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No extension for Subir Raha
Postal Dept to park Rs 225 cr in stock market
Sensex sheds 250 points on selling by traders
Rupee weakens
Infrastructure to hit GDP growth
Dishman to buy Solutia’s pharma biz for $74.5 m
5 lakh jobs in textile sector by 2007
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The ministry is denying him an extension based on the negative remarks on his performance made by the previous oil minister Mani Shankar Aiyer and former Petroleum Secretary S. C. Tripathi and the T. N. R. Rao Committee Report on the fire at a facility in the company's Mumbai High Field last year. "Raha was appointed for five years or till 60 years of age, whichever was earlier. His five-year term comes to an end today. We are not sacking him or terminating his service. In the normal course, the contract is coming to an end (today)," a top oil ministry official said. Sources, however, said the decision was contrary to the recommendations of Petroleum Secretary M.S. Srinivasan, who had favoured a three-month immediate extension and moving the appointment’s committee of Cabinet for extension of Raha’s services till August 2008, by when he would be completing 60 years. Aiyer, in his one-page note, though praising Raha for his managerial capacities, criticised him for “insubordination and indiscipline” and not adding oil reserves of the company. The former petroleum minister said Raha had converted ONGC into a one-man show and was not a team player. Interestingly, Raha is credited with the making ONGC India’s largest company in terms of market capitalisation. The company’s market cap as of Tuesday stood at Rs 176,480.72 crore. — PTI
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Postal Dept to park Rs 225 cr in stock market
New Delhi, May 24 IT and Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran told reporters here that the government today cleared the Department of Post’s initiative in this regard. "The corpus of Rural Postal Life Insurance Scheme (RPLI) and Postal Life Insurance Scheme approximately stands at Rs 10,000 crore. Next year the interest and premium of this corpus excluding the outgoes is expected to be Rs 1,500 crore. "According to the IRDA norms, 15 per cent of the Rs 1,500 can be invested in equities from the next financial year," Department of Post officials said. As per the IRDA norms, a majority of the interest income will go towards the government-approved securities which will act as a safety cushion for the investors as compared to the vagaries of the stock market. The returns from the stock market will go towards the Rs 10,000 crore corpus, which will give bonus to policy holders, Maran said. The Rs 10,000 crore corpus will be frozen to SDR (Special Depository Receipts). Meanwhile, he said the government would facilitate setting up of more telecom-specific Special Economic Zones (SEZ) to make India a telecom manufacturing hub. "An export promotion council will also be set up for providing necessary platform for export of telecom equipment. We have an intention to make available the handset at a price level of Rs 1,000 by next year," he said. Maran expected $10-11 billion of investment could materialise in the manufacturing sector in the next 2-3 years. The Telecom Minister projected that India would have 500 million telephones by 2010 and to facilitate it, the government was making efforts to release 45 mhz of spectrum by the end of this year. "The current subscribers base in the country is 150 million. The target for 2007, which has already been announced earlier, is 250 million new phone connections. Now we are setting a target of 500 million telephone connenctions by 2010," he said at a press conference.
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Sensex sheds 250 points on selling by traders
Mumbai, May 24 Earlier in the day, Sensex touched the 11,000 mark in intra-day trading before slipping later in the day. In the broader markets, Nifty slipped 2.6 per cent or 84 points to end at 3155. Today’s main losers were led by the ONGC which fell 5.9 per cent or Rs 73. Tata Steel, Maruti Udyog, Bajaj Auto, HLL, HDFC and Wipro were the other key losers. Gainers included ACC, which closed at Rs 768. Others who closed at higher levels included NTPC, Cipla, Bharti Airtel and Satyam Computer.
