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August 16, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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Government frames draft rules for IT Act WB admits
flaws in Indian projects Road project to connect villages
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ICI India plans pharma
exit Max stake in GB sold Refinery
projects cleared
NEW DELHI, Aug 15 — The government today framed the draft rules and regulations for the IT Act 2000 and said that the formal notification of final rules would be issued by September 15, following online feedback from the industry and the public. The draft rules envisage appointment of the Controller, the adjugating officer, the presiding officer and the Cyber Appelate Tribunal, IT Minister Pramod Mahajan said while inaugurating an e-governance centre here. The IT Act was passed by Parliament in mid-May and got the assent of the President in June. The Act will allow the government to carry out its business online. He said it was necessary to frame rules so that a complete set of legal infrastructure was in place to enable and support electronic commerce. Mr Mahajan said the government proposed to keep these rules on a web page for about two weeks during which suggestions and objections would be invited from representatives of trade, industry and business associations besides members of public. On receipt of these, the rules will be suitably modified and then finally published, he told reporters after inaugurating the Centre for Electronic Governance set up here by the ministry. The centre for e-governance has been set up with a view to collating and disseminating the best practices of e-governance for use by the central and state governments. The activities of the centre include demonstration of feasibility of the concepts in e-governance to decision makers through workshops, video demonstrations and tele-conferences, help the central and state governments in defining and implementing the process and policy changes. The minister said the first area of draft rules involved the appointment of certain authorities for implementing various provisions of the Act. Under this, rules have been provided for the appointment of the Controller, the Adjudication Officer, the Presiding Officer, and the Cyber Appellate Tribunal. One of the key functionaries would be the Controller, who will lay down standards and supervise activities of the certifying authorities. The other important issue which has been dealt by the rules is one of specifying qualifications of becoming a certifying authority. He will be granted a licence to issue a digital signature certificate. The security of transactions taking place on the net will depend on the quality and control that he has on certificates. The rules specify the amount of paid-up capital, the bank guarantee and various other requirements that one will have to fulfil before one is granted a licence for issuing digital signature certificate. They will also cover issues like the period of validity of licence granted and the payment to be made. The rules also provide for procedures for creating secure electronic record and secure digital signature. They have been framed on the manner in which the adjudicating officer will hold an inquiry if disputes arise. The e-business focuses its element on telephone, computers and web sites as the basis for deciding competitiveness of a country. It can help the companies to lower costs dramatically across supply and demand chains, take their customer service to a different league, enter new markets, create additional revenue streams and re-define business relationships. According to a Nasscom-McKinsey study, no more than Rs 131 crore of e-commerce was transferred in 1999, while investments exceeded Rs 1000 crore. But, revenues will more than double this year to Rs 450 crore.
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WB
admits flaws in Indian projects NEW YORK, Aug 15 — World Bank officials have
admitted that some projects in India have failed as resettlement
problems remain unsolved and ordinary villagers remain uncompensated
for their trials and tribulations. Thousands of villagers whose homes were flattened in eastern and central India have received no benefits even as Coal India Ltd. has mowed down their homes and profited from higher production and greater efficiencies, says the Wall Street Journal. The Handidhua Resettlement Colony is a “ghost town where water taps have no drinkable water, the shopping centre has no shops and the community centre has no community,” reports the WSJ. Edward Lim, the Bank’s India director, admits the loopholes. “We thought we could make a real difference in this project. We’ve been disappointed with the project on a number of fronts,” he is quoted as saying. After $530 million to start the project to modernise 24 open-pit coalmines, made in 1997, the Bank happily walked off the project after Coal India formally requested it to withdraw in what was becoming an increasingly embarrassing situation where yet another large project was turning out to be a failure for the displaced. The project reeks of the same mistakes made with the massive Narmada dam project from which the Bank withdrew after being requested to in the early 1990s, following equally massive grassroots protests that continue to this day. Despite several failures in resettlement, however, Lim made it clear that the Bank would not change its policy of lending for such projects. “Evidence from the field suggests that despite five years of reformist talk from bank President James D. Wolfensohn, the institution is still having trouble figuring out how to finance big development projects in poor countries while protecting the poor themselves,” the WSJ notes. “Resettlement in very large, densely populated absolutely poor countries like India is very tough,” admits Lim. Still, the bank had made the loan on the promise that displaced persons would be brought back to their original or better state. “Bank staff members say they expected that problems would arise with the Indian coal project because of its scale and difficulty,” WSJ emphasises. In the article, Bank officials place the blame for failure on local authorities in charge of project implementation. And Coal India officials blame the victims even as its coffers are overflowing. “Fuelled by the World Bank’s millions, the company says its new excavators are tearing record amounts of coal from the ground to feed the Indian economy,” WSJ notes. Wealth will eventually flow to the poor, says Shashi Kumar, the Coal India engineer who is responsible for implementing the social content of the World Bank project. “If coal production doesn’t increase, the power plants won’t come,” he says. “If the power plants don’t come, the expansion of industry won’t take place. And if industry doesn’t expand, employment along the chain won’t be produced,” he is quoted as saying. Apparently, bank officials who were monitoring the projects “grumbled” to Coal India about the bad situation at resettlement colonies, the article says. Seems like a lot of crying over spilt milk. The bank knew before lending that Coal India Ltd. had no experience in resettlement. Lim said the other 79 loans to the country, valued at about $11.5 billion, will remain unaffected by the Coal India experience.
