Saturday, December 19, 1998
today's calendar
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B U S I N E S S | Saturday, December 19, 1998 |
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spotlight today's calendar |
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Economy can face limited
Gulf fallout Tax
collections decline |
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Punwire gets DoT orders
worth 9 crore DSE
collects Rs 7 crore |
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Lions
Club’s exhibition inaugurated European,
Asian markets lead upswing |
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Economy can
face limited Gulf fallout NEW DELHI, Dec 18 — The flare-up in West Asia may not have an immediate effect on the Indian economy, specially the oil prices, even though there is a rise in oil prices in the global market. Observers here felt that since the country did not have any trading with Iraq, it was unlikely that the Indian economy would face any undue pressure. Although the Centre was closely monitoring the situation, reports said that there was no impact either on the oil or the shipping sector. The observers, however, felt that in the long term the flare-up could put pressure on the balance of payments. This, they clarified, would happen only if the crisis was prolonged, of which the chances were remote. On Wednesday the crude prices had shot up by 83 cents to $ 12.38 per barrel on speculation about the attack. Petroleum ministry officials, however, pointed out that the crude oil prices in the international market had already fallen by $ 5 to $ 6 per barrel in the last few months. The present rise would then have little impact on the crude oil prices in India. The oil Pool Account was also not going to be affected adversely since the account was already running in surplus. There was a feeling that since the Indian economy was not directly linked with the global economy and markets, the negative impact of the ongoing tussle could be restrictive. The observers felt that there was always psychological impact and that there was also an initial impact on the market but it was short-lived. The attack, if prolonged, could affect the flow of remittances to India from the NRIs. According to officials of the Finance Ministry, the internal projections had put the annual average import price of crude oil at $ 12 per barrel and in the remaining part of the year the prices in the global market were not likely to go up by any wide margin. The supplies of crude oil in the international market from Iraq were unlikely to be affected for a longer period. This would also mean that the rise in the oil prices would also be limited unless there was a sustained disruption in the supply of crude oil from Iraq. The shipping industry has
also not been affected so far as there is currently no
Indian ship in the war zone. However later, if the
situation demanded some of the Iraqi ports may be
declared as war-affected and some of the Indian shipping
lines which would not have any insurance could be
affected. |
Punwire gets
DoT orders worth 9 crore CHANDIGARH, Dec 18 — Punwire has received two orders from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for the supply of 2 GHz digital microwave equipment valued at Rs 8.82 crore. The equipment is used by DoT in its network for connecting smaller townships to the main trunk routes so as to provide STD/ISD facility. The microwave radio sets have been designed specifically to work under Indian conditions. Punwire, which a major supplier to DoT for various telecom equipment like digital point to point and point to multi point microwave radios, telephones etc., also supplies equipment to Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, the police and para-military forces, the defence forces and cable TV operators. Punwire is a major supplier of 2 way radios, telephones, pagers, video uplinking equipment & cable TV equipment apart form transmission & access equipment. The company has introduced
VSAT-based distance learning services in the country for
the first time to take high quality education to the
rural areas, said a company release here today. |
Tax
collections decline CHANDIGARH, Dec 18 — Markets are dull and recession is now well set. This is a common refrain among industrialists, traders and government officials. While industrialists are cutting down production as traders refuse to lift their products, the letters complain that buyers have deserted the market. For farmers wishing to sell their land, there are hardly any takers. Prices are down for all types of property. Five years ago, there was a booming market with buyers. “The price of land of various qualities has fallen by 15 to 50 per cent in Punjab and Haryana”, revenue officials in both states confide. The same is true of urban property all over the region. Take Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali, the boom areas, the prices have gone down by