 |
| Thursday, February 8, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
|
Markfed initiatives to lift potato gloom
From marketing to bus terminals MTNL launches cellular services
PM urges world capital tax Centre to honour Dabhol
guarantee |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bank of Punjab sets up Kolkata
branch Honda 2-wheeler soon Prisoner turns
millionaire No cancer link
to cell phones Elephants to
get married
|
|
Markfed initiatives to lift potato gloom CHANDIGARH, Feb 7 — To tackle the present potato glut in Punjab and provide a minimum support price, Markfed will soon enter the market to buy two lakh bags of potato at Rs 2 a kg. Under a market intervention scheme of the Centre, Markfed will tap Nafed, which too may purchase two lakh bags of potato from Punjab. Announcing this here today, Mr D.S Bains, Markfed MD, said if Markfed suffers any loss while buying potatoes at Rs 2 a kg the Centre will meet half the loss and the remaining half will be borne by the Punjab Government. The potato prices, which ruled at Rs 1.30 a kg recently, has shot up to Rs 1.75 after Markfed bought 100 truckloads of potato for Gujarat earthquake victims. Gujarat-bound 100 trucks, each carrying 10 tonnes of potato, will be flagged off by Mr Parkash Singh Badal at the PAP ground in Jalandhar tomorrow. Five trucks were despatched to Gujarat, where Punjab is organising langar for one lakh people, on February 2 from Patiala by the Chief Minister. Markfed also supplies fresh vegetables and vanaspati for the langar. To export potatoes, Markfed has identified Sri Lanka, Dubai and Mauritius as potential markets. It has got a potato order from Sri Lanka at $ 100 per metric tonne and sent samples. But the price is not good enough. To negotiate a viable price, Mr Bains left for Colombo today, leading a delegation of potato growers. If a deal is struck with Lankan importers, identified by the Indian Embassy in Colombo, Markfed may step out, leaving Punjabi growers to handle their exports. The delegation will also explore the UAE and Mauritius markets. To store potatoes, Markfed is set to float tenders for four modern cold storages — one in Bathinda and three in Doaba — where potatoes will be kept after CIPC treatment. The CIPC technology prolongs potatoes shelf life and keeps the original taste intact. Apart from exports, Markfed will sell potatoes through its outlets. It also plans to tap the Army demand for fruits and vegetables, for which a meeting is scheduled for February 15-16. The delegation to Colombo also carried samples of waxed and graded kinnows to push their export. Colombo currently imports potatoes from Pakistan. Markfed officials are confident that their Kufri Jyoti and Kufri Chandermukhi potatoes will beat the competition, being superior to Pakistani potatoes.
From marketing to bus terminals CHANDIGARH, Feb 7 — Markfed will now build bus stands in Punjab. And also hockey and athletic tracks, cycle and basketball stadiums — these at
PAU, Ludhiana. Why? Because it builds cheaper and faster than the PWD. And PWD officials are not pleased. A bus stand projects’ review meeting was held today under the Chief Secretary. The Punjab Government has asked Markfed to build new bus stands at
Moga, Zira, Ferozepore, Muktsar, Ropar and Amritsar, much to the PWD’s annoyance. In the first four towns, work has already started, costing Rs 13 crore so far, and will be completed by May-June this year. At
Amritsar, the existing bus stand structure will be pulled down. A make-shift bus terminal will be put up while the new one is constructed. Still on paper, this project will cost Rs 10
crore. For the Ropar bus stand, land is being acquired. Funds will come from the Transport Department. Markfed will earn Rs 1.8 crore from the projects — more than its salary bill of Rs 1
crore. PUDA and PSIEC too will pitch in. Does Markfed have construction experience? Said Mr D.S.
