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| Wednesday, August 23, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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‘Don’t just hand over AI to a foreigner’
Haryana turns to e-governance CHANDIGARH, Aug 22 — All Haryana Government officials and political leaders will be trained in e-governance by the end of March, 2001. This was stated by Mr P.K. Chaudhry, Commissioner and Secretary, Industries, Haryana, while addressing a press conference here today. Japan PM taken aback by crowd NEW DELHI, Aug 22 — The government is sorting out “sticky issues” for the strategic sale of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) and Maruti Udyog Ltd, Secretary in the Department of Disinvestment (DoD), Pradip Baijal, said. |
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| Reforms erratic: fund managers TORONTO, Aug 22 — Some leading global fund managers have expressed scepticism about India’s investment climate and criticised the government for micromanaging the system. Why tax sops for Star, Sony & Discovery? IAF offers 2,000 cr business Soffia to pay 21 pc
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‘Don’t just hand over AI to a foreigner’ NEW DELHI, Aug 22 (PTI) — The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport and Tourism has strongly disapproved the government’s proposal to offer 26 per cent equity and the management control of Air India to a foreign strategic partner. In its report on disinvestment of Air India presented to both House of Parliament, the committee said the government should reconsider the proposal and restrict the same to 25 per cent so that the de-facto control of the management of Air India remained with Indian nationals. “The committee fails to understand as to why the government is permitting, at one go, the foreign strategic partner to acquire 26 per cent equity and the management control whereas even countries like the USA, China and Taiwan which have earned a big name as the champions of liberalisation and privatisation, are not allowing total management control to the foreign partners,” it said. Stating that it was the unanimous report of the Committee, its Chairman Mohd Salim told reporters “we are not against disinvestment per se but only the way it was being done.” “Disinvestment is a major decision and it should not be carried out in haste”, the committee said adding that the government should have first come out with the Aviation policy and in the light of such policy, a decision on disinvestment could have been taken. The Committee felt that with only 14 per cent share, the Indian partner may not withstand the pressure of the foreign partner with 26 per cent equity and may be influenced by the foreign partner. “Thus, the foreign partner will be able to effectively control the Indian partner and through it the entire Air India”, it said. The committee cited the Chicago Convention which stated that an airline must be “substantially owned and effectively controlled” by the nationals of that country. Referring to a government plan to collect Rs 10,000 crore from the disinvestment process by March 31, 2000, the committee said “the disinvestment of Air India should not appear to be desperate and a distress sale.” The present scenario of projecting disinvestment of Air India painted a “grim picture” of the marketability of the airline and keeping in view the airline’s past performance and future potential, no fair valuation of the assets of the airline has been made, it said. “Air India’s hidden value is far more than what appears on the surface and unless a brighter vision is presented to the prospective bidders of Air India, disinvestment process of the airline may not yield much”, it warned. Expressing its anguish at the government’s failure to take any steps for restructuring of Air India or to arrest the decline in the fortunes of the airline, the Committee said that firstly the government did not make any efforts to obtain the report from the kelkar committee, which had been set up to look into the restructuring of Air India. While the government did not agree to provide equity of Rs 1,000 crore as recommended by the Disinvestment Commission, even Air India’s requirement of Rs 750 crore to make it turn around had not been provided, the committee said adding “the government has been virtually ignoring the assets of Air India built over a period of nearly 50 years”. “Without taking any concrete and effective steps for the revival of Air India, the government has straightaway decided to go in for disinvestment of Air India”, it said. The Committee has recommended that the government should acquire new aircraft at the earliest and the additional manpower in Air India could be accommodated in the maintenance and operation of these aircraft. The Committee has also expressed hope that there would be no
retrenchment of employees of Air India and that the new management would abide by the commitments made earlier by the government. |
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Haryana
turns to e-governance CHANDIGARH, Aug 22 — All Haryana Government officials and political leaders will be trained in e-governance by the end of March, 2001. This was stated by Mr P.K. Chaudhry, Commissioner and Secretary, Industries, Haryana, while addressing a press conference here today. Mr S.K. Saxena, Managing Director, Hartron, said: “It is very important that the government equips itself with the latest techniques in order to face the competition offered by the private sector”. Software exports from Haryana stood at Rs 900 crore which were 2.5 times more than the national level. Under the IT policy of Haryana, all government departments, boards and corporations have been told to allocate 5 per cent of their annual budget for IT applications. The three-day IT Expo being held at the CII from August 24 will have participation of companies like HFCL, Cybermate, Total Audio Visual, Shonkh Technologies International Ltd, Boss, Trident Infotech Comtel, IBM, ICICI, Infotech Ltd, Hope Technologies, SGS Infotech, Exide, Bharati Comtel and Glide. |
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Japan PM taken aback by crowd BANGALORE, Aug 22 (PTI) — Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, visited the headquarters of Infosys Technologies at the Electronics City near here today. Responding to Infosys Chairman Narayana Murthy calling Japan the “jewel of Asia”, Mori, who arrived here yesterday from Islamabad, remarked: “In Japan, there is a saying that if the jewel is not polished, it will not shine. It is necessary for the jewel to be polished”, He invited Indian it experts to hone skills in the sector in Japan. “I have been told that Infosys had anticipated trends of future and has been leaders not only in whole of India (in IT)......but also the world in the new century,”. Mori told the employees of Infosys in his brief speech heard with rapt attention and applauded for each of his remarks. “When I came here, I was taken aback by the crowd. I thought there is cricket match or soccer match”, he said referring to the presence of a huge number of people, who came to listen to him. “There was general election in Japan recently. If the crowd was as big as this, it would have been a landslide victory”, Mori remarked, evoking peels of laughter. “I am moved by the huge crowd”.