nearly 30 per cent and in some case even more, real estate agents who had made millions admit. “This is the dullest period I have come across”, says Mr Amarjit Sethi, a property dealer with 25 years standing. This view is shared by others in the city. Some estimate that the manufacturing sector is the worst hit. Even the small scale sector, the bane of Punjab and Haryana, is reeling under no demand notice. More and more units are getting closed down or are on the verge of closure. This builds a vicious circle. Demand is less and one reason is high prices and the second is farmers and workers, the main consumers, have a little surplus with them to buy. And if demand is less, traders suffer and so do manufacturers. When industry suffers, it lays off workers and this leads to unemployment and thus less money to buy goods and services. Maruti Udyog, now fighting both recession and new rivals in the market, has cut down its production by 25 per cent. This has seriously affected the recovery of sales tax in Haryana. A sample of 107 large tax payers that include paper, footwear and general merchandise in Haryana shows that the dealers had paid Rs 32.86 crore up to October 1998 against Rs 48.27 crore during the corresponding period last year. Haryana may lose up to Rs 25 crore. This surely means much less business all over Haryana. Take Punjab, one reason for the poor sales tax collection here again is recession. Last year up to March 1998 the sales tax collection was Rs 1,399.76 crore. It showed a rise of 10.4 per cent over the previous year’s 1267.00 crore. But this year up to November 1998, the sales tax collection touched Rs 1049.51 crore. The financial year has four more months to complete and this period is rated as a good period. But officials said,” tardy collection is one good reason, but then markets are down also.” Ludhiana’s hosiery
and cycle industry or sewing machines industry,
Amritsar’s woollen industry or Jalandhar’s hand
tools — all are showing signs of recession. |
DSE collects Rs 7 crore as listing fee NEW DELHI, Dec 18 (PTI) — The annual general meeting of the Delhi Stock Exchange (DSE) will be held tomorrow to consider annual accounts, besides deciding new directors on its board. The DSE, which collected a record Rs 7.17 crore as listing fee for 1997-98, collected a whopping Rs 68,286.11 crore turnover, registering nearly 40 per cent increase over the previous year. DSE President Deepak Choudhry said the listing fee collection was a historic high despite sluggish primary market with hardly any fresh listing. He said some companies had wounded up, amalgamated or merged, thus reducing the number of companies and securities listed on the exchange. DSE officials said the
elections for the DSE board are expected to get tougher
this year as a large number of corporate members are in
the fray. |
Lions
Club’s exhibition inaugurated CHANDIGARH, Dec 18 — A four-day Lions Club Chandigarh Plaza-sponsored “Consumer-98” exhibition-cum-sale opened to the public at Parade Ground here today. According to Lion H S Malhotra, 85 stalls have been put up. Special attractions at the exhibition include a free check-up of blood sugar, a medical check-up, a Hepatitis-B vaccination camp and a food festival. The organisers were jubilant this time as their exhibition in October last year had witnessed torrential rain. Lion Anil Gupta said as the winter time attracts heavy purchases, both customers and stall owners will realise a good value of money. The exhibition was
inaugurated by Mr G Vajralingam, Secretary Finance,
Chandigarh Administration. |
IQL offers
Juran, Crosby programmes CHANDIGARH, Dec 18 — Quality programmes, designed by Juran and Crosby, will now be available in the city. A training workshop was organised here today by the Delhi-based Institute of Quality Limited (IQL), which represents both Juran Institute and Philip Crosby Associates in India. IQL has entered into a business partner arrangement in Chandigarh to provide training and consultancy in quality management to small and medium enterprises. Sarat Luniya, General Manager, Business Partners of IQL, said the company would have an IQL Associate in every major industrial belt by the year 2000. He said the only way company can remain profitable is through reduction of operating costs, waste and cycle time. Pratap Aggarwal, Managing Director of IQL Associates in Chandigarh, told TNS that the enterprises that could benefit from quality programmes included hotels & restaurants, small firms, hospitals and nursing homes, authorised service stations, government departments and educational institutions. Mr Ravinder Singh, Vice-President, IQL, said IQF is a non-profit body established with the objective of communicating the importance of quality to the non-corporate sector. It has been working with over 100 schools in Delhi. Mr Harish Kulshrestha,
Manager MIS, Deepak Spinners, said that with the help of
IQL Associates, the local industry will benefit.
