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Boeing, Airbus centres in India by next year
Long-distance tariff may fall
Maruti staff to get 39,777 shares
Bar on Ranbaxy from marketing Lipitor
GAIL shreds ONGC’s claim
Trade deficit up to $33.8 billion
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Tata Coffee diversifies into tourism
GoAir to buy twenty A320s
Re weakens by 23 paise
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Boeing, Airbus centres in India by next year
Singapore, February 22 The two aviation giants today announced investment plans for supporting services in India at the Asian Aerospace, 2006, in Singapore, asserting their ambition to dominate the Indian market, estimated to require 1,000 aeroplanes to cope with the 25 per cent growth in domestic passenger traffic and 20 per cent growth in international passenger demand in the coming years. Airbus says it had confirmed orders for 214 aeroplanes — 100 with Indigo, 60 with Air Deccan and 54 with Kingfisher. Boeing informed it had secured orders for 131 aeroplanes — 68 with Air-India, 20 with Jet Airways, 10 with SpiceJet and three with the Indian Air Force. Boeing Senior Vice-President for Commercial Airplanes Dinesh A. Keskar said the American group was in talks with the Indian authorities and customers to set up a $ 100 million maintenance and repair centre as well as a $ 75 million dollar pilot training centre. Boeing, he said, had also extended $ 10 million to an Indian pilot academy to provide preliminary training to potential pilots, given that the country’s fast-expanding airline industry was facing a pilot crunch. In a separate press conference held today, Airbus President and CEO Gustav Humbert said his group was in talks with the Indian authorities and partners to set up an engineering centre to design aircraft parts as well as a maintenance and repair centre. Mr Humbert said the engineering centre, likely to be in Mumbai, would be part of Airbus five overseas centres, two of which were already operating in the USA and one was being planned in Beijing. He declined to name the parties involved in the talks but added that the centres would hopefully be operational from next year, ahead of the new aircraft deliveries to India-based airlines.
— UNI
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Long-distance tariff may fall
New Delhi, February 22 In an effort to push this, DoT has decided to permit mutually negotiated sharing arrangement of cost for upgradation of interconnecting networks. This decision is expected to kick-start the so far non-starter CAC, as the present licence agreement provides that the network resources including the cost of upgradation/modifying interconnecting networks to meet the requirements of the service will be undertaken by the operator seeking interconnection. This was a major sore point as it was seen heavily tilted against the company seeking interconnection, whereas the benefit of this was to go to both sides (terminating provider also). The resistance of BSNL to CAC where it feared loss of customers and revenue on the basis of competition, has also delayed the process. “Mutually negotiated sharing arrangements for cost of upgradation and modifying networks between services providers will be permitted”, officials of DoT said. About the CAC, the order was issued in 2002, but it did not happen since then. The CAC is a dialler code that allows users to access the network of a long distance service provider of their choice to make calls.
Maran to sick PSU’s rescue
The Department of Telecom has come as a saviour for Hindustan Cables Limited (HCL), a sick PSU under the Department of Heavy Industries, by agreeing to lobby on its behalf with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for orders. “Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran is extremely positive about helping HCL with orders placed by BSNL for both jelly-filled and optical fibre cables,” Chairman of Board for Reconstruction of Public Enterprises Prahlad K. Basu said.
— PTI
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Maruti staff to get 39,777 shares
New Delhi, February 22 “The transaction in this regard will be completed by the end of this month or early March. Employees will be offered up to 20 shares,” Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said briefing newspersons this morning on the outcome of the CCEA meeting last night. The Finance Minister said disinvestment receipts realised through this transaction would be Rs 2.625 crore. After this disinvestment, the shareholding of the government in MUL would come down from 10.28 per cent to 10.27 per cent. In January 2006, the government sold 8 per cent equity of MUL to public sector financial institutions and public sector banks. After deciding this sale, it had also been announced that the government would offer up to 20 shares each to employees of MUL at a price of Rs 660 per share. After the sale, the government holding in the company would fall to 10.27 per cent from 10.28 per cent, currently. “There will be no lock-in period (for sale of the shares in secondary market). We will complete the transaction in February or latest by early March,” he said. Out of 3,596 eligible employees of MUL, 1,994 employees had conveyed their willingness to avail of this offer, he said. The CCEA also approved the launch of ‘Livestock Insurance Scheme’ on a pilot basis in 100 districts during 2005-06 and 2006-07. “It is targeted to ensure 1.5 lakh animals under the scheme with an estimated expenditure of Rs 120 crore,” Mr Chidambaram said. He said the districts under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) would be those where livestock is a potentially important source of income supplementation and where special efforts are being made to introduce crossbred and high-yielding cattle. He minister also said the CCEA has approved financial assistance up to Rs 15 crore to engineering export promotion council for organising India’s participation as the partner country in the Hannover Fair to be held in April.
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Bar on Ranbaxy from marketing Lipitor
New Delhi, February 22 The Helsinki Court of Appeals in Finland had granted a preliminary injunction against Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. prohibiting it from marketing a generic version of Lipitor. The ruling involves Pfizer’s patent (FI94958) that covers processes and intermediate compounds used to make atorvastain, the active ingredient in Lipitor. “This decision is another significant milestone in our defence of Lipitor patents around the world,” Pfizer Vice-Chairman and General Counsel Jeffrey Kindler said in a statement on the company’s website. “It’s also an important outcome for Pfizer and other medical innovators who invest in high-risk research to develop life-saving medicines for millions of patients,” he added. Ranbaxy officials here declined to make a comment on the ruling, stating that “We are yet to read the details of the ruling and are not in a position to say anything.” The decision of the Helsinki court reverses an earlier lower court ruling and is subject to a possible appeal to the Finnish Supreme Court. It will remain in place during further judicial proceedings, including a full-patent infringement trial that has not yet been scheduled. The patent expires in February, 2009.
