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Inflation at 12.63 pc
Sensex sheds 434 pts
9-10 pc growth achievable: Montek
Cabinet nod to IPTV policy
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Tribune Exclusive
Airtel, Vodafone launch iPhone
BSNL gives link to RCom
No interest subsidy extension to exporters
Nagarjuna bags orders worth Rs 474 cr
Biocon plans R&D centre in Punjab
3G Spectrum
Adlabs to be merged with Big Pictures
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Inflation at 12.63 pc
New Delhi, August 21 Earlier, Lehman Brothers said they expected WPI inflation to increase further to 12.59 per cent over last year from 12.44 per cent in the previous week due to higher prices of vegetables, non-food articles, sugar, cement, tobacco, and machinery and tools segments. Inflation had surged to 12.44 per cent for the week ended August 2. Fruit prices went up by 8.9 per cent and pulses became dearer by 1.4 per cent during the week. Diesel prices in the commercial segment rose by 16 per cent. The government’s fiscal and monetary measures have so far failed to tame the rising prices, and another round of monetary tightening like raising interest rates is feared along with other controlling measures. Inflation may peak in November-December and slip into single-digit by March 2009. Going by the current price situation, there may be another round of monetary tightening, said Prime Minister’s economic advisory council member Saumitra Choudhury recently. Latest report by British banking giant Barclays also said inflation was likely to continue moving northward to nearly 17 per cent and the country was expected to witness more controlling measures such as increase in retail fuel price in the near future. “Upward pressure on inflation is likely to continue throughout the year largely due to rising food prices and elevated oil prices. The government recently raised retail fuel prices by around 10 per cent and we expect there is more to come,” the report said. |
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Sensex sheds 434 pts
Mumbai, August 21 All the major indices took a knock as heavy selling hammered down stocks across the board as a few analysts worried about inflation soaring past 13-14 per cent. Among the major losers today included SBI, which fell 7 per cent. Other prominent losers included NTPC, HDFC Bank and DLF. Of the sectoral indices, the BSE realty index fell 5 per cent or 263 points. Indiabulls Real Estate was the most prominent loser in the sector down 7.4 per cent. The BSE banking index also plunged 5.2 per cent or 357 points to 6,577 levels. The SBI, dropped 7 per cent to close at 1,342 levels while HDFC Bank lost 5.8 per cent to end at 1,165 level. |
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9-10 pc growth achievable: Montek
New Delhi, August 21 “We are targeting 9 per cent growth in the medium term and getting up to 10 per cent,” Ahluwalia told reporters on the sidelines of a function here. Ahluwalia termed the target “quite achievable”, saying it “may look ambitious with a slowdown in the global economy, but is achievable in the medium term”. He said the problem of inflation was short-term and would moderate in due course, as the government has taken several monetary and administrative measures to rein in inflation. “Inflation will moderate. Let’s have patience,” Ahluwalia said. India’s annual rate of inflation touched a 13-year high of 12.44 per cent for the week ended August 2. Ahluwalia also set aside the apprehension that the government’s recent decision to hike employees’ salaries would have any adverse impact on the country’s economy. “We will be able to deal with any implications (arising out of the salary hike),” he said. The Prime minister’s economic advisory council, in its ‘Economic Outlook Report 2008-09’, has predicted a 7.7 per cent economic growth in the current fiscal, as compared to 9.1 per cent last fiscal. Former RBI Governor C. Rangarajan, who released the EAC’s economic outlook report here August 13, had said inflation would moderate to 8-9 per cent by March 2009.
— IANS |
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Cabinet nod to IPTV policy
New Delhi, August 21 “Issuance of guidelines on IPTV will bring clarity on defining the parameters in which such service providers will work as also clarifying how these services are going to be regulated,” information and broadcasting minister P.R Dasmunsi said after the Cabinet meeting today. The Cabinet also gave its approval to amend the policy guidelines for downlinking of TV channels for allowing broadcasters to provide content to IPTV service providers, he said. Current downlinking norms allow broadcasters to only share their channels with cable and direct-to-home platforms. Modification of downlinking guidelines will enable IPTV service providers to obtain content of registered satellite TV channels from the broadcasters. IPTV involves delivery of television and video signals over a broadband network. It uses high speed Internet to deliver television channels but also other value added services like time-shift TV, interactive advertising, movies without any advertisements, games among other such services. State-owned BSNL and MTNL are already providing IPTV services across several cities while private players like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications are waiting to launch their IPTV services. Broadcast regulator TRAI had recommended a higher foreign investment cap of 74 per cent for the IPTV sector in comparison to the FDI cap of 49 per cent in the cable sector.
