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| Thursday, April 6, 2000, Chandigarh, India  
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CNG Cielo priced at Rs
5.30 lakh
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New HP tourism policy
soon Wintech opens two e-commerce
centres Exim Policy to boost MMTC Rockwell announces automation
strategy
States, UTs agree to sales tax
deadline NEW DELHI, April 5 — All the States and Union Territories today agreed to comply by the end of this month, with uniform floor rate of sales tax, thus bringing to an end the tax war among the States. Four rates of sales tax-zero, four, eight and 20 per cent and tax incentives for industry, given by various states to bring in investment, will be applicable to all States and Union Territories by the end of this month. The eight-member standing committee for uniform sales tax met here today to finalise the nitty-gritty of applicability of the decision taken earlier in this regard. The committee was presided over by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and the convenor was West Bengal Finance Minister Ashim Das Gupta. Punjab Finance Minister Capt Kanwaljit Singh, who attended the meeting, said the agreement had been reached on 205 items. All the States would issue notifications in this regard by April 30 and the next meeting has been fixed on May 4 to review the implementation. The sales tax incentives given by the Punjab Government to attract industries would be stopped by the end of this month, Capt Kanwaljit Singh said here. “Industrial units would be attracted to invest in the state by offering infrastructural incentives,” he told newspersons after attending the meeting of the Standing Committee of State Finance Ministers here. Industries, at present enjoy incentives on land purchase, registration, interest collection, he said, adding that infrastructural incentives like power, road, communication, housing and education would be given in future to attract industrial units. Only exception has been the State of Pondicherry, where it could not be implemented due to change of Government. “Mr Sinha has assured that the Union Territory would also fall in line with the states by April 30 and the disparity would be removed,” Capt Kanwaljit Singh said. The different sales tax structure between Punjab and Chandigarh would be removed by this measure, he said. Even the States which
had first implemented the uniform sales tax structure but
withdrew for some of the items would abide by the uniform
structure, he said and pointed out at Haryana as an
example. |
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NEW DELHI, April 5 (UNI) — Economists and social scientists find that the green revolution in Punjab has petered out, leaving the State in an economic morass with no funds for social sector and infrastructural development. At a discussion organised here by the Capital-based National Institute of Punjab Studies, former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and Prof G.S. Bhalla painted a grim scenario about the State, saying that Punjab was fast losing on all fronts and the situation warranted immediate corrective measures. The discussion on “Trends in Punjab economy and its social implication”, held on Sunday, was presided over by Chief Election Commissioner M.S. Gill. He highlighted the point that “Punjab is under extreme financial crisis as 67 per cent of the funds go to salaries and 30 per cent to the interest payment leaving absolutely no money for investment in infrastructural development.” Prof Bhalla said that Punjab, which once prided in linking every village with a road and 100 per cent power supply to the villages, is “totally starved of development investments today.” The malaise, he said, emanated from political popularism, deterioration of social service sector such as health, education and basic scientific research and centralisation of powers. The economists agreed to the fact that the green revolution had plateaud with per-unit productivity of wheat and rice declining. Dr Amrik Singh, former Vice-Chancellor and Prof Bipan Chandra hinted at the social problem of younger generation abandoning the traditional work and culture in an agrarian society. Dr M.S.Gill expressed concern on the decelerating pace of development, declining status of women, deterioration in service sector and vulgarisation of the Punjabi culture. Institute Director
Mohinder Singh said the two decades of agriculture
development in Punjab had tremendously promoted service
and tertiary sectors in the State. |
