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‘Outcome budget’ next month: Chidambaram
RIL acquires 6.97 per cent stake in Reliance Energy
Punjab to initiate labour reforms
Chandigarh’s mobile brand preferences
Modi hints at oil find in Gujarat, moots IPO
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Plan MTR calls for policy initiatives in farm sector
Videocon pays Rs 1280 cr for Thomson’s tubes
Kamal Nath for policy space in WTO talks
Eveready scouts China for raw material
SAIL clears 8 new projects
Ludhiana bus terminus
Exide proposes 25 pc dividend
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‘Outcome budget’ next month: Chidambaram
New Delhi, June 28 “In the first week of July, we will come out with an outcome budget”, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told newspersons after his presentation at the National Development Council (NDC) meeting here today. He said the Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry had received the inputs from various ministries in this regard and added that an “outcome budget” would make ministries more accountable. On the rural cooperative credit system, he said the implementation of the recommendations of the Vaidyanathan Committee would require an investment of Rs 15,000 crore. The financial assistance, covering all tiers, would take care of the major components, including the accumulated losses of about Rs 10,000 crore. The Finance Minister said the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) would be the implementing agency and suitable MoUs would be entered into by all takeholders. At the national level, a team headed by the Finance Secretary would monitor the implementation on a quarterly basis and report to the Finance Minister, while at the state level, a team headed by the state Finance Secretary would monitor the implementation. Exuding optimism at the state of the economy, he said consolidation was essential to avoid further fiscal deterioration. “Social sector schemes should be purposive and targeted to intended beneficiaries. Subsidies need to be rationalised to reduce inefficiencies and achieve better targeting”, he said. There was also need for expenditure reprioritisation and expenditure on non-essential activities should be reduced. “Salaries and wages, pensions, interest payments, subsidies and other current transfers pre-empt 110 per cent of the revenue receipts of the Centre and states”, he said. He said the CMP of the UPA government stated that chronically loss-making public sector undertakings should be closed down or sold. On the politically controversial issue of state borrowings, he said “as per assessment of the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India, states will borrow less than indicated”. States were estimated to mop up Rs 23,000 crore during this fiscal year but might eventually borrow less due to the enhanced grants and allocation from the Central pool of taxes as per the recommendations of the 12th Finance Commission. Mr Chidambaram said higher outlays were necessary but not sufficient to realise desired objectives. There is a need to “specify desired outcomes in quantitative terms with time frames. Allocations of resources should be on the basis of progress in delivery”, he said. The low level of investments was also a serious area of concern. During 2002-05 only 50 per cent realisation of the planned investment had taken place. While originally the 10th Plan had set a target of Rs 12, 12,802 crore of the total public investment, the mid-term appraisal had brought it down to Rs 9,81,113 crore. Even after the downward revision of the investment target, only 50 per cent (Rs 4,55,837 crore) had been realised so far. “We now have to meet the balance 50 per cent in the next two years, which is a tall order”, the Finance Minister said.
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RIL acquires 6.97 per cent stake in Reliance Energy
Mumbai, June 28 RIL has an investment of Rs 8,100 crore represented by 162 crore preference shares in Reliance Infocomm Limited. Reliance Infocomm shall now allot 287.76 crore of equity shares of face value of Re 1 each fully paid-up to RIL for a value of Rs 9,208.27 crore, which includes the accrued premium on preference shares. This allotment will increase the RIL holding in Reliance Infocomm to 65.9 per cent. Ahead of demerger of Reliance Industries as a part of the settlement between Ambani brothers, RIL will buy from its
subsidiary 6.97 per cent equity in Reliance Energy, a company that has gone to younger sibling Anil. RIL informed the stock exchanges that it would acquire REL equity from Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings (RIHL). RIL said it has, along with Reliance Power Ventures Ltd and Reliance Capital Ltd, proposed to acquire 1,36,22,707 shares from RIHL, its wholly-owned subsidiary. The proposed acquisition price is Rs 157.74 per share. The date of the proposed acquisition is on or before June 30, 2005.
Rel MF buys stake
Reliance Mutual Fund today picked up 8.59 per cent stake in Pritish Nandy Communications Ltd. Reliance Growth Fund, a scheme of Reliance Mutual Fund, acquired 9,00,000 shares aggregating to 8.598 per cent of the total paid-up capital of the company, Pritish Nandy Communications Ltd said.