— PTI
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GAIL shreds ONGC’s claim
New Delhi, February 22 The company said under Article 21 of the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) of 1994 between the PMT jv consortium and the Government of India (GoI), natural gas produced from the PMT fields was offered to GAIL as a government nominee. Currently, GAIL is purchasing about 6 MMSCMD of the PMT gas as the government nominee for supplying this entire quantity to 10 power and fertiliser consumers, including NTPC, NFL, Pragati Power and others. GAIL is supplying the entire 6 MMSCMD of the PMT gas at an APM price of Rs 3,200 per 1000 scm in compliance with the gas pricing order of July, 2005. It is not charging a single cent by way of marketing margin, as contended by the ONGC, it said. In November, 2005, the government had communicated to the PMT jv, followed by another reminder in February ,2006, for the extension of supplies of 6 MMSCMD of gas to GAIL beyond March 31, 2006, on the same broad terms. Accordingly, GAIL and the PMT jv are discussing the terms of purchase of the PMT gas beyond March 31, 2006. It may be of interest to the direct customers of the PMT jv to know , said GAIL, that on the sale of 4.8 MMSCMD of PMT gas to them, it was the jv consortium which was charging a marketing margin of 22 cents / mmbtu to them, about 10 cents / mmbtu more than the marketing margin charged by GAIL to its non-APM customers. IPCL Gandhar and IPCL Baroda were also buying natural gas from the Panna-Mukta-Tapti consortium, it said, which had the ONGC, Reliance Industries and British Gas as members, at a price of $4.08 per mmbtu ,inclusive of marketing cost, which was 10 cents more than GAIL’s price of $3.98 per mmbtu, inclusive of marketing cost. GAIL had served a notice on IPCL since it had not signed a supply agreement with GAIL and the outstanding dues were mounting, it added.
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IPCL drags GAIL to Oil Ministry
Reliance Group company IPCL has approached Petroleum Ministry against the supply termination notice served by gas transportation firm GAIL India Ltd saying the state-owned company was not entitled to charge marketing margin on the Government-controlled gas it sold to industries.
GAIL had on February 9 served a notice to terminate gas supplies to Indian Petrochemicals Corp Ltd (IPCL) unless it cleared Rs 64.02 lakh outstanding towards marketing margin. An Oil Ministry official said GAIL had demanded a marketing margin of Rs 222 per thousand cubic metres on the government administered or APM gas which it was supplying to IPCL’s plants at Baroda, Gandhar (Gujarat) and Nagathone (Maharashtra). “The government’s gas pricing order, which revised APM gas price to Rs 3,200 per thousand cubic metres with effect from July 1, 2005, does not provide for any marketing margin over and above the transportation tariff being realised by GAIL,” he said.
— PTI
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Trade deficit up to $33.8 billion
New Delhi, February 22 Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has projected that the current account deficit for 2005-06 would be at 2.9 per cent of the GDP. “While it is appropriate for an economy of our size with vast investment needs to be running a current account deficit, its size and composition warrant monitoring,” the panel said in its report. It said the current account deficit was still in the comfort zone. In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jairam Ramesh said there were no measures to restrict imports or artificially balance trade that may lead to the dampening of growth of the economy or resurgence of inflationary pressures. However, export promotion was a constant endeavour of the government and a number of measures had been taken recently to boost exports. Meanwhile, imports from China continue to flood India. The provisional estimates in 2004-05 said that these went up to $6746.66 million, a 64.45 per cent increase from $4053.23 million in 2003-04 at 45.17 per cent. Also, the bilateral trade between India and Pakistan grew from $380.57 million in 2004-05 to $450.66 million in 2005-06.
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Tata Coffee diversifies into tourism
Mumbai, February 22 The company said here today that it was launching “Plantation Trails”, a cluster of well-appointed Holiday Homes in Coorg, Karnataka. Each plantation home in Tata Coffee’s Plantation Trails offers a rare opportunity to experience a plantation lifestyle just as the original planters did in the midst of vast coffee estates of Coorg,” the statement said. The homes offer three-bedroom and double- storeyed bungalows between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,500 per room for two persons ,including breakfast, on a daily basis.
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GoAir to buy twenty A320s
Mumbai, February 22 The deal was finalised during the Singapore Airshow, the company said here today. The additional aircraft will be used for connectivity in north Indian and metro-to-metro flight routes, GoAir Managing Director Jeh Wadia said. The A-320 family aircraft would have a single-class economy layout with 180 seats.
— PTI
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Re weakens by 23 paise
Mumbai, February 22 The rupee weakened to a one-month low as month-end dollar demand and a stronger dollar against the euro, Japanese yen and other Asian currencies had their impact on it. In the morning the rupee opened flat at 44.41/42 against the dollar, as compared to yesterday’s close of 44.4150/4250 at the forex market here, the dealer added. The cross-currency rate
for the rupee against the euro was 53.06 (52.91), up from last close by 15 paise; for pound sterling
it was 77.70 (77.47), closing up by 23 paise from its last close and for the Japanese yen it was 37.60(37.40), up by 20 paise.
— UNI
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Honeywell wins $4 b deal
Singapore, February 22 It said in a statement issued during Asian Aerospace, the world’s third-largest airshow, that Honeywell’s HGT1500 auxilliary power unit would be used in the new long-range wide-body A-350 aircraft. The A-350 is scheduled for launch in 2010.
— AFP
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RBI restriction
Mumbai, February 22 “Jagran Prakashan has reached the caution limit of 24 per cent of its paid-up capital,” a RBI notification issued today said.
— UNI
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bb
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