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Thursday, February 7, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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India, Russia to boost trade
VRS offer is unattractive
Govt likely to mop up Rs 7,000 cr from selloff |
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Washington, February 6 Long-time Enron Corp. Auditor Andersen played no role in creating off-the-books partnerships used to hide losses and enrich executives before the energy trader’s violent implosion, Andersen’s CEO said. Sinking fund to be set up soon
C-DAC ties up with Mauritian firm
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India,
Russia to boost trade New Delhi, February 6 The protocol of the two-day session was signed here today by the Commerce Secretary, Mr Dipak Chatterjee, and the Russian First Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Mr Mikhail Egonovich Dmitriev. According to the protocol, steps will be taken to encourage more active interaction between Indian and Russian commercial organisations engaged in the trade of agricultural production and in this context the Russian side responded by agreeing to assist India in identifying reliable commercial organisations in Russia dealing in import of wheat, rice and other relevant products. Both sides agreed to initiate remedial action to arrest the declining trend in bilateral trade, especially in the context of the decline in exports of some important items like tea, tobacco, and rice (from India) and fertilisers, iron and steel and
metaliferrous ores and metal scrap (from Russia). The two sides also agreed to hold the first meeting of the joint working group for cooperation in the field of rough diamonds in February/March this year. This follows the Protocol for cooperation in the field of processing and trade of rough diamonds and precious metals signed during the visit of President Putin in October, 2000. On India’s request to expedite settlement of all pending claims of Indian exporters and organisations and Russia’s request for early settlement of short payments under states credit, both sides took note of the progress made on these issues and welcomed the decision of the sub-group on banking and financial matters to consider the setting off of the exporters’ claims against repayment of outstanding short payments from the Defence Ministry of India. On Russia’s concern regarding import of a range of Russian goods, it was agreed to continue the mechanism of informal consultations. Meanwhile, Russia said it was willing to provide credit facilities for coal projects in India, Russian Deputy Energy Minister A.B. Yanovsky said. Mr Yanovsky, who is leading the Russian delegation to India, made the offer after signing the protocol of the seventh meeting of the Indo-Russian Working Group on coal, along with Coal Secretary N.K. Sinha. The two sides agreed to exchange scientific and technical information on continued basis on the coal industry in their respective countries, an official release said. |
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VRS offer is unattractive New Delhi, February 6 On a day when several landmark reform decisions were taken, India on Tuesday decided to offer the VRS to its surplus government employees. The government currently has a wage and pension bill of around Rs. 1,580 billion, almost half the government's annual spending. The move, however, does not seem to have gone down well, with a key trade union leader contending that the scheme had not been properly thought out. The scheme will be applicable to 3.7 million employees of the government. It will not apply to the 6.5 million people who are employed by the state governments or to the 1.7 million people employed in government-owned enterprises, for whom a separate VRS is already in place. Employees opting for VRS are to get 35 days' pay for each year worked and 25 days' pay for each year left till they turn 60, when they would normally retire. A government committee has identified one million government employees as being "surplus." These employees could be sacked if they do not accept the VRS or get retrained or redeployed. The first steps towards downsizing were taken in September when the government restricted new recruitment to just one in three posts falling vacant. As 3 per cent of government employees retire annually, this would translate into a 10 per cent reduction of staff in five years. "The new VRS offer is neither attractive nor clear," said S. K. Vyas, secretary-general of the Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers, which claims to represent the 3.7 million federal employees. "First the government would have to identify the surplus staff before an employee can opt for VRS. Further as there is to be no retrenchment, it will not have any impact as the VRS package being offered is not attractive in comparison with what bank employees are getting," said Vyas. "The VRS is not clear on several issues like age, length of service and category where surplus staff will be identified. There may be some takers for the scheme with income tax exemptions being offered," said Shashanka Bhide, chief economist with think tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). "It would have had greater impact if the VRS offer had been made to all those keen to avail of it instead of first identifying surplus staff," Bhide contended. VRS has had a major impact in government-owned enterprises with the staff strength coming down from 2.3 million to 1.7 million in the last few years. Trade unions also alleged that in implementing the new rightsizing policy the government has cut off all avenues of promotion "thereby stopping all incentives for hard work." "The move to privatise VSNL and downsizing of staff merely show the bankruptcy of the government," said H. Mahadevan, secretary of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC). Trade unions are planning a demonstration on February 26, when the Railway Budget is presented in Parliament, to protest what they term the distress sale of government units and the attempts being made to downsize staff. A joint convention of the trade unions is to be held on March 5, to be followed by a countrywide protest the next day, said Mahadevan.
