was satisfied. “We hope the deal will get the official approval in the next few weeks,” he said. Indian Airlines’ decision to acquire 43 all-Airbus planes is likely to come up before the Union Cabinet soon. While Kingfisher has signed purchase agreements for their order, Jet Airways and IndoGo have signed Letters of Intent for their orders. “We would be signing purchase agreements with them in a couple of weeks,” Mr Rao and his successor, Mr Nigel Harwood, said. To questions on the capability of Indian airports to accommodate the world’s largest aircraft A-380, the Airbus official said their teams had conducted surveys at Delhi and Mumbai airports and made certain recommendations for “minor changes”. He claimed that the A-380s could use the existing airports and that the aircraft required lesser runway space for take off and landing compared with its competitor Boeing 777s. The A-380 required 9,800 feet for take-off as against 11,000 feet for 777. “The first A-380 will be flying into India hopefully by 2007,” Mr Rao said, adding that Airbus was getting “overwhelming support” from the Indian government over the process to carry out the required modifications at the airports in the country.
To outsource from India
Betting big on Indian technology expertise, European aircraft maker Airbus will tie-up with more IT firms to outsource manufacturing of parts and software development for reducing costs and building better planes. “The amount of parts we need depends on production, which is expected to go up 10 per cent to 360 aircraft this year. We look to expand existing relationships and explore new opportunities for outsourcing from India,” Airbus Regional Press Manager David Velupillai told reporters here. The company has allocated manufacturing worth over $ 80 million to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). Airbus also has industrial relationships with Infosys, HCL Technologies, Midhani, Computervision and Vidhyacom. “Besides, Videocon is also helping us with digitisation. We expect outsourcing from India to continue to grow,” he said. Infosys worked on the design and development of the top and bottom skin extensions within the inner fixed trailing edge for the Airbus A-380, which will be the world’s biggest aircraft after it starts commercial operations.
— UNI
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Advances to Haryana SSI units increase
Chandigarh, June 21 Keeping in view the importance of post-harvest operations, the limit of loans to farmers through the produce marketing schemes be increased from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh under the priority sector lending. He said stress would be laid on the development of textile clusters in Panipat, light engineering goods clusters in Faridabad and auto parts cluster in Gurgaon. The Centre would be approached for the upgradation of five more clusters, which includes scientific instruments in Ambala, metal industries in Jagadhri, agricultural implements in Karnal, pharmaceutical cluster in Sonepat and industrial chemical cluster at Bahadurgarh. In respect of national goals, the achievement of banks was satisfactory as ratio of priority sector to the total credit was 65 per cent against the national goal of 40 per cent. Advances to small-scale industries (SSI) in Haryana showed a significant growth of 16.6 per cent or Rs 422 crore during the review period i.e. from Rs 2,543 crore in March 2004 to Rs 2,965 crore as on March 2005. Speaking on the occasion, Mrs Umesh Nanda, Financial Commissioner and Special Secretary, Institutional Finance and Credit Control, said the credit deposit ratio in the state had increased from 52 per cent to 55 per cent as on March 2005. The state government is committed for creating gainful employment opportunities in the public and private sector for which the banks, particularly the private sector ones can play an active role.
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Delayed rains no big worry: NCAER
New Delhi, June 21 “With the declining share of the agriculture sector in overall GDP, a weakening of the relationship between agricultural production and industrial growth is inevitable,” the NCAER said in its latest monthly report “Macrotrack”. The monsoon, which generally hits Kerala by June 1, was delayed by about four days, raising a lot of anxiety about the fate of the kharif crop and the overall performance of agriculture sector this fiscal.
— PTI
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Qatar keen on IT
New Delhi, June 21 Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said Qatar was an important trading and investment partner of India, especially with India emerging as Qatar’s largest customer of LNG.Mr Nath said in view of the growing importance of trade between the two countries, Qatar should consider Indian companies for turnkey projects and also energy-intensive and export-oriented projects, he said.
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Patel cautions low-fare players
Mumbai, June 21 “...there is a word of caution because we are not yet fully matured in aviation market. Carrier sizes are not that big and all are not deep-pocketed. So they should see whether they can balance things out at a certain level,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an aviation and tourism investor summit here. On the entry of private carriers, Mr Patel said incremental capacity has been built up by them and “in terms of prices...they are looking very different”. He said the Empowered Group of Ministers would take up tomorrow the modernisation plans of Delhi and Mumbai airports. Eight entities have offered bids for the modernisation of the two airports. The minister said there was too much concentration on Delhi and Mumbai airports and there was need for them to go to other airports. “We will provide incentives like non-peak and peak hour traffic and also disperse them to other airports,” he added.
— PTI
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Vanaspati industry at crossroads
New Delhi, June 21 The IVPA said the domestic industry had an installed capacity of 48 lakh MTs as against the demand for around 12-13 lakh
MTs, resulting in the utilisation of only 27 per cent of the capacity. Consequently, there was no scope for importing even one tonne.
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IT roundup
New Delhi, June 21 With a potential to hurt Microsoft’s business across the world, researcher Debasis Mohanty has broke open WGA through an “easy-to-exploit” weakness in the software for generating illegal copies of Window XP programme. Microsoft confirmed the claims of the Bangalore-based researcher Debasis Mohanty but sought to downplay it saying, “it represents very little threat.” A company spokesperson said they did expect counterfeiters to try a number of different methods to circumvent safeguards provided by WGA. WGA is an anti-piracy program that keeps a tab on consumers whether they are running legitimately licensed copies of Windows XP. i-Flex acquisition
Leading IT solutions and products providers i-Flex Solutions Ltd today announced its alliance with Capco, a global financial services consultancy and IT solutions provider. According to the agreement, i-Flex will acquire the intellectual property rights (IPRs) for Capco’s Operational Risk Tool Suite — ORTOS — and the company plans a two-pronged approach for its use, i-Flex informed the BSE today. Meanwhile, iflex will continue to sell and implement ORTOS independently and Capco will serve as its reseller and distributor through its global sales network.
Intelenet headcount
Mumbai-based BPO company Intelenet Global Services Pvt Ltd is planning to increase its full time employees (FTE) to 20,000 from current 5,000 by 2009 and it has entered into a strategic partnership with European offshoring company Transcom WorldWide SA to offer services in 40 languages. “We are aiming to increase the headcount to 10,000 by 2007 and to 20,000 by 2009. The company is also planning to set up several centres in secondary cities including Pune, Coimbatore, Mysore and Mangalore”, Intelenet Chief Executive Officer M. Susir Kumar told reporters here today.
— Agencies
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Export quotas Bank of Punjab Raymond’s pact WB loan Kopran, Merck deal Insurance tie-up Motorola model Rs 50 note HP gives nod to 22 industrial units Vegetable park
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