— IANS
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Road project to connect villages NEW DELHI, Aug 15 — The Indian Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee announced today a road-building project to link villages for which the government will provide Rs 50 billion ($ 1.1 billion) in the current start-up year. The announcement is line with the government efforts to improve the country’s sagging infrastructure to achieve higher economic growth rate and spread the benefit of economic reforms started in 1991. Mr Vajpayee said the project would be fully sponsored by the federal government under the Prime Minister’s Rural Roads Programme and work would start on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. More than 190,000 of India’s 580,000-odd villages have a population exceeding 1,000. About 14 per cent of them had no metalled linking roads in 1995-96, according to the government’s Planning Commission. Besides the rural road initiative, the government also has an ambitious project to build or widen nearly 12,000 km (7,500 miles) of highways. India plans to build roads linking the northernmost state of Jammu and Kashmir with the southernmost town of Kanyakumari and the northeastern city of Silchar with the western port of Porbandar to speed up economic development. The government expects to raise Rs 20 billion every year from a tax on petrol and diesel to build the highways and supplement it with debt and foreign aid. The World Bank is expected to provide $ 40 million per year for seven years until 2006-07 (April-March) and the Asian Development Bank $ 200 million per year over the same period.— Reuters |
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NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (PTI) — ICI India Ltd., subsidiary of ICI Plc of UK, has embarked on a restructuring drive to focus on speciality products and paints to align businesses in line with the global parent. ICI India, which has already exited from non-core areas like acrylics and fertilisers, plans to divest other businesses like pharmaceuticals over a period of time, Aditya Narayan, Managing Director of the company told PTI. “We’ll be seeing more restructuring in ICI India with the basic strategic intent to bring in core strengths of the British parent to benefit customers, employees and shareholders,” Narayan said. Restructuring would involve moving out of pharmaceuticals, bulk chemicals and cyclicals over a period of time, he said. The company, which had sold its animal healthcare business to Glaxo, is looking at divesting its pharmaceutical business to new owners. “It (pharmaceuticals) does not fit into our long-term portfolio. We are looking at disinvestment only in the long-term after evaluating the best value,” he said. ICI Plc, which holds 51 per cent stake in the Indian subsidiary, had recently exit from pharmaceutical business. “We’ll look at disinvesting from some areas to fund future growth sectors like speciality food and industrial starches,” he said. Mr Narayan said in order to get the best value at the time of disinvestment, ICI India will continue to add new products in its pharma stable. The pharma division of the company which contributes 4 per cent of the total turnover is presently into cardiovasculars and
anaesthetics. |
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NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (PTI) — Max India has sold 24 per cent stake in the 50:50 penicillin-based bulk pharmaceutical joint venture Max GB to the foreign partner Dutch giant DSM for Rs 26 crore. With this sale, Max’s stake in the JV has been diluted to 26 per cent, and Gist Brocades (GB), which is now part of DSM, takes management control by becoming the 74 per cent stake holder in Max GB, a senior Max India official said here today. “Given Max’s changing focus — where the future growth engines are expected to be information technology, healthcare and insurance, but no longer the bulk pharmaceuticals business, we have decided to reduce our holding in Max GB from the current level of 50 per cent to 26 per cent,” Managing Director of Max India Vivek Jetley told PTI here. He said as a result of this decision, Max is expected to receive Rs 26 crore in the second quarter of fiscal 2000-01. While denying any immediate plans to offload the remaining 26 per cent too in the partner’s favour, Jetley said this route could be considered some time later, if the group needed money to invest in its various other upcoming ventures. “We’ve completed this phase of disinvestment and further disinvestment is not on the cards right now,” he said. Gist-Brocades had subscribed to fully convertible debentures aggregating to Rs 88.92 crore issued by Max-GB as per an agreement in 1998-99. As per