New Delhi, June 28
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today offered succour to the impoverished weavers and made a slew of suggestions for revitalising the sagging handloom sector, including offering them a lower interest rate and restructuring the debt of handloom co-operatives as well as individual weavers.

Launching the handloom mark here, the Prime Minister also announced the setting up of 230 yarn depots for providing easy access to the commodity for all handloom clusters with more than 1,000 looms and made out a case for extending technology upgradation fund scheme to this sector.

He has asked Finance Minister P Chidambaram to consider the feasibility of extending the low-interest facility provided for farming community loans at 7 per cent to handloom weavers as well.

Dr Singh said he had asked the Textile and Finance Ministers to look at the problem of debt which is afflicting handloom cooperatives so that this can be rescheduled or cooperatives recapitalised in a manner similar to that done for cooperative banks through the Vaidyanathan Committee.

''I am hopeful we will resolve this problem in the next three months,'' he said and acknowledged that high cost of credit and debt overhang as serious constraints and underscored the need to address these problems on ''a priority basis'', he said.

He also announced that the government would cover another 100 clusters this year under the Integrated Handloom Cluster Development Scheme.

The event, organised at Vigyan Bhawan, was also addressed by Union Minister of Textile Shanker Singh Vaghela and Minister of State for Textiles EVKS Elangovan.

The handloom mark would help consumers distinguish between genuine hand-woven fabric and power loom and machine-made fabric and that it would help individual weavers, weavers cooperative societies, master weavers, retailers and exporters.

The National Common Minimum Programme makes a firm commitment of ensuring the welfare of the handloom sector, especially the weaver community. The initiatives will cover all aspects of production and raw material supply, design and technical assistance, training and skill up-gradation and marketing, he said.

Last October, Dr Singh informed, the Textiles Ministry launched a life insurance scheme for weavers, the Mahatma Gandhi Bunker Bima Yojana, in collaboration with LIC and also launched a health insurance scheme in collaboration with ICICI Lombard, to provide health facilities to weavers and their families.

The Prime Minister also honoured National Master Weaver Award winners at the function. — UNI

New Delhi, June 28
The ONGC and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) may have to surrender oil and gas blocks they had won in New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP auction for not being able to fulfil the minimum committed exploration programme.

The ONGC may have to return six offshore exploration blocks while RIL may have to turn back four blocks awarded for development under initial rounds of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), industry sources said.

The two companies have been asked to return the blocks on recommendation of the Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), India’s upstream nodal agency.

Despite repeated attempts, Mr V. K. Sibal, Director- General, DGH, did not return calls for comments.

Sources said ONGC and Reliance had not completed the minimum work programme (MWP) that they had committed to the government at the time of bidding for the blocks. The two companies would have to pay a penalty for the default before the blocks are taken away from them.

The blocks taken away from the ONGC and Reliance would be re-tendered in the seventh round of NELP next year.

The ONGC and Reliance spokesmen declined to comment on the issue.

The government has so far awarded 110 exploration blocks in five rounds of NELP bidding with a view to boosting domestic oil and gas production. — PTI

New Delhi, June 28
The air bilateral arrangements between India and Kuwait are set to be reviewed to increase the number of seats available on airlines of the two countries during the forthcoming bilateral talks scheduled for July 18 and 19 here.

India has approved the increase of weekly seats from Kuwait by 1,300. Kuwait Airways is to maintain its current schedule and capacity of 5,200 seats per week while Jazeera Airways will get additional 1,300 seats per week.

The issue also came up during the meeting between Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel and Minister of Communication of the State of Kuwait, Dr Ismael Al-Shatty, today. The two also discussed issues regarding the promotion of bilateral relations in the field of civil aviation between the two countries.

This meeting is a follow-up to the recent visit of the Kuwaiti Amir to India in June. During the Amir’s visit the promotion of air transport relationship between the two countries by increasing bilateral entitlements was agreed upon.

On the issue of commercial agreement it was explained to the Kuwaiti delegation that as per the decision of the Union Cabinet of the Government of India on phasing out commercial agreements with foreign airlines, there would be no commercial agreement for all new services of foreign airlines starting on or after January 1, 2005. Commercial agreements existing before January 1, 2005, would continue only for 5 years.

It was agreed that the bilateral talks in July would look into connectivity of Kuwait with more Indian cities, besides increasing the number of seats.

Stockholm (Sweden), June 28
Volvo Car Corp announced today it had decided to branch out into India, with first sales of its models there due in the fourth quarter of 2006.

The new subsidiary, Volvo Car India, will have its head office in New Delhi, the company’s CEO Fredrik Arp said.