CNG Cielo priced at Rs 5.30 lakh NEW DELHI, April 5 (PTI) — Daewoo Motor India today announced the launch of a de-lux version of its mid-sized car Nexia with better engine performance and improved interiors, carrying a price tag of Rs 6.20 lakh.The company also announced price of the CNG version of Cielo at Rs 5.30 lakhs (ex-showroom, Delhi) against the petrol variant which is available in the market at a price of Rs 4.90 lakh, a company release said here today. Hyundai restrained: MRTPC today restrained Hyundai from publishing the “disparaged” advertisement against Daewoo in print, visual, electronics and hoardings saying “we find that in several advertisements the car of the applicant (Daewoo) is designed to be disparaged”. Issuing notice to Hyundai to file reply within three weeks, MRTPC fixed hearing in the case on May 12. Armada & Bolero: Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) will replace its entire “Armada” range of with Euro-II compliant advanced Bolero vehicles by the month-end. The company will fit new
engines in the existing Armada vehicle, upgrade the
interiors and body designing, and rename it as Bolero
with a view to creating a new brand in the market. |
New HP
tourism policy soon SHIMLA, April 5 — The Himachal Government will soon come out with a new tourism policy which will recognise the role of the private sector in the liberalised economic environment in the development of this important sector. Stating this at an interactive meeting with members of the Himachal Hotels Association here, Mr Ajay Prasad, Secretary Tourism, said that the concept of tourism had undergone a radical change over the past one decade, making it essential for the state to frame a new policy which could take care of the emerging areas like adventure sports, health resorts and eco-tourism. He said the policy would be finalised in consultation with the industry and departments concerned to ensure an integrated development of the tourism sector. The draft policy had already been circulated and some of the valuable suggestions made by the industry would be incorporated in the policy. Simultaneously, the Tourist Trade Act is being amended to put in place a regulatory framework for various kinds of adventure sports which required certain minimum safety standards. He said the unstructured manner in which hand-gliding, paragliding, river rafting and other adventure sports are being organised at present had earned bad name for the State. The new policy would also take care of the inter departmental issues and ensure that tourism industry did not have to deal with a multiple agencies. The policy would give due place to the private sector and reduce the government’s involvement merely to a facilitator. The government also proposed to set up a destination development fund to which all the agencies connected with tourism and basic infrastructure sectors will contribute. Mr Yogesh Khanna, Secretary, Finance, said the latest Budget recognised tourism as one of the engines of economic growth and the effort now was to provide the thrust to the sector which had been missing hitherto. Mr Umesh Akre, Secretary of the Association, welcomed the government decision to charge luxury tax on the basis of actual receipts instead of rack rates of hotel rooms. He said this would enable hotels to offer competitive rates on packages, group bookings and conference, which, in turn, help generate more business. He said the decision to charge passenger tax at a fixed rate of Rs 12,000 per quarter on tourist buses coming from other States would increase tourist traffic by road. He urged the government to fix a reasonable tax on buses and other vehicles on trip basis. Mr Akre also hailed the
rationalisation of the bar licence fee for hotels up to
50 rooms. This would enable small hotels to have bars. He
demanded adequate representation for the private sector
in various boards and councils which, he stressed, be
selected in a democratic manner. He also underlined the
need to give all incentives and benefits to the tourism
sector available to the manufacturing sector. |
Central Bank, BoB revise interest rates MUMBAI, April 5 (PTI) — Taking a cue from the recent bank rate cut by RBI, two more public sector banks — Bank of Baroda (BoB) and Central Bank of India — have revised downwards their term deposit rates. Bank of Baroda also slashed its PLR by 0.75 per cent to 11.25 per cent for advances above Rs 25,000, while the rate for advances up to Rs 25,000 was brought down from 12 per cent to 11.25 per cent, both with effect from tomorrow. BoB has also revised its retail deposit rates, which will be in the range of 4.5 per cent for 15 to 30 days to 9.5 per cent for terms above three years with effect from April 7. Central Bank of India (CBI) has lowered interest rates on various slabs of term deposits by 0.5 per cent to one per cent, besides slashing the SB rate to 4 per cent. With effect from April
7, 2000, the interest rate on term deposits of 15 to 29
days’ duration will be 4.5 per cent against 5 per
cent earlier. For deposits of more than three years, the
rate will be 10 per cent against 10.5 per cent earlier. |
Wintech