IANS |
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Govt likely to mop up Rs 7,000 cr from selloff New Delhi, February 6 The government has already been successful in garnering about Rs 5472.8 crore from disinvestment of six companies including some properties of Hotel Corporation of India (HCI) and ITDC till now, besides the amount mopped up through special dividend in case of the big ticket privatisation of telecom monolith
VSNL. “We would now take up other PSUs, which are slated for disinvestment in the current fiscal including IPCL, MUL and HZL,” Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie told PTI but declined to hazard a guess as to what would be the level of realisation from disinvestment in the current fiscal. Ministry officials, however, indicated the government is likely to mop up atleast Rs 7,000 crore from disinvestment of PSUs in 2001-02. The trump card for the sell-off process has been the privatisation of VSNL, which has brought to the government coffers a whopping Rs 3,689 crore, including Rs 1439 as the sale price to Tatas, Rs 1,887 crore as dividend and Rs 363 crore as dividend tax, while in case of IBP the realisation has been to the tune of Rs 1153.6 crore. In other
PSUs such as IT company CMC Ltd, the government garnered Rs 152 crore, while HTL brought to its coffers about Rs 55 crore.
PTI |
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Enron auditor denies role in ‘hidden’ losses Washington, February 6 Yesterday, former senior Enron employees told Congress the once-giant energy trader gave millions in bonuses to top executives two days before filing for bankruptcy last year, then fired thousands of employees without the severance pay to which they were entitled. And disgraced former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay agreed to appear before Congress next week after failing to show up for a hearing on the advice of his attorney, who cited what he called a prosecutorial tone in Congress. However, he was expected to invoke his legal right not to answer questions. Andersen CEO Joseph Berardino told the House Financial Services capital markets sub-committee that the special Enron committee led by William Powers, Dean of the University of Texas Law School, had rebuffed Andersen’s attempts to offer information about Enron’s spectacular collapse. “We begged them to talk to us,” Berardino told the congressional panel. “This committee did not talk to us.” The hard-hitting Powers Report, released on Saturday, alleged Andersen was closely involved in the creation of the shadowy web of partnerships used by Enron to hide debt. The chief of America’s fifth-largest accounting firm said it did not know about transactions involving the partnerships. Contrary to the Powers report, he said, Andersen did not help develop those partnerships. “We did not help to establish. We reviewed the accounting that others developed,” he said. Enron fired Chicago-based Andersen as its auditor on January 17, ending a long relationship in which some Andersen accountants ended up working for Houston-based Enron. Andersen’s involvement in the Enron affair has sullied the firm’s reputation and those of other accountants, setting off a wave of concern in markets about financial reporting. Responding to market concerns, Berardino called for changes to the accounting industry in response to the Enron affair, which he called “painful, but instructive.” He said US accountants should drop their simplistic “pass/fail” corporate auditing system and replace it with more flexible quality grades and “plain english” auditing reports.
Reuters |
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Sinking fund to be set up soon Chandigarh, February 6 MITC, which took loans amounting to more than Rs 97 crore from four banks in 1970-71, was recently slapped with an order by the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) at Chandigarh asking the state government-run corporation to pay Rs 96.13 crore to the banks as repayment for the loans advanced by the banks. The DRT order, responding to petitions filed by the SBI, State Bank of Patiala, Punjab and Sindh Bank and Punjab National Bank,which had advanced the money to MITC, came on January 28. Officials in MITC said that after receiving Rs 97.21 crore as loan from the four banks, MITC was making repayment to these loans by instalments. According to them, so far MITC had paid Rs 172 crore to the banks against the loans. According to the MITC officials, the total amount paid by MITC to the banks was adequate to settle the loans taken by it. The banks, however, went to the DRT which gave the order in their favour. This has prompted MITC to look for a compromise formula with the banks. It is understood that the Sinking Fund proposed to be set up by the state government to meet with such contingencies may come in handy for tackling the crisis being faced by MITC. The fund, which is proposed to be mobilised by charging the corporations at the rate of 2 per cent of the loan amount for each loan taken by the corporations from financial institutions, for which the state government stands guarantee, is expected to be notified by the state government after getting approval of the RBI before the commencement of the next Budget session. The proposal to charge 2 per cent as guarantee fee from the corporations has been approved by the Haryana Government already and the collection of money for setting up the fund, whose corpus will be somewhere around Rs 30 crore for each year, will also start soon, it is learnt. |
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