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Saturday,
June 2, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Policies hit growth: survey
Demand of coloured packaging to go up ICICI Bank plans
Smart Cards |
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Sub-groups to formulate
NCR plan .Net set to change your lifestyle ITC stock options to eligible employees Fitch downgrades India’s rating Microsoft Corp launches Office XP Chargesheet filed against Ketan Parekh
Do not invest blindfolded
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Tata Steel net surges 31 pc Mumbai, June 1 The board has recommended a 50 per cent dividend (Rs 5 per share) as compared to 40 per cent in 1999-2000, Tata Steel Managing Director, J.J. Irani, told reporters here today. Irani said Tata Steel has recorded its highest-ever profit before tax at Rs 602.44 crore (Rs 476.59 crore in last year) on back of richer product mix, marginally improved realisations, continuing control over costs and slightly higher volumes. The net profit includes extraordinary expenditure of Rs 285.84 crore (Rs 22.51 crore), he added. The company has also registered a 13 per cent increase in its turnover from Rs 6,890.87 crore to Rs 7,759.44 crore and a 6 per cent rise in its sales from 3.21 million tonnes to 3.40 million tonnes, he said. The fourth quarter under review, Irani said, was the best ever quarter in terms of net profit — Rs 209.01 crore (Rs 186.23 crore). Exports in the year under review were lower at $164 million ($166 million), he said. Irani said the steel industry is expected to grow at 5 to 8 per cent till 2010. Vice-President (Finance) R.C. Nandrajog said the capital expenditure for 2001-02 was Rs 650 crore. Irani said during the last quarter, the company acquired 1,20,98,527 equity shares of Tata SSL Ltd through an open offer. Consequently, Tata SSL has become a subsidiary of the company. Tata Steel has reported that the pickling line and the tandem cold rolling mill, forming the main equipment of the cold rolling mill complex, started operations in August 2000 and sales from Jamshedpur was 3,38,772 tonnes. The last unit in the complex, continuous galvanising line-II (CGL-II) would commence operations tomorrow, he said adding, after this unit goes on stream the present modernisation plans of the steel company could be considered as being largely complete. The full benefits from the CRM would be seen in 2002-03, Irani said. On the right-sizing, he said as on March end, the strength was 48,821 (52,167). Irani said the following changes at the corporate level have been made, effective from May 1, 2001. B Muthuraman is the Managing Director designate, who takes over from Irani, while the three Deputy Managing Directors T. Mukherjee (Steel), F.A. Vandrevala (new and allied businesses) and A.N. Singh (corporate services). The capacity at the bearings division was expanded from 15 million to 25 million bearings, he said. Referring to the outlook, Irani said steel realisation would hold, India would use more steel and prices are expected to rise. For their Australian venture, he said the company has identified the land. Telco to go for
‘block closure’ Tata Engineering (Telco)’s Jamshedpur unit, would go for “block closure” for six days from June 4 in view of “poor market conditions and slump in demand of commercial vehicles”, a company release heer said today. Company sources said except for a handful of employees in emergency services, about ten thousand workers in six divisions in Telco would not attend work for six days. “There would be no deduction of salaries. But the leave would be adjusted from privilege and casual leaves”, the release said.