Visits Wipro Wipro Corporation, the largest Indian provider of IT services in Japan, expects its business to double every year for the next few years. Welcoming Mori at the company’s plant, Wipro’s Chairman Azim Premji said the company’s investments in Japan will grow manifold after this visit. “We have 700 professionals working on Japanese projects today. We will double our business with Japan every year”, Premji said. At Wipro, Yoshiro Mori was taken around development centres established by Wipro for two major Japanese clients — NEC Corporation and Daiwa Institute of Research. This was followed by a brief tour of the Wipro Learning Centre, an in-house facility for imparting training on latest software technologies. |
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Maruti is being dusted for selloff NEW DELHI, Aug 22 (UNI) — The government is sorting out “sticky issues” for the strategic sale of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) and Maruti Udyog Ltd, Secretary in the Department of Disinvestment (DoD), Pradip Baijal, said. “Since the disinvestment would be through strategic
sale, there are concerns from the administrative ministries, stake-holders and the workers which need to be looked into,” Mr Baijal told UNI. While the government has equal shareholding with Suzuki Motors in Maruti Udyog Ltd, it has a majority stake in VSNL, before DoD was created, the disinvestment programme largely meant the sale of the minority stake of the government in the market. However, the policy direction has since changed towards strategic sale of the government-owned companies to private sector enterprises. “This is why many of the sticky issues need to be sorted out,” Mr Baijal said. The whole process of sale through the strategic route will take about a year or so and the state companies which have so far flourished on monopoly situation could fast lose the competitive advantage reflecting in their valuations. For instance, Maruti Udyog which used to command over 80 per cent of the passenger car market in the country, recently saw its market share plunge to below 50 per cent. “This question of valuation is being debated by us”, DoD Secretary said. While the government would largely be following the recommendations of the Rangarajan Committee and the Disinvestment Commission headed by G.V. Ramakrishna and go in for the strategic sale, the stock market is not in favourable conditions for the direct sale. “The market is in a terrible state,” Mr Baijal said. But will the valuations not be affected even through the strategic sale of companies like VSNL if the market conditions worsen in the next few months ? “No, in the strategic sales there are other methods of valuations and the market conditions would not affect the process,” Mr Baijal said. |
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Reforms erratic: fund managers TORONTO, Aug 22 — Some leading global fund managers have expressed scepticism about India’s investment climate and criticised the government for micromanaging the system. Tien-Yu Sieh, Senior Vice-President of Scudder Kemper that manages four international equity funds, told Forbes magazine that he is on the fence about most Indian companies, even those carrying very little debt. “We have some political concerns about India because the policy reforms have been erratic,” he is quoted as saying in an article titled, “Putting Asia under the microscope”. “The government is micromanaging the economy. They’re as bad as the Soviet Union was,” the latest Forbes issue quotes Joydeep Mukherji, chief India analyst at Standard & Poor’s, as saying. “There is a resistance to liberalisation that is holding back foreign investment. On paper they have liberalised a lot, but in reality they have not liberalised,” Mukherji maintains. Though global money managers generally have a gigantic tolerance for risk and are going back to the Asian market, which had been abandoned for years in the wake of the economic crisis, India is obviously not benefiting in this return. “Foreign investment dollars have certainly not flowed to the subcontinent. India drew less than $3 billion in foreign investment last year, compared with China’s $40 billion,” Forbes notes. For Asia as a whole, while these managers are aggressive about IT firms, they worry about the lack of transparency and the fact that many Asian companies are suppliers of components to US firms and could be affected by happenings in the West. The article points out that Asia cannot be generalised about as it houses both Japan and India, the extreme ends in terms of poverty rates. While being critical of India, Sieh gives high marks to some Southeast Asian economies that were the bane of foreign investors just three years ago. “In terms of weighting, we are very bullish on Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and China,” says Sieh. He has put 39 per cent of the $160 million in assets into technology and 21 per cent into telecom. Asian dotcoms, on the other hand, have a long way to go, according to Merrill Lynch’s senior investment officer Eric Sandlund. ”... we never got into those. We think there is going to be a shakeout.” — IANS |
