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March 17, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Tehelka.com in talks with Zee to offload stake
Commission to PCOs raised to 20 per cent
Annan: need to open up global market Be more competitive, Maran to industry Haryana receives 1300 cr FDI in 20 months |
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Haryana, chamber
meeting on March 18 Petro products consumption up by 6.3 pc Bank of Punjab opens 2 branches OPEC keeps markets
guessing GLOBAL
NEWS
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Tehelka.com in talks with Zee to offload stake
New Delhi, March 16 The portal, which triggered a political storm with its videotapes exposing corruption in defence deals, said the funds mopped up after this divestment will be used to realise plans of entering the print and television businesses. “Zee is in talks with us for taking some equity stake, and so are several other companies, both media houses and non-media companies. But nothing has been finalised yet,” co-promoter of tehelka.com, Anniruddha
Bahal, told PTI here. Bahal’s comments came amid a denial by a spokesperson for Zee of “any relationship” with tehelka.com. “We do not have any relationship with tehelka and the portal does not belong to us,” he said here adding that rumours about Zee holding stake in Tehelka were being spread by competitors. The spokesperson clarified that Zee did get the story (of the expose and the related videotapes) a bit earlier (than other news channels) but this was on account of one-on-one relationship between journalists of both the companies. “Both Tarun and myself have print media background: We’re also interested in television. We want Tehelka to be comprehensive multimedia company shortly”, Bahal said but declined to divulge the amount of equity up for sale. He said this will be second round of divestment; 20 per cent of Tehelka’s equity has already been divested to individuals and companies including first global. “I cannot at this point talk about how much equity will be offloaded, but we (promoters) will retain majority control”, he said. The portal was set up in March last year and currently Tehelka employs about 100 people, with offices in Delhi and London.
PTI
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Commission to PCOs raised to 20 per cent
New Delhi, March 16 The commission will be 22 per cent wherever the operators face competition from cellular operators. The Chief General Managers (CGMs) can fix commission upto 25 per cent where the PCO operators face competition from the private basic operators. These are among the important decisions taken by the Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan after a meeting with the PCO operators held here last evening. The Minister said that these decisions have been taken in the wake of competition faced by PCO booth operators from the private operators and the recent concessions announced by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and distance calls up to 200 km. However, the rural PCO operators will continue to get 25 per cent commission on gross turnover as at present. Stating that a Task Force was appointed to lok into the problems presented by the nearly 8 lakh PCO operators throughout the country so as to provide them a level playing field, Mr Paswan said that it has also been decided that a service charge of Rs 2 per call in urban areas and Re 1 per call in rural areas would be payable to PCOs for intra-circle calls between 100 to 200 km. No service charge will be payable for such calls upto 100 km. Mr Paswan said that in keeping with the government policy of liberalisation and modernisation of telecom sector to benefit the customers in terms of cost, quality, choice and other value added advantages, the PCO operators would be encouraged to upgrade their booths to “Public Tele Info Centre”. He said that, in addition, all eligible PCO operators under Franchise Scheme will be extended facilities of sale of Postal Stationery and Indian Telephone Cards.
UNI
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Annan: need to open up global market New Delhi, March 16 Speaking at the meeting of FICCI, Mr Annan said industrialised countries have an indispensable role to play and preaching the virtues of open markets to developing countries is mere hypocrisy if they do not open their own markets to those countries’ products. They (industrialised countries) can also provide technology, debt relief and official development assistance. “We need to open up the global market and it needs to be genuinely free and two weeks ago when the EU decided to eliminate tariffs and quotas for imports coming from 48 least developed countries, they called it everything but arms could be imported free of quota”, he said adding that now “we should encourage the USA, Canada and Japan to do the same”. Developing countries themselves can do more to improve governance, public administration, transparency and accountability, and create the conducive legal and institutional environment for attracting domestic and foreign investment.
On the question of natural disasters, Mr Annan said there is a need to plan ahead.
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Be more competitive, Maran to industry New Delhi, March 16 Presiding over the meeting of the Board of trade here on Wednesday, Mr Maran agreed with the members that transaction cost as well as cost of export credit must be reduced and that there should be far greater involvement of states to impart a new dynamism to the country’s export effort. The Minister said while there was an optimism resulting from a robust export growth of 20 per cent this year, there were some apprehensions due to slow down of the US economy and a new trade regime at home but he said he had full confidence in the resilience of the Indian trade and industry to meet the emerging challenges. “Competition from China is a challenge which cannot be met by anti-dumping measures alone. The ultimate answer is to improve our competitiveness”, Mr Maran said, adding that the mindset had to change at all levels so as to promote export consciousness in the country. Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Omar Abdullah, Commerce Secretary Prabir Sengupta, Special Secretary Nripendra Mishra, Director General Foreign Trade (DGFT) N.L. Lakhanpal and other senior officers participated in the meeting along with representatives of trade and industry.