PTI |
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Policies hit growth: survey New Delhi, June 1 The 1991 reforms have “launched India in the direction most Indians would want to see it go: towards more widely shared prosperity and a position of influence in the world”, writes Brooke Unger, the survey’s author. Yet India is beginning its second decade of reform in a gloomy mood and these disappointments, the survey argues, are the result of too little reforms rather than too much. Agriculture, which occupies more than half of the
work fore, is hemmed in by countless restrictions. A host of incentives — legal and illegal — discourages small enterprises from becoming big ones. Thus India has a vast informal sector, which accounts for 90 per cent of employment but is unready to face growing international competition, the survey says. Regarding big business, the survey says, the shock has not been fully felt. “The 1990s were Woodstock, a time of liberation and youthful experimentation but not much discipline for Indian industry. Only now are the pressures of adulthood being felt. Industry is now responding to those pressures, by restructuring portfolios, switching from family to professional management, changing product
designs, outsourcing and so on”, Mr Unger states. “Anyone doing business in India runs up against what might be called institutionalised friction”, the survey notes. This is the result of two types of infrastructure: the traditional kind (roads, ports and power) and the human types (courts, bureaucracy and the parliament). Such failures slow down business and deter investment, “Reforms made the impossible possible, but did not make the possible easy”, Mr Unger says. |
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Demand of coloured packaging to go up Mubarakpur (Rajpura), June 1 The growers in the state who earlier used to focus mainly on improvement of the quality of their produce are now taking to new and attractive packaging. Mohan Fibre Products which came out with coloured packaging bio degradable trays last year expects 15 to 20 per cent of farmers to shift to the new coloured packaging by the end of this year. While attractive packaging will help them procure a much better price for apples, the growers are demanding initiatives from the state government to solve their marketing problems. Mr Rakesh Ahuja, MD, Broadway Agro Agencies said: "We were able to get at least Rs 100 per cartel more due to attractive packaging. Though the farmers are aware of the importance of good marketing, a lot still needs to be done in terms of generating awareness". The farmers from the state were on a visit to Mohan Fibres to know about the latest packaging techniques. The apple growers said they were suffering a lot due to absence of proper transportation and marketing facilities. Middlemen too have been more interested in grabbing their own share. Availability of sufficient packaging material also caused problems at times, they said. "We have been very cautious in maintaining the quality of our produce. We want to meet global competition and are also trying for that. But certain policies like imposition of 16 per cent excise on the cartels are only acting as deterrent in improving the performance", said Mr Ahuja. Imposition of this duty would deter those who are already using wooden boxes for packing to shift to new packaging methods due to the fear of these being expensive. The farmers also demanded an improvement in the transportation facilities in the state. "Not only are these insufficient but also very expensive", said a grower. Though 50 per cent of apple in the state still continues to be packed in wooden boxes, thereby damaging at least 33 per cent of it (as per industry surveys) , the industrialists are hoping substantial improvement in this regard. This, they said, is mainly due to the fear of sustaining themselves in the market as apple from other countries has already started arriving: "Last year there was a total demand for 1.84 crore boxes for packaging of which we supplied nearly 47 per cent. This year though the demand is estimated to be much less as the produce has fallen by 70 per cent , yet we expect a 5 to 7 per cent growth in the number of our customers", said Mr Munishwar Kumar, Director, Marketing and Business Development, Mohan Fibres. |
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ICICI Bank plans Smart Cards New Delhi, June 1 “Technology initiatives have been taken in the area of introduction of smart cards with two pilot launches at Infosys Ltd in its campus at Bangalore and the second at Manipal Academy of Higher Education. The experience is being used to design suitable products in this segments” ICICI Bank. The bank is also planning introduction of specialised banking products for students, small children (kid-e-bank), high net worth clients and specific business segments, which will be processed by its centralised database. It has already introduced ‘Business Multiplier’ a premium current account to cater needs of small business segment and ‘ICICI Select’ service for high-net worth clients, besides setting up ‘I-Fund’ for mutual fund product distribution.