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Why tax sops for Star, Sony & Discovery? NEW DELHI, Aug 22 (PTI) — CAG has pulled up tax authorities for giving concessions to various foreign telecasting channels (FTCs), including Star, Sony and Discovery during, 1996-99. “FTCs were accorded a “special” status whereby they could avoid the rigours of normal assessment procedure which are applicable to Indian telecasting companies...Most FTCs did not file return on income whereas their Indian agents returned losses,” CAG said in one of its reports tabled in Parliament. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), on July, 1996, decided to impose a 10 per cent tax on the amount remitted abroad after FTCs convinced tax authorities that they would not make substantial profits before 3-4 years of operations. However, in actual terms advertising revenues of Sony increased to 94.48 crore in the annual year 1998-99 from Rs 2.34 crore in 1996-97, while Star’s revenues went up 131 per cent to Rs 76.15 crore and Asia Today posted a 64 per cent growth in ad revenues at Rs 191.35 crore in 1998-99. CAG said CBDT’s presumption of lower profit in the initial period in case of foreign channels was not a correct assessment when compared to Indian telecasting channels. “Comparison with India-based channels such as Sun TV, Udaya and Raj TV were ignored by the CBDT. These should have been the basis to ascertain the profitability of FTCs,” it added. The CBDT also did not consider royalties and lease income from pay channels of Discovery Communications (India) and ESPN Software (India). Discovery Communication earned “facilitation fee” of Rs 22.63 crore for viewing its channel in the financial year 1997-98. ESPN Software India earned distribution turnover of Rs 213 crore from rights to view Star and ESPN channel and earned another Rs 43.31 crore as lease rental in respect of decoders in 1997-98 fiscal, CAG pointed. “The board had not considered this flow of revenue accruing to the FTCs,” the report said. Although the CBDT issued a circular for determining revenue and benefits to FTCs, no systems and procedures were introduced to monitor the assessments. Moreover, foreign channels were allowed about 30 per cent deductions from the aggregate of their receipts. “This was a major concession leading to an unfair advantage for the FTCs,” CAG said. It was also seen that the RBI has granted approval to nine FTCs to operate in India through agents. For instance, Zee Telefilms was an agent to Asia Today while News Television India to Star. But CAG said records of only three Indian agents in Delhi and two in Mumbai could be accessed for audit purpose. |
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IAF offers
2,000 cr business NEW DELHI, Aug 22 — The Indian Air Force (IAF) today offered its Rs 2,000 crore spare parts market to the domestic private sector as part of its massive indigenisation programme.
Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Maintenance Plans) Air Vice-Marshal G.K. Kwatra said today the force imports 70 per cent of its requirements from abroad and this offered a tremendous scope for the Indian industry. The IAF has already indigenised over one lakh items and is in the process of attaining self-reliance in 8000 other items during the current year, he said. “The critical sourcing needs of the variety of spares is significant enough for a large or medium scale company to invest and venture into with long-term involvement,” he said. The IAF today had an interactive session on indigenisation with the representatives of the private industry which was organised by the CII. |
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CHENNAI, Aug 22 (PTI) — Soffia Software’s net profit for the fourth quarter ended June 30 increased to Rs 1.64 crore compared to Rs 26.86 lakh during same period last year. The company at its board meeting held here yesterday decided to maintain the interim dividend of 21 per cent as the final dividend. Soffia Software will acquire two software companies in the USA as part of its plans to focus attention on the telecom and networking sector. The company has also decided to spin off its training division Soffia Infology into a separate company during the year 2001-2002. |
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NRI sets up fund
to ride IT wave New Delhi, Aug 22 — The $ 200 million Boston-based Dhunn-Carr venture capital fund (VCF), promoted by a group of NRIs, is hoping to ride the Indian information technology (IT) boom with the launch of its Dhunn-Carr AK Fund in India. Dhunn-Carr has made investments in a sizeable chunk of Silicon Valley-based companies, such as Cereva Networks in which Dhunn has invested $ 66.5 million so far. Among others are Internet software provider Selectica, IT company Rainbow and the Nasdaq-listed Tripath Technology. Dhunn-Carr’s India fund, to be headquartered in Bangalore, however, wants to be different from other VCFs that tend to focus on the software sector. The company is focusing on hardware manufacturers it feels have been neglected. “Our focus is to create new companies with a billion dollar market capitalisation which should have global roll-outs. We need to get hardware people to India. Focus should be on knowledge-based hardware, design development along with software and manufacturing involving engineers from all disciplines instead of just software engineers,” Rahul Singh, chairman and CEO of Dhunn-Carr, told IANS here. “India should begin to seriously develop hardware capability so that there is greater job opportunity and revenue generation within the country. The companies we create should work in joint effort with U.S. companies,” Singh, who is in India on a brief visit, said. “We are looking at teams with an open mind, good ideas, the concept has to be good. If the concept is good but the team is not we will not put money,” Singh added. Dhunn-Carr’s focus would be on sectors like telecom, basically equipment manufacturers in wireless services, IT companies into convergence and into manufacturing of storage, chips, optics, software and multimedia. — IANS