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European, Asian markets lead upswing MUMBAI, Dec 18 (PTI) — Equities recovered their initial losses and a few key scrips even scored handsome gains lifting the sensex moderately up by 1o points on the stock market here today in the wake of late support by operators as well as foreign funds and Indian financial institutions. Initially, prices tended to move furthers downwards in extremely narrow movements as the market witnessed fresh selling pressure despite buoyant European markets like Wall Street and the UK last night followed by better start by Asian stocks this morning, as American warplanes continued air-strikes on Iraq. However, the market rebounced after midweek when the sensex neared the 2841-support level with renewed support from foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and FIs. FIIs were reportedly net buyers in Infosys Tech, Castrol, Pentafour Software, Satyam Computer, Zee Telefilms, Telco and others. Indian mutual funds and banks were reported to have made purchases in Madras Cement, Guj Ambuja Cement, MTNL, SBI and Corporation Bank. Dealers attributed heavy support in software scrips to expectations of further improvement in the working of this sector, third quarter results of which are expected by month-end. Speculation of a bonus issue by Infosys Technology also contributed to the uptrend. Bull operators were also active in software scrips, dealers said. The BSE sensitive index opened better at 2875.91 but later reacted to dip to the intra-day low of 2850.48 before closing at 2875.09 as against yesterday’s close of 2864.44, netting a small gain of 10.65 points. The BSE-100 index also edged up by 5.31 points to 1273.17 from previous close of 1267.86. The Unit Trust of India was said to have sold heavily high priced stocks like HLL, ITC and some pharma shares. Market sources strongly feel that the market will gradually move upwards and even break the 3040-resistance. The BDE-200 and the Dollex were quoted moderately up at 295.37 and 115.60 compared with the previous close of 294.05 and 115.05 respectively. The volume of business was down by Rs 102.67 crore to Rs 1251.40 crore from yesterday’s turnover of Rs 1354.07 crore. Satyam Computer clocked the highest turnover of Rs 362.90 crore followed by ITC (Rs 152.82 crore), Pentafour Software (Rs 123.40 crore), Zee Telefilms (Rs 97.76 crore) and Telco (Rs 59.53 crore). Market leader Satyam Computer firmed up by 34 to 630. ITC rose by 6 to 696, Telco by 4.70 to 141.30, Pentafour Software by 25.75 to 512 and Zee Telefilms by 9 to 586.25.
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DUBAI (PTI): Indian software exports this fiscal are expected to touch $ 2.75 up from $ 1.5 billion last year with the introduction of the unified currency euro in Europe holding new opportunities for the country’s software industry. The fears of a downturn in software exports once the Y2K (year 2000) problem is solved is unfounded as it accounts for only 15 per cent of total software exports, Dewang Mehta, Executive Director, National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) said at a joint meeting of Indian and American business councils here. The software industry this year will be worth $ 1.3 billion compared to $ 950 million last year and the exports, which have consistently grown by over 50 per cent in the last seven years, are expected to register 68 per cent growth in dollar terms in 1998-99 though in rupee terms the figure may be higher, Mehta said On-line export NEW DELHI (PTI): An on-line system, being launched by the Apparel Export Promotion Council (APEC) to electronically allocate garment export quotas has run into rough weather with a group of exporters questioning the rules for “mutual transfer” of the quotas. The issue has now been referred to the Textile Ministry following a protest by a section of the exporters led by the All India Garment Exporters Common Cause Guild, against a proposed amendment to the “mutual transfer” rules in the on-line system called Electronic Transfer System (ETS). Thinking software NEW DELHI (PTI): US-based software major Computer Associates (CA) has unveiled its latest software ‘Neugents’, which can be used within information technology infrastructure to enable systems to predict changes and results. The software can virtually predict what is going to happen after analysing the data stored inside a system, CA India Managing Director Venkat Subbarao said here on Thursday. “Neugents helps new generation business applications to not only analyse conditions in business markets and technical environments, but also predicts changes in those conditions and suggest remedies,” Subbarao claimed. Terming Neugents as a “thinking software,” Subbarao said the software, priced around $ 2,000 could perform through ‘self-learning’ processes that empower it to assimilate new information and apply it to new situations without manual programming. “For the first time a software can instinctively identify new business markets, spotlight new sources of revenue and intelligently automate business functions,” he said. Future implementations of Neugents would encompass active data mining, electronic commerce, financial services and other mission-critical business applications. Apple BANGALORE (PTI): Apple Computer International Private Ltd has entered into distribution partnership for its products in India with Electronic Resources India Limited (ERIL). Announcing this, Apple South Asia Managing Director Samit Roy told reporters here that the partnership would enrich Apple’s distribution network in India and bring in the support and state-of-the-art distribution practices. Computers CHANDIGARH (TNS): A
complete celeron 266 MHz PC with colour monitor, a full
featured multimedia PC with current level Intel processor
with Windows 98 and a premium, feature rich home computer
with the state of art Microsoft natural keyboard designed
with a split to save the user from fatigue will be the
major attractions of a two-day computer carnival being
organised by HCL at Hotel Shivalikview from tomorrow. The
latest models — all with Windows 98 — will be
displayed. The Pondicherry plant of HCL produced more
than 60,000 machines a year. |
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| Forex MUMBAI, Dec 18 (PTI) — The following are interbank forex and RBI rates: (In rupees per unit) US $ 42.5425/5525. The RBI reference rate was Rs 42.54. Gold falls Ricoh copiers V. Dhiri PNB counter |
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