PTI |
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Sub-groups to formulate
NCR plan New Delhi, June 1 The sub-groups, which will submit their reports within three months, will cover among other things the NCR policy zones, demographic profile and settlement pattern regional
land use and rural development, physical infrastructure, utility and service infrastructure, social infrastructure, environment and institutional framework. Briefing newspersons after the meeting, Mr Jagmohan said the NCR concept had not taken off and its main aim of decongesting the national capital was not met. The government was committed to making the idea work. The group would formulate a short-term interim plan and a longer five-year plan for the balanced development of the region. The Minister pointed out that the Centre’s decision to allow 100 per cent foreign direct investment for development of new towns would give a boost to the building of the NCR. Under the liberalised rules foreign construction companies can take up construction of entire township, including housing, social and urban infrastructure. |
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.Net set to change your lifestyle New Delhi, June 1 Called .(dot)Net or the next generation Internet, the new technologies break down
barriers which exist between digital islands — computers, devices, web sites, organisations and industries — to help realise the full potential of Internet. So, if you have a last minute change in an appointment, your cellphone will automatically sense it, convey it to your PC, your colleague’s PC and even that of your assistant. Or for that matter if you don’t have time to type your notes, your handwriting and speech will interact naturally with your PC. “Thus we have a new platform that will take at its centre the Internet and the user rather than having the devices at its centre,” says Orlando Ayala, Microsoft’s Marketing head. “The .net technologies in the next two years will be the largest platform for programmers not only in India but all over the world,” says IT expert Vijay Mukhi, who has authored five books on .net. “The .net technologies will enable a new set of Internet applications all over the world and thus increase PC usage also,” says Mukhi, noting that the goal is to enable a new set of applications where the PC will not be the centre of the universe. “After PC, windows and Internet, .net is the fourth revolution in Information Technology. It has immense potential for it empowers the end users and they can in turn use information anytime, anywhere and on any device,” says Orlando Ayala, Microsoft’s Marketing chief. “.Net is all about speed in development and can totally change your lifestyle... it is an important milestone in taking Internet to the next level of experience,” says Ayala. Microsoft, which unveiled the technology last year, has finalised a deal with National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT), who will now not only train its students in XML (Extensible Markup Language that enables better utilisation of back-end data for personalised devices) standards but also inculcates .Net into vital parts of its online e-education programmes. C#(pronounce sharp) — the modern object-oriented programming language for .Net services will be a major part of the tie-up and NIIT has even declared C# as the technology of the year. “What makes C# so compelling is that it builds on the skills that many programmers have already developed, thus enabling improved time to market, reduced development costs and the ability to keep pace with the rapidly changing world of web,” says Rajiv Kaul, Managing Director, Microsoft India. “We hope to train around 25,000 professionals in one year in C#,” says Rajendra S. Pawar, Chairman, NIIT. “As .Net has changed the paranoia of computing, we need to relook at the technologies also,” he observes. For taking the new IT mantra to the masses, Pawar says the marketing strategy would also shift from devices to services. “PC penetration here is very low and people are not ready to put in huge sums on buying it. So for .net we will concentrate on PCOs and cyber cafes to popularise it,” says Pawar. The advantage here is that .Net uses a host of devices. “People will only have to pay for the services this way.” Ayala India should especially focus in this area. “...India is not a latecomer to the market. XML is already here and we see India as a major software power house in the world and with .Net we are making a big, bold bet here.” The dot-com meltdown has shown that Internet business model needs a reboot. Giving away services for free and making it up on the volume just isn’t a sustainable model for running a business, a Microsoft paper on ‘Building user-centric experiences’ says. .Net is not only future technology but also future business.
PTI |
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ITC stock options to eligible employees Kolkata, June 1 The options included those granted to Non-Executive Directors of the company, Deputy Secretary R.K. Singhi said. The meeting which took the decision to this effect was held on Wednesday. The exercise price was fixed at Rs 779.95 per option, he said. The number of ordinary shares covered by the option granted was 3,39,119 shares with vesting period of one to three years from the date of grant of the option. Exercise period would begin from the date of vesting and would expire at the end of five years from the date of grant, Singhi said. ITC shareholders had approved two special resolutions providing for allotment of Stock Options to employees in an Extra-ordinary General Meeting convened on Jan 17.