— PTI |
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Tribune Exclusive
New Delhi, August 21 The government’s move comes following TRAI’s demand for a complete and holistic review of the FDI policy to hike FDI cap in all forms of broadcast signal distribution to 74 per cent. These would include cable TV, HITS, DTH and IPTV and mobile TV. At present, there is a wide variation in FDI caps across different sub-sectors in telecommunications and broadcasting. While the current policy permits 49 per cent foreign holding in cable TV, it allows 100 per cent in satellite radio and 49 per cent in DTH, of which direct foreign investment can only be 20 per cent, the rest having to be through FII investment. The current policy also does not specify the FDI limit for head-end in the sky. While the reports suggest that the Cabinet is expected to take up the matter of raising the FDI cap soon, Jawahar Goel of the Dish TV in a letter addressed to the national security advisor; home secretary; director, Intelligence Bureau (DIB); and secretary, information and broadcasting ministry; has said the national security would be compromised if the FDI in the sector was opened up. Citing the case of the Blackberry mobile phone services in the country, over which the security agencies have raised an objection as they could not intercept the messages sent or received on it, Dish TV has said even the set top boxes (STB) used in the DTH services were capable of receiving and sending “select massages”. Goel says: “The STBs which are used in DTH and digital transmission are capable of receiving select messages transmitted through service providers without getting intercepted by the national security agencies.” He points out that these “select messages” can be inserted in the data packet of 500-700 mega bytes by the uplink station of the DTH operator and can be received by an individual in the form of TV signals. Incidentally, the security agencies again do not have the facilities to intercept such messages. While offering to demonstrate how messages can be done through the STB without interception and detection, Goel said increase in the FDI would compromise the mandatory licencing condition of the Indian management control and would expose the platform to grave security risk. |
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IGIA gets third runway
New Delhi, August 21 The runaway was opened today and Air India Boeing 777-300 ER was the first plane to land this morning. The new 4.43 km-long runaway is capable of handling new generation super wide-bodied aircraft like the Airbus A-380 and the Antonov AN-225. This will nearly double the airport's peak-hour capacity from 35 to 40 landings and take-offs to about 75 per hour. Currently the two existing runways handle nearly 700 flights a day. It has CAT IIIB instrument landing system (ILS) on both - Dwarka and Vasant Kunj - landing funnels, which will allow aircraft to land even when the visibility is as low as 50m. With this Delhi will be the only airport in the country to have three runways and with CAT IIIB facility on two of them. Costing about Rs 1,000 crore, the runway has been built by Delhi International Airport Ltd in a record time of 18 months, six months ahead of its schedule. With the use of modern technologies, the runway has a surface glass grid laid under the concrete to prevent cracks from emerging. The union civil aviation minister Praful Patel while inaugurating the third runaway said the new runway was expected to nearly double the airport's peak hour capacity. Patel said construction activities for modernising and expanding the Kolkata and Chennai airports by the Airports Authority of India would begin by the end of next month, civil aviation minister Praful Patel said today. |
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Airtel, Vodafone launch iPhone
New Delhi, August 21 While Airtel officially launched the iPhone from one of its stores at a mall in Gurgaon, Vodafone did the same from its store in central Delhi to the waiting customers who wanted to be among the first to flaunt the phone. This was also the first of its kind launch in the country. According to Sanjay Kapoor, president (mobile services), Airtel, the iPhone would over the next few days be available through their stores and from the Apple retail outlets in 65 cities across the country. However, the initial launch of the phone has been done in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Priced at Rs 31,000 for the 8GB phone and Rs 36,100 for the 16GB phone, the iPhone has had a pre-registered response from almost two lakh customers on the Airtel network itself. The company is looking at making at least 50 per cent of the sales from the pre-registered customers. Vodafone also said the response from their customers has also been very good. Kapoor, not willing to put a figure of sales the company is expecting, however said Airtel would not be making any profits on the phone and would be making it available to its customers at cost-to-cost basis. This, he said, was being done to provide the customers with better services. The customers would be able to enjoy the iPhone at their present plans with the telecos, which would be offering a free download facility of up to 500 MB in the first one year. As the iPhone made its launch in the country, the other rival camps have not been perturbed and said the iconic touch-screen phone was hardly a threat to their sales. Finland-based Nokia Corp, which dominates the Indian handset market, said its sales would not be impacted by the launch. However, in a bid to counter any effects of iPhone, the company was forced to launch its latest multimedia device N96 in India, almost a month ahead of global launch. Samsung said: “There is a global trend towards touchscreen handsets and we have a strong line-up available, which we are in the process of introducing globally and in India.” |