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Haryana receives 1300 cr FDI in 20 months Chandigarh, March 16 This was disclosed by the Haryana Chief Minister, Mr Om Prakash Chautala while inaugurating the Rs 8 crore office complex of HSIDC at Sector 6 in Panchkula today. Mr Chautala said that many multi-national industrial companies were now setting up their units in the state as they were finding Haryana to be the place of ultimate choice. Mr Chautala, who has widely travelled abroad, regretted that the nation could not maintain the pace of development despite having ample resources mainly because our national character had fallen over the years, whereas the people in several foreign countries had made strong character as the basis for rapid development. He called upon the people to give a serious thought to the issue as it would not be difficult to restore our ancient glory to make India once again a top ranking country in the world. He said that although Haryana is an agrarian state yet an industrial revolution had been ushered so as to keep pace with the changing scenario in the world economy. The state government had been laying stress on the development of infrastructure, especially in the areas of roads and power sector. Earlier, the Chairman of HSIDC, Mr S.Y. Quraishi said that the rapid industrialisation in Haryana was evident from the fact that despite having a number of industrial estates, the government had to acquire new areas to allot plots to the entrepreneurs to set up their units. He said that 500 acres of land had been acquired at Badli, 900 acres at Bahadurgarh and 1000 acres at Manesar to accommodate the entrepreneurs and investors. He said that Rs 1200 crore would be spent to develop infrastructure in these areas during next two years. He said that 3000 industrial plots had been allotted within a short period of about 20 months and these units had generated employment opportunity for one lakh persons. Mr Quraishi, who is also Principal Secretary of Chief Minister, said that Ambassadors of several industrially advanced countries like Japan, Singapore, Belgium, France, Canada and S. Korea had called on Mr Chautala and expressed the growing interest of entrepreneurs of their countries in Haryana. As a sequel to Chief Minister’s visit to Japan, a delegation of small and medium industrialists from Japan External Trade Organisation had called on Mr Chautala. They were impressed with the quality of industrial infrastructure developed in the state and were keen to set up their units in Haryana. He said that an MoU was also signed by HSIDC with Vavasi Oil and Gas Private Limited to set up a natural gas-based power plant in the state. |
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Haryana, chamber
meeting on March 18 Chandigarh, March 16 The background paper prepared for the session has highlighted that the lack of adequate power in the state in recent years has sent negative signals to potential investors. "Having lost its primacy to Noida on account of power shortage, high local taxes and several other factors, there is an urgent need to adopt a partnership between the government and the industry to accelerate the pace of development in the state", the chamber has stated. Proper land-use plan up to 2020 and beyond should be formulated clearly identifying the areas for agriculture, green belts, industrial estates and residential habitats, it has been suggested. It has stressed the need to rationalise tax structure and formulate a trade policy. For setting up new industrial enterprises, an Empowerment Committee should operate as a single window in the districts. Freedom to stagger employment for seasonal and export industries should be permitted with a proviso for employment for specified number of mandays in a year, the chamber says. It has also suggested that Haryana should confine itself to carving out a niche in a few select areas like automotive components, developing an IT state, promoting agri-industrial units and rejuvenate the Panipat belt for traditional handlooms. |
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Petro products consumption up by 6.3 pc Dehra Dun, March 16 He said the oil demand in India is expected to increase to 368 MMT by 2025. The import dependence, which is 66.5 per cent now, is also likely to go up substantially. The widening demand supply gap, stagnant domestic production, volatility of oil market — all these factors raise the issue of national energy security which not only requires sustained efforts to boost domestic production and means to access significant share of global oil and gas but also a strategic shift from dependence on producing alternate energy sources. Mr Bora said oil currently accounts for about 40 per cent of world commercial energy supplies. By anticipating a rising demand of about 1.8 per cent per year the oil requirement is likely to reach 110 million barrels per day by 2020 from the current level of about 75 million barrels per day. In 2020, oil is expected to represent 37 per cent of the total energy supply. The decline of oil in the energy share reflects primarily a trend towards switching to natural gas and other types of fuel particularly for power generation in many industrialised and developing countries. He further said the current levels of per capita energy consumption in India are extremely low as compared to the rest of the world. In terms of comparison with the developed countries the differentials are even more marked. The current commercial energy requirement of India is catered by multiple sources such as coal (55%), oil (35%), gas (7%), hydel (2%) and nuclear (1%). The demand for oil and natural gas which together make up about 42 per cent of the energy requirement is likely to grow at a rate of 5.6 per cent per year in the case of oil. The growth in consumption of natural gas is expected to increase from the current level of 65 MMSCMD to 231 MMSCMD by 2006 -2007 and would approximately be 391 MMSCDM by 2025, indicating that dependency on natural gas would increase in the future. Earlier, inaugurating the seminar Nityanand Swami, CM of Uttaranchal urged the ONGC to take up the Maneri Bhali power project and join the race with the other companies in the power generation sector. In an another inaugural address Mr A.K. Chaterjee, former President of Indian Geological Congress, stressed upon the need to tap non renewable energy sources such as wind, water, oil, natural gas etc.