Bains, Markfed MD: “We built one sugar mill (at Malout) and six rice mills in a record time.” MTNL launches cellular services NEW DELHI, Feb 7
— After a week’s delay from the original schedule, MTNL, today launched its cellular phone service, Dolphin, in the national capital. The service in Mumbai is scheduled to commence on February 28. MTNL is the third operator in the market and has projected to have in excess of one lakh subscribers in the first year of its operation. So far, since the booking of the Dolphin service started on January 15, 10,000 customers have sent in their subscription applications, and MTNL is envisaging to increase its user base to four lakh by the end of the third year. The existing players AirTel and Essar, have a combined subscription base of approximately 4,50,000 in Delhi and had reduced their tariffs to compatible levels of MTNL. The Dolphin service will entail a tariff of Rs 2.70 per minute for an outgoing call and Rs 1.50 per minute for an incoming call with a monthly rental of Rs 400. The pre-paid service is expected to start within two months time, with roaming facility to be provided “ progressively”. Paying employees to quit Reuters: MTNL facing growing competition and the need to make itself appealing to investors, plans to reduce its bloated staff by paying employees to quit, a top company official indicated on Tuesday. The state-run firm has nearly 63,000 employees. It plans to make a general offer to the 50,000 employees in the non-executive C & D grades to quit in return for money. “We are in the process of submitting a voluntary retirement scheme to the board. We hope to reduce our staff in the C & D grades by about five percent,” S. Sundaresan, MTNL’s Finance Director, told Reuters. The company, soon to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, faces growing competition from leaner private firms. Last month the government announced an unrestricted number of companies will be allowed to enter the fixed-line business. Analysts say MTNL must also pare its staff to make itself more attractive to investors ahead of the likely privatisation of the company. Sundaresan said the scheme would be ready in about two months and will be implemented in the financial year beginning April 1. MTNL had not finalised the details of the scheme and was studying similar schemes at state-run banks. |
|
NEW DELHI, Feb 7 — Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee said on Wednesday a charge should be imposed on capital flows between developed countries and the money raised should be used to fight poverty. The gap between rich and poor countries had widened to an unsustainable extent, Vajpayee said. “It is high time we considered imposition of an international levy on capital flows between developed countries, and all capital repatriations from developing countries,” he said. The proceeds could go to a global poverty-reduction fund which could help poor countries liquidate external debts and tackle poverty, he told a conference on sustainable development. He did not say how he thought such a levy should be implemented or how much it should be. Vajpayee said globalisation had brought benefits such as technology and trade but the spread was uneven across the world. “As a result, the rate at which poverty is being eradicated has not kept pace with the rate at which the rich are getting richer,” he said. The proposed fund could also help people in low-income countries improve their skills to compete in a global economy, he said. Some 2.8 billion people across the world live on less than $2 a day, said the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI), which organised the conference. Vajpayee also urged greater cooperation to fight natural disasters and said India was grateful for the international help it received in coping with last month’s earthquake that devastated the prosperous state of Gujarat. “The poor always lose proportionately much more than the rich in natural calamities,” he said. An estimated 30,000 people died in the Gujarat quake, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless.
— Reuters Centre to honour
Dabhol guarantee NEW DELHI, Feb 7
— The Centre will honour the counter-guarantee given to the Enron-promoted Dabhol Power Company (DPC) following the Maharashtra Government’s refusal to pay the November dues to the company and try to evolve a new arrangement with the US energy major for the future, the Union Power Minister, Mr Suresh Prabhu, indicated here today. Dabhol Power Company had invoked the counter-guarantee for the month of November following the Maharashtra Government’s failure to pay its dues amounting to Rs 79 crore. When asked about the Centre’s reaction to the dispute, Mr Prabhu said, “We will look at the proposal...but this cannot go on for month after month”. He said the Centre was looking at options to resolve the current problem. Besides the November bill, an amount of Rs 152 crore is outstanding for December. A senior minister in the Vajpayee government said the Centre had no option at this stage and it would have to honour its commitment to preserve investor confidence in India. He said the Maharashtra Government should have taken all factors into consideration before signing the contract with Dabhol Power Company. Half way down the road one cannot change track, he added. Trouble has been brewing between the DPC and the Maharashtra State Electricity Board as the board has been unable to afford the steep Rs 7 per unit of electricity being charged by Enron. These tariffs had created a big controversy in the Maharashtra Assembly with one section of the polity urging the government to scrap the second phase of the project. Enron says the main reason behind the high tariffs is the low power offtake by the MSEB and a higher offtake would have brought the tariff down for the electricity board. The MSEB is committed to paying for 80 per cent of the capacity of the Dabhol power plan, irrespective of how much it actually consumes. One reason for the MSEB’s poor finances is that it supplies power at concessional rates to a major section of society. Agriculture power is priced at 50 paise per unit while industrial rates are around Rs 5 to 6. The MSEB’s average tariffs are reported to be a dismal Rs 2.80 per unit. Under the agreement, it is obligatory for the state electricity board to pay up the monthly bill by the 25th of next month. