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Telecom Ministry’s New Year gift
Bonus hiked on LIC policies
APEC ministers forge common stance on WTO talks
Separate window for block deals mooted, says SEBI chief
Three cluster growth schemes for Haryana
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Jaypee Group plans cement
Eligibility norms for independent Directors reviewed
VW car unit in Andhra likely
Saudi nod to SBI
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Telecom Ministry’s New Year gift — OneIndia
New Delhi, November 15 What this means is that distance would no longer be a barrier for telecom tariff. That means calling one’s relative from Chandigarh to Calicut, Amritsar to Aurangabad or Delhi to Gangtok would cost as much as calling from Sector 17 to Sector 29 in Chandigarh. The government’s decision to drastically cut the entry-level licence fees for offering national and international long distance telecom services and cut annual fees by 60 per cent is a significant move in this direction. The Ministry of Telecommunication is working on a new ADC (access deficit charge) free regime, which would enable “single call rate throughout India”, a reality. Union Communication Minister Dayanidhi Maran has said that OneIndia seems to be possible in the near future. “We are heading for a regime where distance in the country will not matter in making phone calls. The loss in government revenue might be recovered by increase in telecom traffic,” said Mr Maran. However, Department of Telecommunication, has, so far, remained silent on how it plans to address a slew of issues including, reworking the present licensing regime, interconnect agreement, access deficit charges and the revenue share arrangement. These issues need to be addressed before OneIndia can be implemented, analysts said. BSNL, the largest telecom operator, whose revenue will be severely affected by OneIndia, is analysing the impact of the new government move and plans to counter and/or take advantage of the measures. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has stated that it would start implementing the carrier access code (CAC) at the earliest and has asked the telecom operators to submit their CDR-CAC readiness by November 21. The CAC will allow customers to choose their long distance operators by selecting an operator who offers the most competitive call rates by dialling a specific code to be issued by DoT, followed the STD/ISD code and telephone number. Stand-alone long-distance call providers would be able to offer very low rates to individuals who will now be free to use their services, much like what happens in countries like the US. Once this happens, Trai will also allow long-distance operators to charge lower rates for carrying calls. Today, a minute’s carriage charges are set at between 20 paise and Rs 1.1 for different distances even though leased line rates have fallen by over 70 per cent over the past few months. Trai has said that after the CAC is implemented, operators will be free to charge market rates and so, rates are expected to drop drastically. Meanwhile, state-run BSNL is likely to get Rs 700 crore licence fee and spectrum charges reimbursement in the current fiscal, which could turn out to be less than what it received last year. Official sources said the telecom PSU had last fiscal received Rs 1,765.68 crore as reimbursement — which is paid by the government to compensate for its loss-making operations like rural telephony.
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Bonus hiked on LIC policies
Chennai, November 15 Under the wholelife LIC scheme the policy-holders will enjoy a bonus of Rs 71 per Rs 1,000, he said while launching the LIC web portal here today. The policy-holders of the endowment scheme will now get a bonus of Rs 34-54 per Rs 1,000 and for moneyback scheme, it has been increased to Rs 32-45 per Rs 1,000. “This is in addition to the special bonus announced by the Prime Minister during the golden jubilee year of the LIC, earlier this year,” he said. The LIC had earlier increased the bonus for pension policy-holders and retained terminal bonuses, wherever applicable. “My goal is to make LIC a world-class insurance company and it is very close to becoming one,” Mr Chidambaram said. Meanwhile, Banks must be listed in the stock markets to enable its evaluation in an era of stiff competition, consolidation and convergence being the drivers of the banking sector, Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said today. At the inaugural function of the 100th state-of-the-art core banking solution networked branch of Bharat Overseas Bank Ltd (BOBL) here, he said since the debate was on about who owned banks or who should own them, it was ultimately the people who should be the final judges for which listing in stock markets was imperative. “There are no allowances for failures,’’ he added. Banks could make huge profits in a monopoly or oligopolistic situation. But the quality of the organisation, standards of governance and ultimately, subjecting itself to market discipline, would determine the standing of a bank, especially since customers were demanding all services under a single umbrella, he added. Advocating corporate governance, Mr Chidambaram said it should improve and so also should the quality of audit and accountability. Simply analysing whether banks were making profits or losses could no longer be the yardstick of performance. Credit was the driver of the economy the absence of which would mean there was no economy.
— Agencies
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APEC ministers forge common stance on WTO talks
Busan, November 15 Breaking a deadlock in the World Trade Organisation over subsidies in the heavily-protected farming sectors of Europe and some other developed countries has become a key focus of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting in Busan, South Korea. Trade ministers from APEC’s 21 member economies held a special meeting today with WTO chief Pascal Lamy, and later agreed on the wording of a special statement on the issue that they will hand to APEC leaders for their annual summit on Friday and Saturday. Officials here hope a strong statement by APEC’s leaders, including US President George W. Bush, Japan’s Junichiro Koizumi and China’s Hu Jintao, will have enough political clout to revive hopes for a WTO meeting in Hong Kong next month. “If we can, as countries that make up 50 per cent of world trade, come up with a strong commitment then we can make the progress happen on our side,” Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu said. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Chilean Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker took heart from a speech by Britain’s Blair yesterday that challenged the United States and the EU to take the steps needed to make the Hong Kong talks a success.