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BSNL gives link to RCom
New Delhi, August 21 “When others are doing it (giving link to RCom), we will also do it. We have no choice. We always follow TRAI’s directives. Giving interconnection to others is a rule for us. Why is this a big issue?... In fact there is no issue here. We have been very liberal with giving link to other players,” BSNL director (finance) S D Saxena said. COAI, the GSM operators’ body which was planning to move TDSAT, also said there was now no need of of going to the sectoral tribunal over the matter. COAI director general T.V Ramachandran said: “We are happy that we are moving towards a resolution under the good offices of TRAI on the matter in a fair and equitable manner. Since there seems to be all-round efforts to resolve the issue, there is no need of going to TDSAT over the matter.” Two key GSM operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar are also learnt to have agreed in-principle to provide link to RCom’s GSM network. This brings to partly an end the interconnection row that was potentially threatening to be a full-blown legal issue with GSM operators thinking of approaching TDSAT and halting Reliance’s GSM march. Five other operators - MTNL, Aircel, Tata Communications, Spice and Idea Cellular - have already agreed to open their networks to RCom. TRAI had given time till today to give interconnection to RCom or face penalty.
— PTI |
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No interest subsidy extension to exporters
New Delhi, August 21 “Finance minister P Chidambaram informed an exporters’ delegation that the interest subsidy was announced last year in the wake of appreciation of the rupee. Since currency depreciation has again improved exporters’ margins, there is no case for such a sop,” an industry official said. A delegation comprising the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry and Apparel Export Promotion Council met the finance minister on Tuesday with a plea to continue the export incentives. The delegation also wanted the Centre to refund the state-level levies like market fee and octroi, paid by the exporters. Industry sources, however, said the finance minister rejected the demand citing constitutional constraints. The textile industry was also disappointed with a negative response from the finance ministry on their demand to raise duty refunds under different drawback schemes. — PTI
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Nagarjuna bags orders worth Rs 474 cr
Mumbai, August 21 The company has received an order worth Rs 252 crore from Engineers India Ltd for developing sports facilities and Infrastructure development works for 2010 commonwealth games at Delhi University area, which is scheduled to be completed within 18 months. The
Hyderabad-based company has also won an order worth Rs 114 crore from the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation for construction of traffic and transit management corporation in
Bangalore. Besides, Nagarjuna Construction has bagged 108 crore order from Civil Engineering Division of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation for developing transport and infrastructure facilities in
Mysore. — PTI |
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Biocon plans R&D centre in Punjab
Chandigarh, August 21 Biocon chairperson and managing director Kiran Mazumdar communicated this during a meeting with Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal here yesterday. Mazumdar emphasised the need to chalk out a joint action programme to involve the state’s industry with universities to work together for overcoming all the practical hardships being faced by both sectors in the field of biotechnology. She said clinical research in the medical units must be promoted with the involvement of pharmaceutical industry. Taking part in the deliberations, Badal said Punjab was taking major initiative for the promotion of biotechnology in the state, including setting up of national agri-food biotechnology institute, bioprocessing unit and biotechnology park in Knowledge City,
Mohali. |
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3G Spectrum
New Delhi, August 21 Scindia’s comment comes in the wake of the finance ministry raising objection to the recently announced 3G policy by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). The finance ministry officials had argued that it was not consulted before the guidelines were issued. It also said the calculations of the base price and others were not based on the latest figures. The DoT hopes to garner Rs 40,000 crore through the auction of 3G licences and and has set a base price of Rs 2,020 crore for an all-India 3G licence.
— PTI |
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Adlabs to be merged with Big Pictures
Kolkata, August 21 Industry sources said since Adlabs, which was already a movie-processing unit and runs 180 screens across the country at the moment, would be ultimately merged with Big Pictures. From 180 screens now, sources said this number would go up to 300 over the next three to six months. In a new initiative in the field of digital entertainment, Reliance ADAG today launched the Big TV DTH that would source movie contents from Hollywood’s Sony Pictures and various other production houses from Bollywood like Adlabs.
— PTI |
Central Bank of India Hindustan Zinc ups prices Yes Bank services Exide to expand capacity Aurobindo gets USFDA nod HCL Tech centre in Sydney UTI Pharma & Healthcare Lupin acquires stake in Australian Co
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New Delhi, August 21