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Power Committee of FICCI, Mr M.S. Kasliwal, said the decision of the DPC to invoke counter-guarantee was highly premature and felt such a step would not suit the long-term interest of the power sector. At this stage, it would be more appropriate to resolve the issue through talks between the state government, the MSEB and the DPC. A legalistic approach involving recourse directly to the Centre is not called for, he said. He said the real problem lay with the temporary liquidity problem of the MSEB, which FICCI is confident can be resolved by some decisive action of the Government of Maharashtra. The MSEB has receivables which are in excess of Rs 5,000 crore and all efforts should be made to correct the situation. As such power investment is a long-term infrastructure play and is a game of patience and perseverance, Mr Kasliwal said. |
|
Mutual funds’ gains trail sensex’s in Jan NEW DELHI, Feb 7 — Most Indian equity diversified and sector-specific mutual funds posted positive returns for January, but underperformed the benchmark index, a mutual fund tracking firm said on Wednesday. In all, 67 diversified funds tracked by New Delhi-based Value Research posted an average return of 6.6 percent last month. The performance of some sector-specific funds was even better. Dedicated technology funds, 13 in number, posted an average gain of 9.54 percent. By comparison, the Bombay Stock Exchange’s 30-issue Sensitive index appreciated 8.93 percent, due in large part to buying by foreign investors. “The rise has been because of a rate cut in the U.S. that injected the much needed foreign fund liquidity in our markets as well,” said Sanjay Dutt, Director at New Delhi-based Quantum Securities. Foreigners purchased a net $850 million of Indian stocks in January, more than half the amount in all of 2000. But last month’s gains followed big declines the previous year. A massive 88 percent of 78 mutual funds either wholely or partly invested in Indian stocks posted double-digit losses last year, as Indian markets tracked the fall in the tech-laden Nasdaq. Indian tech funds were some of the worst performers. Value Research Managing Director Dhirendra Kumar said last year’s overwhelming dependence on tech stocks and the subsequent drubbing has put some common sense back into fund managers. Kumar said the weighting of tech stocks in the portfolios of diversified funds had declined to 25 to 30 percent from 50 percent last year. Star performer The top performing mutual fund in January was the UTI Petro fund, which gained a whopping 25.32 percent. The 484 million rupee ($10.5 million) fund is heavily invested in state-run refineries and petrochemical stocks. Almost two-thirds of the fund is invested in just six such stocks, four of which surged in value last month on speculation the government will privatise the companies and decontrol petroleum product prices ahead of schedule. The government has said it would abolish price controls on gasoline, kerosene and other petroleum products by April 2002, thereby enabling refiners to charge market prices for their products.
Performance KP Prima, a 600 million rupee fund, was the top performing equity diversified fund last month with a return of 14.97 per cent. “We continue to retain our focus on small cap companies and go for quality assets,” said Vivek Reddy, chief executive officer of Kothari Pioneer. Reddy said the KP Prima fund was overweight in cyclical stocks such as Tata Steels, Sterlite Industries and Raymond. “Within KP Prima, we were underweight in technology stocks for the last year or two,” Reddy said, adding that just under 25 percent of the fund was invested in domestic software companies. GIC Growth Plus II ranked second with a monthly return of 14.72 percent, on a portfolio overweight in state-run telecom stocks.
— Reuters
|
|
SINGAPORE: A Singapore software developer will soon turn the ordinary car into an Internet-connected business and entertainment centre on wheels. “Anything you can do on the Internet will be delivered in the car,’’ Jamshaid Akbar, Chief Executive Officer of goMobile, told Reuters on Wednesday. “The car will be... totally networked, just like a small office.’’ The product — tentatively called Wired Mobile — will allow drivers to carry out a wide range of activities such as listen to music, check e-mails and download street information on handheld devices or mobile phones. At the heart of Wired Mobile lies Ericsson’s Nanocube, developed at the telecommunications giant’s Singapore research facility. The device, about half the size of a shoebox, acts as the base station for all the devices used in the car. The cube, placed in the boot, will be powered by the car battery. Akbar said that while car makers in the USA were developing similar proprietary products, Wired Mobile was based on open standards such as Linux and Bluetooth which made the product more compatible. GoMobile has paired up with car maker DaimlerChrysler in Singapore to produce a prototype of Wired Mobile within the next few weeks. A commercially viable product would be ready in about three months, Akbar said, adding that the USA and Europe were key target markets because of long hours spent commuting.
