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Cabinet nod to IT investment regions
Core sectors grow by 8.7 pc in Feb
TCS begins work on Pune SEZ facility
MFs give smart returns in FY 08 despite Q4 losses
PNB to cover 30,000 villages under IT financial inclusion
Semiconductor Policy
MRTPC notice to Bharti, Vodafone on cartelisation
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Shyam-Sistema gets start-up spectrum
RIL, ONGC among 48 Indian cos on Forbes list
Duty cuts to cost around Rs 4,000 cr
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Cabinet nod to IT investment regions
New Delhi, April 3 The Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs, which met under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today, has given a go-ahead for setting up ITIRs. This has been done with a view to offer excellent infrastructure and investor-friendly policies to boost the growth of both IT/ITES and Electronic Hardware Manufacturing (EHM) units. According to the government, these regions would become major magnets for investment in the IT area creating employment opportunities and economic growth in the technology field. In addition to this, these centres will reduce the pressure on existing urban centres by enabling growth of new townships and dispersal of industry. These regions would be a combination of IT/ITES and electronics hardware manufacturing units, public uitilities, residential area, social infrastructure and administrative services. Such regions could include new integrated townships, SEZs and industrial parks. In the ITIR, there would be a clear delineation between the IT/ITES areas and electronic hardware manufacturing areas. The ITIRs would generate direct and indirect employment during the construction and operational phases. The ITIRs will be much larger than IT SEZs. Each ITIR is expected to be a specifically notified investment region with minimum area of 40 sq km planned for IT/ITES and EHM units. According to the proposal, while the Centre will facilitate development of national highways, airport and rail links towards the ITIRs, states will help in the local infrastructure like power, water, health, education and state roads. The ITIRs would be developed in a phased manner through Public-Private Partnership route. |
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Core sectors grow by 8.7 pc in Feb
New Delhi, April 3 Growth in coal, power and cement, three of the six industries that make up the core infrastructure sector, aided the healthy growth in February as compared to 7.6 per cent a year ago. However, in April-February 2007-08 period, infrastructure growth remained lower at 5.6 per cent compared to 8.7 per cent a year ago due to less than 5 per cent growth in the four preceding months this fiscal. The infrastructure sector had grown by 4.2 per cent in January 2008. In February, coal industry growth improved to 11.7 per cent from 6.5 per cent, power to 9.6 per cent from 3.3 per cent and cement to 12.4 per cent from 5.8 per cent. However, crude oil dropped to 2.3 per cent in the month under review from 4.9 per cent in the same month last year, petroleum refinery products to 5.8 per cent from 11.3 per cent and finished steel to 8.2 per cent from 13.6 per cent. |
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TCS begins work on Pune SEZ facility
Mumbai, April 3 According to the company, the project to be completed in three phases will have the company's largest development centre called the TCS Sahyadri Park, spread over 50 acres of land. In a statement released on the occasion, TCS managing director S Ramadorai said more than 20,000 persons would be employed at the facility. Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh yesterday laid down the foundation stone for the first phase of the project. According to the company, this would be completed at a cost of Rs 400 crore by March next and will employ more than 7,000 persons. To manage Chrysler’s operations
Michigan: Chrysler LLC is outsourcing some of its computer technology work to TCS in a move that will eliminate about 200 of 1,000 full-time salaried jobs. TCS and Virginia-based Computer Sciences Corp. will manage maintenance and support operations for internal employees.