PTI |
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Fitch downgrades India’s rating New York, June 1 Currently, it rates the foreign and local currency obligations of India as BB plus and BBB minus respectively. The negative rating outlook reflects the slow progress of the government in implementing privatisation and addressing the weakness of public finances, the agency said in a release. Continued fiscal profligacy and back-paddling on privatisation and other structural reforms could adversely affect sovereign credit worthiness, prompting a more severe rating action over time, it said. But the rating could stabilise if the government implements a clearly defined strategy for fiscal consolidation and puts in place a coherent set of structural reforms, it said. Fitch also expressed concern over the dispute with Enron power company, the country’s largest foreign investor, and the Maharashtra Government and said it might lead to deterioration in foreign investment. The passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Bill, continued buoyancy in exports and a boost in Foreign Direct Investment that underpin further strengthening of international liquidity position would also be viewed positively, it adds. Until authorities display a concerted willingness to address fiscal imbalances, India will remain locked in a stop-go cycle of growth and it could slip into a debt trap, it said. Fitch said it believed that the privatisation process needed to be accelerated to lighten the burden on public finances, improve the efficiency of public sector enterprises, attract greater foreign investment and instil investor confidence. The agency said India’s general government deficit at over 9 per cent of GDP was among the highest in the realm of rated sovereigns. Persistently high fiscal deficits had led to a build-up of the general government debt burden, estimated to be over 60 per cent of GDP.
PTI |
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Microsoft Corp launches Office XP New York, June 1 Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates formally launched the software, called Office XP, saying that the first update to the product in two years would greatly boost worker efficiency and more than pay for itself. By making Office just 10 per cent better, we can save hundreds of millions of hours in the workplace, and certainly, with Office XP, we’ve more than met that threshold,” Gates told the main launch event at a Manhattan ballroom. To highlight corporate support for Office XP, Gates was joined at the launch event by business executives like Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive of online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. Which is deploying the product throughout its operations. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, speaking to an audience in Chicago, described the launch of Office XP as “the most significant new product we’ll launch this year. With 250 million users worldwide, Office is the most popular productivity package in the world, with some analysts saying it has a 90 per cent market share.
Reuters |
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Chargesheet filed against Ketan Parekh New Delhi, June 1 The chargesheet was filed in the designated CBI court against Parekh, Kartik Parekh and Kirti Parekh, all Directors in the Ketan Parekh group of companies, besides Ramesh Parekh, then Chairman of the Madhavpura Bank, Devinder Pandya, suspended Managing Director of the bank and J.B. Pandya, suspended Branch Manager of the Mandvi, Mumbai branch of the bank, CBI sources here said.
PTI |
Zee Telefilm net shoots up 68 pc Mumbai, June 1 Total income of the company rose by 47 per cent at Rs 435.77 crore during the FY-01 as against Rs 297.06 crore recorded in the previous year. The Zee network’s net profit also grew by Rs 7.03 crore at Rs 36.97 crore during the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2001 as against Rs 29.76 crore reported in the corresponding period of last year. The net profit of Zee network during the FY-01 shot up by Rs 22.58 crore at Rs 183.38 crore as against Rs 160.80 crore. The board of directors of the company also recommended a dividend at the rate of 55 per cent for the year 2000-2001. Indraparstha net up Indraprastha Medical Corporation today reported a 25 per cent rise in net profit for the financial year ended March 31, 2001, at Rs 1,515 lakh over Rs 1,208 lakh last fiscal. The company registered a rise in net profit despite its total income remaining static at Rs 13,809
lakh. ECIT bags order The Rs 560 crore ECIT, the computer education wing of Electronics Corporation of India Ltd
(ECIL) has bagged a Rs 17 crore order from Himachal Pradesh Government to impart IT education in 146 secondary schools in the state. The project launched recently by HP Chief Minister
P.K. Dhumal would help in imparting IT education to students of ninth and tenth standards for three years. The schools would be provided with necessary IT infrastructure, faculty support, courseware and software exercises by
ECIT. Based on the success it is proposed to cater to 500 schools in future, an ECIL press release
said. Guj Amb not worried about debt Gujrat Ambuja Group has dismissed speculations that the company’s debt has become worrisome, saying that it has been used for massive expansion which has put the company in the top
bracket. Harshavardhan Neotia, a Director of the company, said that, “there is nothing to worry about” because the debt has to be seen in the context of the company’s growth. “We have gone for massive expansion”, he said adding that the company has acquired a few companies like DLF Cement and Modi Cement and, “due to this our capacity has grown by more than two and half times. Hence the debt has not been taken to fund losses, but for growth.”
UNI, PTI |
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