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Mumbai, May 24 Earlier, the rupee opened weak at 45.58/60 per US dollar, as compared to the last close of 45.51/52. The rupee closed weak due to 249 points loss in the benchmark index of the Bombay Stock Exchange. The RBI fixed the reference rate at 45.73 per US dollar, which was 21 paise down as compared to Tuesday’s level. The cross-currency closing rate for rupee against euro was 58.78 (58.54), which was 24 paise down; for pound sterling it was 86.02 (85.81). — UNI
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Infrastructure to hit GDP growth
New Delhi, May 23 The government has admitted that bottlenecks in the infrastructure sector, the country’s GDP growth would be affected by 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent annually. The government has not succeeded in giving a push to the reforms in the power, coal, petrochemical and oil sector. The report card is also silent as to why the government has failed to implement the recommendations of the Rangarajan Committee that called upon the government to pass on the hike in the international crude prices to consumers partly along with a review of the duty structure. It admits that as against a target of 41,000 MW in the 10th Plan, the country will be able only to put 15000 MW on stream by March, 2007. The pressure of the Left parties and trade unions have also discouraged the government from opening the coal sector to foreign investment despite the fact India has vast reserves. However, it is forced to import coal due to supply constraints. Over the past two years, the UPA Government has also failed to bring down Rs 22,000 crore losses of state electricity boards and the power theft and transmission losses hovering around 45 per cent in the national Capital itself. Though the report card mentions the government’s efforts to lay natural gas pipelines in the neighbourhood, it is silent on the looming clouds of doubts over the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline in the face of UN economic sanctions on Iran. Bangladesh has already declined to offer a transit route to India to lay a gas pipeline from Myanmar to India. The Finance Ministry and the Commerce Ministry are still struggling over the implications of tax concessions to exporters in special economic zones leading to uncertainty.
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Dishman to buy Solutia’s pharma biz for $74.5 m
Mumbai, May 24 The company has signed an agreement for purchasing a 100 per cent stake in CarboGen and Amcis—Solutia Inc’s pharmaceutical services division, Dishman said. The acquisition includes other assets used in the pharmaceutical services business for a consideration of $74.5 million, including a working capital of $8 million, it said. CarboGen and Amcis offer a broad portfolio of drug development and commercialisation services to the pharmaceutical and bio-pharmaceutical industry at all stages of drug development since 1982. To enhance the business prospects of the newly acquired entity, Dishman said it would expand the product suite and renew focus on key accounts to increase the scale of operations jointly by the Indian and Swiss businesses, which can serve the entire drug life cycle of 15-20 years. This acquisition will boost the company’s contract manufacturing business from CarboGen customers. The pharmaceutical services business has research and development facilities at three sites in Switzerland with integrated platform, which provides seamless solutions to the world’s leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, it said.— PTI
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Salora, TEAC join hands
Chandigarh, May 24 Through this new marketing and technical manufacturing agreement with Salora, TEAC today launched its Nostalgia and Retro range, AV receivers, DVD players, home theatre system, plasma TV, LCD TV and CRT TV, said Mr Horoshi Tokushige, Global Head (Consumer Electronics), TEAC. Besides marketing TEAC range of audio and video products across the country, Salora will also
manufacture CRT TV sets and DVD players in its unit at Noida. "We have increased the capacity of our Noida plant (for making TV sets) from 1.50 lakh units per annum to 3. 50 lakh units per annum and aim at producing 2 lakh units of TEAC products a year, besides 1.50 lakh units under the brand name of Salora," said Mr Gopal Jiwarajka, Managing Director, Salora International. He said the trial production for TV sets and DVDs was on and the commercial production of TEAC products would begin in June. Mr Jiwarajka said though Salora's market share was restricted to some urban centres and in semi-urban and rural areas, the new tie up would be able to target the niche audience in the metropolitan towns. He said the company had a 5 per cent market share in Punjab and had sold out 1 lakh TV sets all over the country last year. It may be mentioned that Salora International also has a joint venture compnay with Panasonic- Panasonic AVC India, which manufactures TV sets. Salora also manufactures mobile handsets for Sony Ericsson and Benq
Seimens.
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5 lakh jobs in textile sector by 2007
New Delhi, May 24 Addressing newspersons on the occasion of two years of the UPA Government, Mr Vaghela said that while Rs 30,032 crores worth of investment flowed into the textile sector in 2005-06, by 2010 it was expected to go up to Rs 1,40,000 crore. Much of this investment was expected to flow in integrated textile parks, the minister said, adding that it sought to build 25 large parks of the highest international standards by 2007. The establishment of such parks would facilitate an investment of Rs 18,500 crore leading to the creation of five lakh jobs, Mr Vaghela said and added that nine such parks had been cleared by the ministry. Mr Vaghela said the total exports stood around $17 billion, $4 billion $ higher than the previous year. The target for 2010 was $40 billion.