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Waiter wins Rs 10 lakh MUMBAI: It didn’t require Suresh Gawda of Mumbai to participate in “Kaun Banega Crorepati” to land himself a Rs 10 lakh booty. Overnight he became an object of envy for possessing something as mundane as a crown of a soft drink bottle. Twenty-four-year old Gawda — a waiter in Lakshmi Vilas Restaurant and Bar at Malad here — has been drinking Pepsi and collecting its crowns eversince the soft drink major launched a promotional campaign. Monday, however, was lucky for him. He had with him the crown with the prize-winning crown. “I just can not believe when I saw the number 647 in the announcement on TV. This prize is really godsend and I am yet to decide my future,” said Gawda. The promotion, which was kicked off in the second week of June, has created a lot of consumer excitement. Pepsi has extended the promotion, which was to end on August 16, up to Divali. “The Mera Number Ayega promotion has forged a bond with millions of Pepsi drinkers across the country. The ‘Yeh Dil Mange More” series articulates the aspiration of the youth, which is now being taken forward by the Mera Number Ayega promotion,” Vibha Paul Rishi, Executive Director (Marketing) of Pepsi Foods, said. The campaign, which has been developed by Hindustan Thompson, Delhi, runs across Pepsi’s single serve bottle range of 200 ml and 300 ml.
— IANS Anti-shahtoosh
fashion show New Delhi: If this doesn’t make fashion conscious Indians sit up and take notice of a fast disappearing animal’s plight, little else will. For the dazzling India Fashion Week (IFW) in Delhi, where the who’s who of the country’s fashion circuit has been turning up, has also provided the perfect platform for those campaigning against trade in shahtoosh — wool made from hair of the endangered Chiru antelope — to voice their concern. Seizing the moment is the Wildlife Trust of India that will be holding two seminars to create awareness among traditional buyers about the threat to the Chiru because of the trade in shahtoosh (literally meaning wool fit for kings) shawls. Designer Ritu Kumar suggested that steps should be taken to register the product within a limited period. A certificate should be given to families where shahtoosh has been handed down as a family heirloom. She felt what also added to the threat to the antelope was the fact that shahtoosh had emerged as an important accessory in the European fashion world. According to the Wildlife Trust of India, an estimated 20,000 animals are poached annually. — IANS Here’s mouse that feels SAN FRANCISCO: Logitech Corp has unveiled a mouse that feels the texture of pictures on web pages by vibrating for gliding smoothly. The “Ifeel Mouseman” has a tiny motor inside that glides smoothly when it encounters the picture of an ice cube, or gives a series of twitches when it moves over a tennis racket image. Logitech, the world’s largest maker of computer mice, believes that the touchy-feely mouse will change the way people interact with PCs by activating the sense of touch which is now ignored in computing. The new mouse uses optical technology that allows it to operate without a track ball to register its movement. It is expected to sell for between $ 39 and $ 59 when it goes on sale in October. —
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iCare NEW DELHI, Aug 22 — Ionidea Enterprises Solutions have launched iCare, a software package for human resources management. It manages all the HR functions of an organisation right from recruitment till the exit of an employee.
Hope Tech NEW DELHI, Aug 22 — Hindustan Office Products Limited has changed its name to Hope Technologies Limited to reinforce the company’s core strengths in design and engineering solutions.
CMC NEW DELHI, Aug 22 — CMC has designed and developed a website for the Central Board of Excise and Customs, falling under the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance. The sites are “customs.gov.in”, exciseandcustoms.gov.in”, “cbec.gov.in”, “servicetax.gov.in” and “excise.gov.in”.
Soft Systems NEW DELHI, Aug 22 — The ERP solution for agri-business developed by Soft Systems’ “Harvest it” has become the first and only software product from India to be the recipient of the Microsoft Fusion award 2000 for Asia and South Pacific Region and Microsoft BackOffice Logo Certificate.
D.C. Bajaj CHANDIGARH, Aug 22 — Mr D.C. Bajaj, has been elected as the new President of the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI) for the year 2000-01. He succeeded Mr Mahesh Shah. |
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