Demerger talks
The Board of Directors of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) in its meeting with the Corporate Governance Committee today discussed the nitty-gritty of the demerger proposal of the Reliance Group and empowered the committee to expedite the legal and technical procedures related to reorganisation of group companies. “There is no time frame. But we are trying to settle all issues at the earliest. I can tell you, everything will be done as expeditiously as possible,” Mr Y.P. Trivedi, an independent member on the RIL Board, said.
— Agencies
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Punjab to initiate labour reforms
New Delhi, June 28 The state government has asked the State Law Commission to prepare a report on the issue and submit its recommendations at the earliest, while urging the Centre to “undertake a comprehensive exercise in this regard.” “The state government is fully conscious of the need of labour sector reforms with the twin objectives of providing security to workers particularly those in the unorganised sector and improve the investment climate in the state,” Punjab Finance Minister Surinder Singla said while reading the speech of the Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh at the Inter-State Council Meeting here today. He asserted that the Empowered Committee of the state has so far cleared 35 mega projects with an estimated investment of Rs 8,500 crore. The state is facilitating setting up of textile parks, besides industrial clusters for apparel, steel, sports goods, auto and bicycle parts. The state government has also initiated the process of building private-public partnership to reverse the slow growth processes. “In this area, 18 corridors, 13 bus terminals and 22 flyovers are in different stages of construction on BOT basis,” he
said. The Punjab Chief Minister urged the Centre to clear one time special grant of Rs 200 crore to set up a special economic zone in Amritsar that would have a significant impact on investment and employment in Punjab. The state has already identified the site for the project, he said. He urged the Centre to provide financial assistance to set up centres of excellence at par with IIT and IIM in emerging fields like bio-technology, agriculture, science and technology and agriculture.
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Chandigarh’s mobile brand preferences
Chandigarh, June 28 Other brand preferences and their market share, given in percentage in brackets are Sony Ericsson (6.9), Motorola (6.4), LG (4.4), BenQ (3.5) and Panasonic (1.1) in that order. The rest of 0.7 per cent was shared by ‘other brands.’ Another high-point of the survey undertaken in March was that Nokia and Motorola’s monochrome handsets sold more than the coloured ones while it was just the reverse for Samsung, LG, and BenQ. A total of 16,913 handsets were sold in Chandigarh in that month, estimated to have a market value of Rs 86.9 million. Overall for India, as per the latest Voice and Data report on telecom, the market share of GSM phones has grown by a whopping 76 per cent while CDMA-technology based handsets has depicted a massive decline of 61 per cent. According to V&D100 2005, the 10th Indian Telecom Industry Report (Vol I) released by Voice and Data, Nokia emerged as the largest handset vendor with 55 per cent market share while LG stood a distant second with 12 per cent market share.
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Modi hints at oil find in Gujarat, moots IPO
New Delhi, June 28 Indicating a major oil discovery in this region, Gujarart Chief Minister Narendra Modi today said: “We will make a public announcement soon. There could be oil also but that is a business secret which I may disclose later.” Allaying the remarks of Director General, Hydrocarbons, about the final estimates of gas reserves and state government’s authority to make announcement, Mr Modi asserted: “Our estimates are rather on the lower side, and the actual reserves could be on the higher side. Even Prime Minister and Petroleum Minister have congratulated us over the success of major gas discovery worth over Rs 2 lakh crore.” Talking to The Tribune on the sideline of press conference, GSPC Deputy General Manager M.Y. Farooqui said: “We are hopeful to find more oil and gas since this discovery has been made only in one of the three wells drilled so far. The corporation has license for 14 wells,” he said. Mr Farooqui confirmed that along with gas discovery, there were substantial reserves of oil in the well where gas discoveries had been made. He said after the discovery of major gas reserves, the chances of additional discovery of oil and gas reserves have brightened in other wells. Addressing a press conference, Mr Modi said: “The Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (GSPC) fully owned by the state government could go for initial public offer (IPO) for investing an additional Rs 1,500 crore to bring the gas to the onshore. “I have indicated to the Board of GSPC to look at IPO,” he said adding that other options were also open. He said the state government would make all efforts to fully commercialise the gas from these fields within the next 10 years.