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OVL gets 30 pc interest in 6 Cuba blocks
New Delhi, May 24 OVL had earlier entered into an agreement with Repsil-YPF, Spain, in 2005 , to acquire 30 per cent participating interest in these six blocks located in the deep waters of the Cuba exclusive economic zone. The other partners in the blocks are Repsol-YPF as the operator (40 per cent ) and Norsk Hydro of Norway (30 per cent). ‘’The execution of agreements with the Government of Cuba for assignment of 30 per cent interest in the six blocks marks the entry of ONGC Videsh Ltd. in the country. In addition, OVL has already initiated action for increased participation in upstream hydrocarbon sector of Cuba through acquisition of additional acreages’’, said Mr. Subir Raha, Chairman of the ONGC group of companies. |
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846 products identified for rural hubs
New Delhi, May 24 The rural business hubs scheme, launched in 2004, to be set up in partnership with the CII would “upgrade and upvalue the skill and the products made by the villagers,” Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shanker Aiyer said in an interactive session with the Forum of Financial Writers. So far 30 MoUs had been signed for such hubs in Karnataka, Haryana, Uttaranchal, he said, adding that the first such hub has been set up near Nainital in collaboration with the ITC for fruits and their products. Three MoUs had been signed with the Haryana Government to produce jathropha. Mr Aiyer said he hoped to double the number of MoUs for such business hubs in the country in the next 12 months and the idea was to have 30,000 such hubs like the ones in China.
— PTI |
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Thermax net profit Rs 41.97 cr
Thermax has posted a net profit of Rs 41.97 crore in Q4 FY-06 as against Rs 26.19 crore in Q4 FY-05 while its total income stood at Rs 480 crore for the period as against Rs 347.42 crore in the previous corresponding period. A release issued here today said for FY-06, Thermax had posted a net profit of Rs 123.25 crore as against Rs 55.29 crore in FY-05 while the total income stood at Rs 1,498 crore, as against Rs 941.16 crore in FY-05. The company's Board has recommended a dividend for FY-06 at 170 per cent or Rs 3.40 per share, the release added. Bharat Forge
Bharat Forge has posted a net profit of Rs 53.01 crore for the quarter ended March 31, as compared to Rs 48.36 crore for the corresponding period in FY ’05, an increase of 9.5 per cent. Announcing the results, the company said its total income has increased from Rs 363.38 crore in Q4 FY-05 to Rs 452.83 crore for Q4 FY-06. The company has posted a net profit of Rs 206.96 crore for the year ended March 31, as compared to Rs 161.63 crore for FY ’05. Its total income has increased from Rs 1,226.46 crore in ’05 to Rs 1,631.04 crore for ’06. The company’s Board has recommended a dividend of Rs 3 per equity share (150 per cent). Crompton Greaves
Crompton Greaves Ltd has posted a 37.73 per cent increase in net profit after tax at Rs 56.10 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2006 as compared to Rs 40.73 crore for the same period in 2004-05. Total income (net of excise) rose 27.32 per cent to Rs 810.21 crore for the quarter under review from Rs 636.32 crore in 2004-05, the company said. At its meeting held today, the Board recommended to split the shares of the company in ratio of 1:5, where equity shares of Rs 10 each would be split into five shares of Rs 2 each, subject to shareholders approval. For the year ended March 31, 2006 the company registered a net profit after tax of Rs 163.05 crore as compared to Rs 114.78 crore for the year 2004-05. The total income increased to Rs 2,553.33 crore from Rs 1999.40 crore in FY 04-05. The group has posted a net profit after tax of Rs 232.03 crore for FY 05-06 where the same was at Rs 117.12 crore for FY 04-05. Tech Mahindra
Telecom solutions major Tech Mahindra has clocked a 152 per cent vault in the net profit for the fourth quarter of 2005-06 at Rs 89 crore as against Rs 35.3 crore for the corresponding period the previous year. For the same period, the company's revenue, too, rose sharply by 78 per cent at Rs 421.2 crore. Rico Auto
Auto anciliary company Rico Auto has registered a 40.88 per cent decline in the net profit at Rs 7.33 crore for the quarter ended March 31, as against Rs 12.4 crore in the quarter in 2004-05. The Board of Directors recommended a dividend of Re 1 on equity shares of Re 1 each (100 per cent) for the financial year ended March 31, 2006.
— Agencies |
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New Delhi, May 24