— AP
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Separate window for block deals mooted, says SEBI chief
New Delhi, November 15 “The window will be operational for the first half an hour, that is, from 9.55 am to 10.25 am,” Mr Damodaran said talking to mediapersons here after addressing the ‘Hindustan Times-Leadership Summit’. Along with Mr Damodaran, the event was also addressed by Mr Ravi Narain, CEO and Managing Director of NSE, said the threshold limit would not be reviewed, notwithstanding the setting up of a separate window. Large intra-day volatility is experienced on the stock exchanges when these block deals are carried out. Keeping them outside the purview of the time after the first half an hour would stem this volatility. Mr Damodaran said both easier delisting norms and the process of compulsory delisting were under way and would be in place soon. However, no deadline had been set for the purpose. Besides, Mr Damodaran said, the stock exchanges would come out with easier norms for IPOs, which will reduce the transaction cost of floating an issue. Short selling by institutions was likely to become operational by March, 2006. Mr Damodaran noted that short-selling by individuals was allowed at present. Mr Damodaran said there was no investigation per se by the market regulator into penny stocks, some of
which have witnessed a phenomenal rise not correlated to the fundamentals of these companies. SEBI would, however, step up market surveillance as part of the ongoing market reforms. He said an integrated market surveillance system would be put in place by March, 2006, along with credible regulations to ensure orderly functioning of the markets. — UNI
Markets closed
Mumbai:
The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) were closed today on account of Guru Nanak Jayanti. The foreign exchange and money markets were also closed on the occasion.
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Three cluster growth schemes for Haryana
Chandigarh, November 15 While one of the schemes in the textile sector was already in operational, the other two were in the pipeline. The spokesman said that under the cluster scheme the Union Government was providing a financial assistance of Rs 55 crore for the development of infra-structure
facilitates to the textile industry in Panipat. Likewise in Faridabad a cluster development scheme with integrated infra-structure facilities would be set up with a financial assistance of Rs 67 crore from the central government. This scheme was aimed at a boosting light engineering components for the automobile sector. The Haryana government has sent a proposal to the central government for setting up another automobile cluster in Gurgaon. This scheme would provide an impetus to the automobile industry in Gurgaon. The spokesman said the central government had agreed to set up a research and development institute for the automobile industry in Haryana. It would probably be located in the National Capital Region (NCR) of the state.
— UNI
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Jaypee Group plans cement plant in HP
New Delhi, November 15 “We are setting up a three million tonne plant in Himachal Pradesh with an investment of Rs 900 crore. The plant is likely to be completed by 2007,” Mr Manoj Gaur, Managing Director of over Rs 3,500 crore Jaypee Group, said. Since the construction of hydel power plants and presence in the engineering and construction business are the focus areas for the group, having more cement manufacturing facilities makes a business sense, he said. Asked about the source of funding for the expansion plan, Mr Gaur said the group would be using part of Rs 430 crore proceeds from the recent Foreign Currency Convertible Bond (FCCB) issue. “Of the Rs 430 crore, Rs 250 crore will be used for setting up new 3 million tonne plant and we have also arranged Rs 500 crore loan from ICICI and few other banks at an interest rate of nine per cent,” he said. Besides this, the group is also eyeing acquisitions in the cement sector.
— PTI
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Eligibility norms for independent Directors reviewed
New Delhi, November 15 While resisting the temptation of overhauling the selection criteria fully, the government has made “persons of eminence with proven track record from industry, business or agriculture” eligible for appointment as independent Directors on the Boards of PSUs. The move to include lawyers in the list has, however, been dropped after intense consultations. With agriculturalists and businessmen becoming eligible for the job, the government will be able to accommodate many public men, who did not fulfil the criteria earlier. The review of the eligibility criteria came after controversy over the moves to appoint politicians who did not fulfil the conditions on the Boards of navratna companies as independent Directors. Publicmen were never debarred from the job. In fact, the guidelines of 1992 had provided that they could be appointed on the Boards of PSUs as part-time Directors. However, the circular issued in 2004 on the directions of Prime Minister’s Office after the controversy over the appointment of a political functionary on the Board of MTNL added some additional conditions. The guidelines issued in March, 2004, said senior bureaucrats — having served not less than 10 years as Joint Secretary — or university Professors, technocrats, institute heads and corporate leaders, could be appointed as independent Directors of PSU Boards. Politicians who fulfilled these conditions were also eligible.
— PTI
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VW car unit in Andhra likely
Hyderabad, November 15 According to official sources, a six-member technical team of the company led by Mr Peter Walters, visited the site offered by the state government at Mambattu village between Tada and Sullurpet. The site is just a kilometre from the golden quadrilateral express highway between Chennai and Kolkata. Sources said the VW team had preferred the site, as it was only 70 km from Chennai, which has both port and airport facilities.
— UNI
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Saudi nod to SBI
Dubai, November 15 The banks have also been authorised to open branches in the country, said Muhammad Al-Jasser, Deputy Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), the country’s central bank.
— PTI
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Mumbai, November 15 The engineering major is the only company to be selected for the award for the year.
— PTI
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