— AP |
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MFs give smart returns in FY 08 despite Q4 losses
New Delhi, April 3 According to an analysis by Value Research, a mutual fund tracking firm, the ‘diversified equity’ schemes that are most popular among investors lost an average of 28.3 per cent in the past three months period. However, over the period of one year, fund performance has remained strong and the losses of the last quarter have not come even close to wiping out the previous three quarters gains, the report said. Funds in the diversified equity category gained an average of 21.4 per cent over the four quarters in FY 2007-08, with individual schemes returns ranging from a gain of 53.7 per cent to a loss of 7.9 per cent. While, just four funds in the category have registered losses for the fiscal. Analysts believe investing in diversified schemes could still provide better exposure to investors, despite the meltdown in market. Individual funds in the diversified equity category lost between 40.6 per cent and 16.2 per cent in the final quarter of last fiscal, when the BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty both lost 22.9 per cent. “Of the small number of funds that beat the benchmarks handsomely, a majority are those that also invest abroad. This demonstrates the value of true diversification in bad times, “ Value Research CEO Dhirendra Kumar said. However, international funds also lost investors’ money but it was less than domestically-focused funds. In the entire list, the sole profit-making exception was DSP Merrill Lynch World Gold Fund, which invests not in gold but in stocks of firms that are part of the global gold mining and refining industry, Kumar added. — PTI Overseas investment limit hiked
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India today said it had raised the ceiling for overseas investment by local mutual funds to $7 billion from $5 billion, with immediate effect.
— Reuters |
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PNB to cover 30,000 villages under IT financial inclusion
Chandigarh, April 3 "By 2010, our bank plans to cover 30,000 villages, 15 million households and 75 million people under IT-enabled financial inclusion initiatives," PNB chief Dr K.C. Chakrabarty said today, while announcing the launch of IT-enabled biometric smart card based banking here. Pawan Kumar Bansal, union minister of state for finance was the chief guest on the occasion. Besides, the bank has also identified 27 pilot projects (20 in rural areas and 7 in urban areas) to be launched across 13 states for its financial inclusion programme. Out of 20 rural pilot projects, four pilot projects have already been launched at Neemrana in Rajasthan, Tineri Panchayat in Bihar, Matki Jharoli in UP and Gararu in Bihar, he said.
Earlier, while presiding over the State Level Bankers Committee meeting for Haryana, Bansal lauded the banks for covering the entire countryside of the state under 100 per cent financial inclusion and for a good growth (50.69 per cent against a target of 20 per cent) for extending loans to small and medium enterprises. Dr Chakrabarty called upon the bankers to lay stress on stepping up lending to ex-servicemen, their widows, women, SCs/STs and unemployed youth. He said banks in Haryana had disbursed a loan of Rs 9,010 crore between December 2006 to December 2007. He also said the priority sector advances grew at 21 per cent during this period and the total deposits grew at 26 per cent. Cuts rates on NR deposits
New Delhi: PNB today slashed interest rate on Foreign Currency Non-Resident (B) Deposit Scheme for dollar with effect from April 1. The interest rate on US dollar deposits have been reduced to 1.74 per cent for a maturity of one year to less than two years against earlier rate of 1.96 per cent and 1.75 per cent for a maturity of two years to less than three years against 1.87 per cent, PNB said in a release. For tenor of 3 to less than 4 years, interest rate has been reduced to 2.06 per cent as compared to 2.19 per cent while for 4-5 years the new rate is 2.35 per cent against 2.48 per cent, it said. On NRE term deposits, the applicable rate of interest for April is 2.49 per cent for maturities of one year to less than two years and 2.50 per cent for maturity in between 2-3 years, it said.