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Bank of Punjab opens 2 branches Chandigarh,
March 16 The bank also opened its 61st banking office at Bangali Market, New Delhi, yesterday. With the opening of the branch at Delhi, the total number of banking offices in Delhi Circle has risen to 22. With the strong network of customers in Delhi, Bank of Punjab provides greater convenience and reach to its customers along with offering customer-friendly products, a press release said. According to Mr Tejbir Singh, Executive Director, Bank of Punjab, “The bank has consistently endeavoured to provide unmatched service to its customers through its extensive network of offices inter -linked nationwide. The bank branches will offer customer-friendly initiatives like Swagat, DMAT services, Car and Home loans etc.
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OPEC keeps markets
guessing Vienna, March 16 Uncertainty, however, remained about the final figure, to be decided at the meeting of the oil-exporting group tomorrow, which could be as high as 1.5 million bpd, OPEC’s Algerian President Chakib Khelil told reporters in Vienna. As head of the organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Khelil is charged with taking into account the views of all OPEC members. Venezuelan Oil Minister Alvaro Silva said the widely expected cut, to be agreed at a formal meeting tomorrow, would probably be between 750,000 and one million bpd. AFP |
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GLOBAL
NEWS Singapore, March 16 "Most organisations understand at an intellectual level that this is an important issue but perhaps do not necessarily appreciate the gravity and urgency of the situation until a major incident occurs," said Puni Rajah, Vice-President of consulting at research company IDC Asia-Pacific. Rajah was speaking at a Compaq Global Services news conference to unveil its alliance with security solutions provider Internet Security Systems (ISS). An IDC survey of 819 corporate and government organisations in the Asia-Pacific region last year found that less than a quarter had any form of security measures. A survey by the Computer Security Institute and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation shows 643 U.S. companies and government agencies reported US$25 billion in losses in 2000 from cyber attacks as security breaches rose over the last five years. "Because we're making more things available via the networks, vulnerability is in fact increasing," said Kim Duffy, Asia-Pacific Managing Director for ISS. Novice hackers can now access a plethora of tools on the Web, with sites such as War Forge and Rootshell offering extensive, easy-to-use hacking tools aimed at popular corporate computing platforms such as Windows NT and Unix. "The days of having someone very clever going in to hack your Website have gone," Duffy said. Defacing Websites is the most common cyber attack in Asia and is harmless beyond the embarassment it causes, Duffy said. Denial of service, where a person tries to make a Website inactive by overloading it with messages, is shaping up to be the region's biggest threat, he said. The only sure defence was for organisations to educate staff and management, Rajah said. "Great technology is important," she said. "But equally important is the personal habits of the people who are using the system and the management's responsibility to make sure that the processes are in place to enforce the guidelines for security."
Reuters
Tokyo, March 16 As a result, total assets of the world's top consumer electronics maker at the end of the period would be 12 per cent less than the value at the end of December, 2000, a company spokesman said. Matsushita had announced in November that it would reduce its assets as part of a three-year business plan, but had not provided a specific target. It will mainly trim liquid assets such as inventories and accounts receivable, which would free up cash for new investments in core businesses — chips, displays, electronic components and Internet-related services. The asset reduction, coupled with the company's medium-term efforts to consolidate low-performing businesses, will help Matsushita to raise profitability, the spokesman said. Faced with weakening overall demand in the United States and a slowdown in PC and chip demand, the maker of the Panasonic, National and Quasar brand consumer electronics was forced to announce a profit warning last month. It said it expected group operating profit of 220 billion yen in 2000/01, down more than 15 percent from the October estimate, although that would still be a 38 percent improvement from the year before. As part of its midterm business plan, Matsushita said it would aim for group sales of nine trillion yen in the business year to March 2004, against 7.3 trillion yen in the year ended last March. It also aims to raise operating profit-to-sales ratio on a consolidated basis to five percent in 2003/04.
Reuters
Tokyo, March 16 "We are having talks with various makers on many possible forms of tie-ups, and Peugeot is one of them," said a Toyota spokesman. He declined to elaborate further on the content of the talks. The comment followed a report in Japanese daily Tokyo Shimbun on Friday that Toyota and the PSA group have started talks on an alliance to develop and produce compact models with 800 cc engines. Asked whether Toyota will develop such compact cars, the spokesman said: "We will consider doing so, if there is demand." The two companies aim to set up a joint venture in 2004 to produce about 400,000 units per year possibly in Eastern Europe amid growing demand for vehicles with low fuel costs in Europe, the newspaper said. They are trying to reach an agreement by the end of this year, it said. The report comes at a time when Toyota's strategy in Europe is drawing attention.
Reuters
Houston, March 16 The company, just the latest technology bellwether to warn of weaker results, has recently been focusing attention on powerful business computers, storage and devices, as part of its strategy to maintain margins in the midst of the cooling PC market.
Reuters |
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