the pact, upon conversion of these debentures in two to seven years’ time, Max’s stake in the JV would have come down from 50 to 24.9 per cent. “These convertible debentures will now be converted into a 10-year loan and consequently our earlier right to acquire fresh equity shares in Max GB to take our holding back to 50 per cent will cease to exist,” he said. “In view of growing integration between domestic and international markets and the constant need for technology upgradation, Max GB’s business is very heavily dependent on DSM anti-infectives, who are undoubtedly very heavily committed to this business,” Jetley said adding it was best to let the JV partner control the business they understood best. He said the market for penicillin and its derivatives continued to experience a difficult period during the last fiscal globally, with price erosion and margins affecting all players in the business. |
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Refinery
projects cleared CHANDIGARH, Aug 15 — The Haryana State Pollution Control Board has cleared the proposed power project, refinery expansion project and petro-chemical complex of Indian Oil to be set up at Panipat. This was announced by Mr S.S. Saini, Executive Director, Panipat Refinery, at the Independence Day celebrations at the refinery
township here today. Another project to improve the quality of the petrol costing Rs 467 crore has also been approved by Indian Oil, said Mr Saini. Indian Oil has planned an investment of nearly Rs 10,000 crore for these projects at Panipat. The refinery has processed 4.1 MMT of crude oil, 100 per cent capacity run of all process units was established and zero discharge of trade effluent was maintained throughout the year. |
sti
BSES schemes for Net users MUMBAI, Aug 15 (UNI) — BSES Telecom today launched its powersurfer.net. and announced a 50 per cent discount across its various plans targeting a new set of customers. The schemes launched are as follows: “Freedom at 50” to avail this offer, you need not be an Internet wizard. This scheme is available for senior citizens, who can avail the offer at a 50 per cent discount on powersurfer net plans. The scheme promotes Net usage with older people and dispel discomfort towards it. Senior citizens who are 50 years and above can avail this offer for a period of one month, which is from today to September 15,2000. Powersurfer.net launches “freedom at 50” with a patriotic mood on Independence Day to increase awareness among senior citizens and help them to be in pace with the fast growing Net world. “Kids-surf”- this scheme is available for school children between (Std.VI-Std.X) school children can avail a 50 per cent discount on powersurfer net packs. The scheme offers to personalise standard 2 MB free home page space for all students. Here they can have photographs put on their very own personalised web page. The 50 per cent discount scheme is available on the following powersurfer and Net plans. As of now, BSES Telecom’s powersurfer.net schemes will be available only in Mumbai but will soon be extended to other major cities and district towns in the country over time. Japan to punish ‘cybersquatters’ TOKYO, Aug 15 (Reuters) — Japan’s government is finally taking aim at “cybersquatters”, who register someone else’s trademark as an Internet address without authorisation. Although Japan is often criticised by business leaders and Internet companies as an over-regulated market, it has lagged in policing cybersquatters. But a recent string of complaints by Japanese companies over domain names has prompted the Ministry of International Trade and Industry to act. One disputed domain name is “jaccs.co.jp”, which is not owned by consumer credit card company Jaccs Co but by a domain name peddling outfit that calls itself “Japan Associated Cozy Cradle Society”. Jaccs Co has filed a lawsuit to claim the domain. US legislation is already far ahead in this area. In November the government passed an anti-cybersquatting act to prevent “bad faith intent to profit”. Under the law, disputed domain names can be cancelled or transferred to the trademark owner. Domain names, especially in the USA, have become more valuable with the advance of the Internet. PSU sell-off on Net NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (PTI) — The government is considering using Internet for executing the disinvestment process including inviting bids for sale of its equity in PSUs, Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie said here today. “The government is considering adoption of open bidding system through the Internet for disinvestment in various enterprises,” Shourie told reporters on the sidelines of the inauguration of the e-governance centre, set up by the IT Ministry.