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Plan MTR calls for policy initiatives in farm sector
New Delhi, June 28 “Step up public investment, particularly in irrigation and water resources management, watershed development and reclamation of waste/degraded land and provision of essential infrastructure such a road, market and electricity,” the report said. It asked the government to focus on reducing those subsidies that lead to distortions and have deleterious effects on natural resources and cropping patterns, instead of viewing subsidy reduction as a means of mobilising resources for agricultural -related investments. “Increase investment and input use and improve use efficiency of the latter. This should address the issue of low investment and low growth of input use, and of higher capital output ratios and low factor productivity growth experienced since the mid-1990s,” the MTA said. The report expressed the need for working out some innovative mix of proper utility pricing, community control and provision of subsidies on water conservation techniques in the regions displaying acute water distress. It called for reform and rejuvenation of support system such as agricultural research, extension and credit and delivery system of inputs, such as seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, veterinary services. The MTA asked the government to focus on the demand side problems, because the experience since the mid-1990s has been that growth of agricultural products experts has slowed down and per capita domestic consumption of most agricultural products had either remained stagnant or declined despite declining relative prices. The report said although diversification from cereals to other crops was necessary both in view of the changing demand patterns and of sustainability of natural resources, per capita production of cereals had actually been declining over the past
decade. It asked the government to move rapidly to full all- India coverage of welfare schemes like employment guarantee, mid-day meals and the ICDS. “Revert to uniform PDS pricing and to the clear-cut and much less expensive objective of stabilising prices at above the costs of production. The MSPs should be reasonable and extended to cover the entire country.
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Videocon pays Rs 1280 cr for Thomson’s tubes
New Delhi, June 28 The Aurangabad-based Videocon group proposes to fund the acquisition on a stand-alone basis by accessing domestic international debt/equity market, Videocon International Ltd said today. France-based Thomson has, in return, agreed to invest the same amount in two listed Videocon companies — Rs 1,200 crore (225 million euros) in Videocon Industries Ltd, which is mainly active in energy, and Rs 80 crore (15 million euros) in Videocon International Ltd through newly issued GDRs, Mr S.K. Shelgikar, an independent adviser to
Videocon. “Thomson will hold about 14 per cent of each company,” Thomson Chairman and CEO Frank E Dangeard, who was present at the press conference, said. Through the deal Videocon will gain plants producing glass picture tubes in Poland, Mexico and China.
— UNI
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Kamal Nath for policy space in WTO talks
New Delhi, June 28 In a hard-hitting address at the stakeholder consultation workshop on “ Pre-Hong Kong WTO ministerial meeting consultation: non-agricultural market access (NAMA) negotiations”, he strongly underlined that any tariff reduction formula must be only on the basis of bound rates, not the actual applied rates, and that for India this issue was non-negotiable. India was determined to counter any attempts to use applied rates ( i.e., the rates of import duty actually applied which are generally lower than the bound rates) as the base for application of a tariff reduction formula. “This is something which we shall not accept under any circumstances, as it would mean rewriting the July Framework. We have put all those insisting on this on notice. This is a fundamental position of ours and non-negotiable”, he said. Pointing out that the July Framework also provides for flexibility for developing countries either by not undertaking formula cuts on certain tariff lines or keeping unbound (i.e. where the tariff is not subject to binding and hence, can be raised) a certain number of tariff lines, the minister said that India would fully utilise these flexibilities for those sections of the Indian industry where there were domestic sensitivities. Further, “ it is India’s clear position that there is no mandate for harmonisation of tariffs of different countries. We shall, therefore, resist any attempt to impose an artificial, overarching harmonisation, for which there is no mandate”, he said at the one-day workshop jointly organised by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (Department of Commerce) and UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). He said India had been autonomously liberalising an, in its own interest, reducing its tariff on industrial products as it improved the competitiveness of Indian industry and helped in making available inputs to domestic industry at cheaper prices. This improvement in competitiveness was being further enhanced through strategic regional arrangements. Imports too had been steadily increasing by an average of 30 per cent annually for the last few years.
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Eveready scouts China for raw material
Kolkata, June 28 “We will be sourcing some electro-magnetic materials and plastics particles at a cheaper rate which will result in savings for the company”, Eveready Industries India Ltd’s Executive Vice-Chairman Deepak Khaitan said here today. “The labour laws in China are stringent and it is difficult to set up a plant in the country. We have shelved the investment plans for the time and is keeping a watch at the country,” he said while speaking at the sidelines of the company’s annual general body meeting.
— UNI
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SAIL clears 8 new projects
New Delhi, June 28 The company’s board of directors cleared three of these projects for Bokaro Steel Plant (BSL), two for Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) and one each for Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) and Visvesvaraya Iron
and Steel Plant (VISL), Bhadravati. These projects are in addition to the capital schemes valued at over Rs 3,000 crore, which are under various stages of implementation.
— UNI
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Ludhiana bus terminus
New Delhi, June 28
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