— PTI |
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Govt gets proposal from RIL
New Delhi, April 3 Till now, the government has received seven investment proposals totalling Rs 65,000 crore from six companies. Besides Reliance Industries, Videocon Industries, Moser Baer PV Technologies, Titan Energy System, KSK Energy Ventures Pvt Ltd and Signet Solar Inc have submitted their plans with the Department of Information and Technology (DIT), an official statement said. Proposals received are for manufacturing of a wide variety of items like polysilicon, single/multi-crystalline ingots, wafers, solar cells, solar photovoltaic modules (SPV) liquid crystal display (LCD), integrated circuits-advanced logic/ memory/ embedded system on chip including assembly, test, mar and packaging facility for semiconductor devices. “The investments are envisaged over a period of ten years,” the statement said. Under the special incentive package scheme, the Central Government has to provide incentive of 20 per cent capital expenditure during the first 10 years for the units in SEZs and 25 per cent of the capital expenditure in non-SEZ units. Any unit can claim incentives in the form of capital subsidy or equity participation. All seven firms have sought subsidy from the government for setting up their facilities. Reliance Industries’ proposal for establishment of a semiconductor wafer fab with assembly, test, mark and packaging facility has a total outlay of Rs 18,521 crores over a period of 10 years. — PTI
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MRTPC notice to Bharti, Vodafone on cartelisation
New Delhi, April 3 The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) Bench also directed the three companies to file their reply before it within four weeks. In the investigation report, Director General of Investigations and Registrations (DGIR) has said that the three GSM operators, by colluding, have simultaneously increased the price. The report stated that despite having different cost factors, structures and profits, they all fixed the tariff of their local call at Rs 1.20 a minute. The report further said that though the rental and tariff charges of calls and SMS fall under the forbearance category under the telecommunications tariff (23rd amendment) and GSM operators are free to fix any tariff for their services, “But it can not be mere coincidence” that the tariff revision by them is of the identical scale.” It also said that the area of operation was different. Also, the operation cost of each operator was not on same scale and number of subscribers was different. In such a scenario, how they landed at the same tariff is a matter of investigation. — PTI
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Shyam-Sistema gets start-up spectrum
New Delhi, April 3 Shyam-Sistema, a joint venture India’s Shyam Telelinks and Russia’s Sistema, has been given 2.5 MHz (equivalent of 4.4 MHz of GSM) in the seven states of North-East, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, official sources said. Commenting on the development, Rajiv Mehrotra, Chairman of Shyam Group, said: “We are delighted that the government has opened up the way for new telecom players to operate telecom services as soon as possible and this is a major step towards offering cost-effective mobile services.” Russian conglomerate has already announced up to $ 5 billion (Rs 20,000 crore) investment in the Indian telecom sector. Shyam-Sistema, which currently offers mobile service in Rajasthan, has got licenses for rest of the circles. Asked about the company’s plans to enter GSM arena, company officials said they would be seeking GSM spectrum under the dual technology clause. But allocation of CDMA spectrum would give advantage to Shyam-Sistema joint venture to start services faster ahead of other new telecom players. DoT officials said that Communication Minister A Raja has cleared the file for allocating spectrum to Shyam and may start releasing GSM frequency from next week onward. DoT’s move comes in the backdrop of a fierce opposition by existing GSM operators to the entry of new players. The GSM operators have also been at loggerheads with the government, which has allowed dual technology for offering mobile services. Sources said DoT would start allocating GSM spectrum from next week. — PTI
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RIL, ONGC among 48 Indian cos on Forbes list
New York, April 3 Led by Reliance Industries and PSU major ONGC, all these 48 Indian firms named in the ‘Global 2000 List’ have a billion-dollar size in terms of market value. The rankings, topped by British banking behemoth HSBC, has been compiled on the basis of a composite score of sales, profit, assets and market capitalisation. HSBC is followed by industrial conglomerate General Electric, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil-all four from the US-in the top five positions. Two Indian firms, Mukesh Ambani-promoted RIL and ONGC are among the top 200 companies at 193rd and 198th ranks. RIL and ONGC are followed by two PSU majors State Bank of India (219th) and Indian Oil (303rd), the country’s biggest private sector lender ICICI Bank (374th) and state-run power generation major NTPC (411th). The Indian presence is almost evenly divided among the private and state-run companies. While none of the Indian companies have managed to find a place among top 100, it has two firms run by people of Indian origin. Vikram Pandit-run banking giant Citigroup and Lakshmi Mittal-headed steel behemoth ArcelorMittal are at 24th and 38th positions respectively. Indra Nooyi-run beverage major PepsiCo has been ranked at 131st position. Other Indian companies on the list include SAIL (647th) and Tata Steel (738th), Bharti Airtel (826th), Reliance Communications (846th), TCS (927), HDFC (949th), L&T (961st) among others. — PTI
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Duty cuts to cost around Rs 4,000 cr
New Delhi, April 3 “The duty cuts which are aimed at taming the inflation rate are likely to result in a revenue loss of Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 4,000 crore,” said a source in the Finance Ministry, adding the Ministry was further “open to review” duties on other items to bring inflation to “tolerable limits.”
— PTI |
BHEL net profit up 17 pc Tata Motors’ foray in Thailand
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