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Fine-tuning the mind NEW DELHI: Aimed at “servicing the thinking process”, organisations are fast tapping the stretched corporate executive to relieve him of stress and
enhance productivity and motivation. While some organisations focus on yoga, outdoor activities, others thrive on workshops all at a price of Rs 25,000 and above. Stating that it is high time Indian companies thought sincerely about their people and developed in Indian ethos-people friendly management practices, Mr Arindam Chaudhuri of Planman Consulting says: “We conduct workshops with maximum 14 to 18 participants focussing upon India centric approaches to management problems”. Advocating a method of looking within, Dr Poonam Nijhawan of Manford Alliaz, says “through a series of experiences and role plays, the participants are led into a thorough re-examination of the self as performers as well as critical contributors to organisational output”. Offering learning programmes both for the corporate executive and the youth, Mr Gaurav Saklanie of Discovery Educational Services Pvt Ltd, says: “The executive development programmes are a method of developing people using a set of powerful experiences in the outdoors”. “Participants go through a set of physically stretching and mentally challenging tasks both individually and in groups, followed by reflection and sharing on the group dynamics and behaviour patterns,” says Mr Saklanie.
— PTI Green tea can
prevent cancer CHICAGO: Drinking four or more cups of green tea a day may help stave off skin cancer and could be similarly effective if incorporated into skin care creams, researchers have said. The brew, which is especially popular in Asia, where cancer is rarer than in the West, contains antioxidants that are known to prevent skin cancer in mice and may prevent it in humans. Previous research had suggested substances in green tea called polyphenols can kill tumour cells and may starve cancerous growths by limiting blood vessel growth around them. “Based on epidemiological and mouse models, we can say drinking four or five cups a day may be very helpful for protection,” Santosh Katiyar of Case Western Reserve University, said in a phone interview. But he cautioned that green tea was a preventive step, not a cure, for skin cancer.
— Reuters Fertility cure
for singles? CANBERRA: Australia’s conservative government will push ahead with legal changes this week to block single women and lesbians from fertility treatment although a national poll showed Australians divided on the issue. The coalition government has pledged to introduce amendments to Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act to allow the states, which administer health services, to restrict access to fertility treatment to married women “or those women living with a man in a de facto (common law) relationship”. The issue of whether single women and lesbians wanting children should have the same rights as women with male partners to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) programmes and artificial insemination has gripped Australia over recent weeks. The debate fired up after a court in the state of Victoria ruled that blocking single women from IVF programmes breached current sex discrimination legislation. The coalition members agreed at a meeting on Tuesday that the original intent of the sex discrimination law was to give equal opportunity to single women to get finance and employment, not fertility treatment.
— Reuters |
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From Ashok Kumar in Mumbai Zydus Cadila is a healthy pick THOSE who had begun accumulating the shares of Infosys, Satyam Computer and Wipro on our advice a fortnight ago got an excellent exit price and are now back to sitting on the fence to plunge into the markets once again at lower levels. In spite of a good financial performance, the stock price of Cadila Healthcare had dropped below our trigger level of Rs 135. Headed by Pankaj Patel, Zydus Cadila whose IPO pricing was flawed, partially perhaps, on account of the wrong estimation of ground realities by the company’s book-runners, is now surging ahead on the performance front making it a company to watch especially at the current price levels which suggest that there is some money to be made
here from for those with a medium term investment perspective. The company has posted excellent results for the quarter ended on June 30, 2000, recording a 102 per cent surge in its net profit to touch Rs 18.59 crore as against Rs 9.21 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Sales for the first quarter stood at Rs 132.81 crore outpacing the previous year’s figure of Rs 117.03 crore by 13.48 per cent. The Zydus Cadila group which has been focussing on key therapeutic segments such as cardiovascular, pain-management, biological, gastrointestinal and anti-infective segments, launched five new products during the quarter. Celecoxib, the world-wide block buster drug, which was launched in March 2000 under the brand name Zycel is now the leader in its product category. With the aim of becoming one of the top three companies in India by 2005 and a global player by 2020, Zydus Cadila is exploring attractive options for growth. As part of its short-term or immediate strategy for growth, Zydus Cadila plans to leverage existing reverse engineering capabilities to introduce new innovative products in the market. What really gives this company the cutting edge is the fact that Zydus Cadila is rapid progress on the research front. As a part of its biotech research programme, the group is in the process of commercialising the typhoid vaccine and other therapeutic proteins. The research on a r-DNA based therapeutic protein has already been completed and the animal toxicity studies have been initiated. The product will be used in post-operative and post-transplant conditions. The company will deliver. |
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AI task forces BoB net up IRDA White Paper |
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