— Reuters
|
|
Bank of Punjab sets up Kolkata branch KOLKATA, Feb 7 — Bank of Punjab today opened its first branch in Kolkata, making its presence in the eastern region, offering a host of technology savvy products. Speaking to newsmen here after the inauguration of the bank’s 60th branch, Bank of Punjab Executive Director Tejbir Singh said besides setting up three more branches here within as many months, it is proposed to establish 15 more branches in 10 major cities, mostly in South, during the current fiscal. The bank, has a total business of over Rs 4,700 crore. Referring to its impressive financial results Mr Singh said while last year the bank had earned a net profit of Rs 32 crore, this year it projected a growth of at least 10 per cent with the overall business crossing the Rs 6,000 crore mark. The bank’s net NPA was set to come down by at least one percentage point from the present 2.3 per cent, Mr Singh emphasised. Though its main thrust was on retail banking like provisions for home loan, car loan, loan for two-wheelers and other consumer durables, Mr Singh said stress would also be laid on the growth of corporate banking. A number of exclusive corporate branches had also been set up in Delhi and Mumbai, while one each would be set up in Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore in near future. Honda 2-wheeler
soon NEW DELHI, Feb 7
— Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Private Ltd (HMSI), a 100 per cent subsidiary of the Japanese automobile major, Honda Motor Company, is planning to introduce its first two-wheeler model in India during the current calendar year. A company release said the HMSI is currently doing the groundwork for launching a number of models specifically suited for the Indian market. Its production facility at Manesar in Haryana is already operational with an initial
production capacity of 1,00,000 units per year. The capacity will later be increased to 2,50,000 units per year. The HMSI, which has already committed a capital investment of Rs 186 crore, is in the process of establishing an extensive dealership network spread across all major cities of the country. A number of two-wheeler models, which the company plans to launch in India during the course of the year, will be put on display during the India Engineering Trade Fair 2001, being held in New Delhi from February 15 to 19. |
co
Prisoner turns millionaire NEW YORK: A prison inmate in New York State earned $ 899,969 in 1999 after trading in securities worth $ 8 million, The New York Times reported yesterday. Michael Mathie, an inmate of the Elmira maximum security prison, is known at the facility as “our resident millionaire’’. With the proceeds, he also helps other inmates pay lawyers’ fees. Mathie (33) wrote “investor’’ on his tax return to specify his profession while serving year 12 of his 10-to-30-year sentence for manslaughter. He calls his father several times a day and directs him to place trades on the Internet. He pays his father’s telephone bills, which run between $ 500 and 1,200 a month. To help his stock trading, Mathie watches television and news from his prison cell and receives dozens of trade publications and newspapers every day, including the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. Mathie has bought his family a house on Long Island and four cars, including a 97,000-dollar Dodge viper. His start capital was $ 75,000 part of a $ 500,000 award after he sued the chief of internal security at another jail for sexually abusing him repeatedly.
— DPA No cancer link
to cell phones COPENHAGEN: A pioneering Danish study of over 400,000 mobile-phone users showed no increased cancer risk but failed to rule out other health hazards, Denmark‘s National Cancer Institute has said. “This first ever nationwide cancer incidence study of cellular phone users does not support any link between the use of these phones and brain tumours and cancers of the brain or salivary gland or leukaemia,’’ concluded the report, published in the US Journal of the National Cancer Institute yesterday. But the study did not clear cellphones of other health risks, senior researcher Dr Christoffer Johansen told Reuters. “We have only addressed the cancer question,’’ he said. “We cannot exclude that long exposure to mobile phones can cause ringing noises in the head, migraine, headaches and other symptoms of the central nervous system.’’ Diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and various types of dementia and nervous complaints might also be associated with mobile phones, as well as skin diseases at points where the device comes into contact with users’ flesh, he added. Johansen said such a big study could only be carried out in Scandinavia where a system of compulsory registration of citizens operated and cancer registers dated back to World War II.
— Reuters Elephants to
get married BANGKOK: After years entertaining tourists with football matches and orchestral performances, four Thai elephants are to have a break and get married. As St Valentine’s Day falls during the annual mating period for Thai elephants, the head of a provincial elephant club has decided to hold a wedding for two elephant couples at his camp. “Now it is mating season and I think we should organise a wedding for them on Valentine’s Day, so they can live well and produce well,” Sompast Meepan, head of the Ayutthaya Elephant Club, told Reuters. The wedding, Sompast said, would feature a traditional welcoming ceremony for productive male elephants, which are hired to mate with female elephants at the club’s stables. “Copulation will take place right after the wedding in a screened outdoor area,” he said.
— Reuters |
cr
Quake causes ripples in commodities Australia cuts interest rates Japan forex records another high Daewoo union to strike work |
bb
Kribhco MD Rediff site Unitech projects Wipro gets ISO 14001 Whirlpool profit Cognizant tech Lakme offer Bharti teletech |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 121 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