The Ford Motor Co-owned carmaker said it would begin its product introduction with the Volvo S80 and the Volvo XC90 models, with plans to introduce other models in the Indian market “in due course.” “It is an important step for Volvo Cars to establish a presence on this market at a time when India is showing considerable growth in the passenger car market,” Mr Arp said.

Volvo Cars said it expected the total new-car sales on the Indian market to increase from one million cars per year to 1.6 million over a four-year period.

“This gives us an excellent foundation for starting sales of Volvo cars on this market,” Volvo Car India’s Managing Director Paul de Voijs said.—AP

New Delhi, June 28
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has retained the top position among top 20 IT software and service exporters in India, a survey by NASSCOM said today. Infosys and Wipro stood second and third, respectively, in the list.

Mr Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM, said “India’s services exports grew by over 33 per cent in FY06 to clock revenues of $17.3 billion, led by a strong demand and increased traction for traditional services like ADM, new services like EAI and package implementation, and new areas like engineering services. The industry has been able to maintain this growth despite a larger base, through large client wins, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, and the movement of the industry towards a stable pricing model. We have a trend where companies are increasingly winning multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts with global firms.”

India has become a hub for global MNC firms for software development, supply chain management and other services. 

Shimla, June 28
The Himachal Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (HPSIDC) has earned a record profit of Rs 14.54 crore during the last financial year, Mr Kuldeep Kumar, Industries Minister, said presiding over a meeting of the Board of Directors The corporation had made a profit of Rs 4.90 crore during 2004-05. Thus, there had been a three-fold increase in profit.

The corporation had also achieved reduction in non-performing assets from level 85 to 57 per cent. It also decided to release the instalment of additional dearness allowance to its employees which became due from January last. — TNS

Seoul, June 28
Chung Mong-koo, the head of South Korea’s top automaker Hyundai Motor, was freed on bail of $1 million today. “Chairman Chung was released and is now in hospital for treatment and recuperation from illness. He is very exhausted,” said lawyer Kim Jae-Jin. Chung, 68, was arrested and jailed on April 28, and then indicted last month on charges of $83.9 million from the company and breach of trust.

Prosecutors have accused Chung of amassing 103.4 billion won in secret funds to bribe politicians and officials in return for favours for the company. They also suspect he used part of the money to facilitate the illicit transfer of corporate wealth and management control to his son.

Chung went on trial earlier this month and in a letter to the court on June 15, the business tycoon apologised for approving the slush fund at the firm. At a hearing on Monday, he again apologised to the court, saying that he repented “bitterly for past wrongdoing”.

Chung’s defence team had repeatedly requested bail, citing his advanced age, health problems and arguing he was not a flight risk and that his detention left Hyundai Motor rudderless.

Senior court judge Kim Dong-O said the business tycoon had posted one billion won bail. “The decision was made in consideration of that fact that there is no fear that he will destroy evidence as he has already admitted to having raised a slush fund and there were also concerns about a management vacuum (at Hyundai Motor) caused by his prolonged detention.” — AFP

Mohali, June 28
Ranbaxy aims to grow as the fifth largest, $5-billion pharmaceutical company in the world. It will continue to evaluate business opportunities in the European Union after consolidating its position in the United States. This was disclosed by Ranbaxy CEO and Managing Director, Mr Malvinder Mohan Singh, while talking to shareholders at the 45th annual general meeting (AGM) held here today.

Shortly after he shared the company’s growth plans with shareholders, they ratified his appointment as the company head for the next five years.

Jubilant shareholders also ratified the decision of the company to give a dividend of Rs 6 over Rs 2.5 taking the total dividend per share to Rs 8.5 per share for 2005. The global sales of Ranbaxy had touched $ 1,178 million last year and the company hoped to improve it during the current year.

Mr Malvinder Singh revealed that after the acquisition of Ethimed, a Belgium-based pharmaceutical company, and another company, Terapia, in Romania, Ranbaxy was now focusing on the European Union market. With the recent approval of Ranbaxy's cardiac drug Simvastatin getting US Food and Drug Administration nod for 180-day exclusivity to market its 80-mg version, which had US sales worth $3.1 billion last year, Ranbaxy is hopeful of achieving its projected targets for the year 2012.

Ranbaxy’s $324-million acquisition of Terapia will enable the company to leverage opportunities in Romania and pan-European markets.

He further reinforced the company's commitment to lend support to the global fight against HIV/AIDS and disclosed that Ranbaxy and Community Investment Holdings (CIH), South Africa, had formed a joint venture, Sonke Pharmaceuticals (Pty) Ltd, (Sonke), to market and sell Ranbaxy's range of anti-retroviral products in South Africa and other African markets.

Ranbaxy was exploring new opportunities in the Canadian and Italian markets, besides increasing its joint ventures in Japan in the near future.