opens two e-commerce centres CHANDIGARH, April 5 —Wintech today opened two e-commerce education centres in Chandigarh - one in Sector 8-C and the other in Sector 34-A. The two centres will offer students two key e-commerce technologies - WebDB and Microsoft site server. The Wintech centre in Sector 8-C was inaugurated by Mr R.K. Garg, Chairman, Asia Resorts, while the Sector 34-A centre was inaugurated by Mrs Surinder Paul, Chief Commissioner, Income Tax. Wintech has now 10 centres in Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. In the next few months it plans to open 30 more centres in the region. Wintech claims to be the
first institution to offer Internet education, JAVA,
Javabeans, JDBC, RMI, CORBA, Visual Basic 6.0 and Oracle
8i in India. It has launched 1 lakh students on the
global IT scene, said a company release here today. |
Exim
Policy to boost MMTC NEW DELHI, April 3 — The removal of quantitative restrictions on over 700 items as announced in the Exim Policy will benefit MMTC, its Chairman and Managing Director, Mr S.D. Kapoor, has said. “The changes in the Exim Policy will boost our trading activities as a number of items can now be freely imported,” Mr Kapoor told reporters here. Highlighting the performance of the company during 1999-2000, he said MMTC had registered a 14 per cent rise in turnover at Rs 4845 crore that included exports of Rs 1201 crore, imports worth Rs 3629 crore and domestic trade of Rs 15 crore. The company’s net
profit for the year rose by 44 per cent to 25.98 crore
and networth stood at Rs 668 crore compared to Rs 617
crore during 1998-99, he said, adding that the board has
declared an interim dividend of 20 per cent. |
Rockwell
announces automation strategy CHANDIGARH, April 5 — Rockwell Automation here today announced its complete automation strategy for industries in Punjab at a seminar which highlighted the new approach to quality productivity. It was announced at the seminar that Rockwell Automation is introducing its entire range of automation products & solutions. The company has recently opened an office in Chandigarh and appointed distributors in Punjab. Mr Ajay Kumar, GM
Marketing, Allen Bradley India, said: “An
industrially active state like Punjab needs successful
and proven solutions to support the rapid rate of
growth”. |
co
by Ashok Kumar Time to grab Infy & Zee Telefilms APRIL 4, 2000, will go down in the history of the Indian bourses as one of the darkest days it has witnessed. However, the writing on the wall had been there for all who cared to see it as so called ‘New Bulls’ were rumoured, for quite some time now to have begun misusing the Mauritius investment route to ensure that the net FII investment figures remained positive. If historical evidence is anything to go by, there should be a rebound after some more blood-letting later this week. Trading in such a scenario can be extremely risk-prone and hence both long and short positions must be limited as there is no surety over the direction the indices will move. Compulsive traders could consider a long term position at the counters of Hindustan Lever at Rs 2319 (square up at Rs 2398) and BFL Software at Rs 100 (square up at Rs 1066). Short positions could be considered at the counters of Reliance Industries at Rs 301 (cover up at Rs 278) and ITC at Rs 736 (cover up at Rs 697). Discerning investors can
pick up minimum quantities of Infosys Technologies and
Zee Telefilms in the demat segment, at successive price
declines as these scrips could be the first to rebound.
There is no dark horse this week, only darkness all
around. Perhaps, the silver lining may appear next week. |
cr
Moser Baer profit vaults 121 pc NEW DELHI, April 5 (PTI) — Moser Baer today announced a 121 per cent rise in the profit to Rs 45.2 crore in 1999-2000 against Rs 20.4 crore in the previous year. Company sales grew by 48 per cent to Rs 152.5 crore, up from Rs 103.2 crore recorded in 1998-99. The equity capital stood at Rs 32.1 crore against Rs 20.2 crore in the previous year. Tata Honeywell MoU with Group 4 NEW DELHI, April 5 (UNI) — Tata Honeywell and Group 4 Securitas, a global security company, today signed an MoU to form a joint venture company to address the emerging needs for central monitoring and response services for electronic security solutions. Both companies will have a 50:50 stake in the new company. Exide India to pay 25 pc interim CALCUTTA, April 5 (UNI) — Exide Industries today announced an interim dividend of 25 per cent even before taking into account the anticipated financial results for the year 2000-2001. Satyam, Modi Telstra sign MoU MUMBAI, April 5 (PTI)
— Satyam Infoway and cellular major Modi Telstra
have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to offer
Internet-related value-added services in Calcutta. |
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NFL target Rel buyback IFFCO Birla AT&T |
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