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Thursday, April 25,
2002, Chandigarh, India  
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CORPORATE NEWS
Promote tourism, Punjab told
500 businessmen turn spiritual |
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Lowest GDP growth in Ninth Five-Year Plan
Cooking oil made from rice bran
HDFC Life declares bonus HP-Grasim pact for cement plant
Arun Kumar is Nasscom
Chairman
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CORPORATE NEWS Hyderabad, April 24 However, there was a dip of 7.59 per cent in profit after tax and extraordinary items which came down from Rs 486.28 crore in the previous year to Rs 449.37 in last fiscal, according to the financial results announced here today. The net proft increased from Rs 313.16 crore to Rs 490.12 crore in last fiscal while the total income rose by 45.21 per cent with 2001-02 yielding Rs 1,803 crore against previous year’s Rs 1,241 crore. The company, which gave an interim divident of 25 per cent, has declared a final divident of 35 per cent (0.70 paise per share of Rs 2 each) taking total dividend to 60 per cent. Recording a vast improvement in overall performance of all its subsidiaries, the consolidated financial results for fiscal ending 2002 as per the generally accepted accounting principles applicable in the USA (US GAAP), the company wriggled out from a negative balance of $ 27 million to a profit of $ 25 million. Satyam has acquired software services division of Sify for a consideration of Rs 33.25 crore in January and entered into an agreement with Mauritius-based GE Pacific GEPL, the financial Managing Director B Rama Raju of Satyam said while releasing the results. The company has closed down some of its fully owned subsidiaries during the year, including Satyam Europe Limited, Satyam Asia Ptc and Satyam Japan KK, but there was an increase in manpower in the last quarter by 322, he said. The consolidated results of domestic and foreign subsidiaries of Satyam, include Satyam Europe Ltd, Satyam Japan Ltd, Satyam Asia Ptc Ltd, Vision Compass Inc, Satyam Idea Edge Technologies and Dr Millennium Inc. ABB net up Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) has posted a 32 per cent increase in the net profit at Rs 6.2 crore for the first quarter ended March 31 as a result of increased revenues compared to Rs 4.72 crore in the same period last fiscal. The company net sales/income from operations for the quarter under review stood at Rs 241.12 crore higher than Rs 202.17 crore in the Q1 ended March 31, 2001, ABB Managing Director Ravi Uppal said in a release here today. Cosmo films Cosmo Films said today its net profit grew 59 per cent for the year ended March 31, 2002, due to a Rs 5.59 crore provision for deferred tax. The net profit stood at Rs 17.60 crore as compared to Rs 11.09 crore in the previous fiscal, according to the audited financial results released here.
PTI
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Promote tourism, Punjab told Ludhiana, April 24 Incidentally, despite repeated announcements, the Punjab Government has failed to announce the state tourism policy over the past few years. Mr Tek Bahadur Dangi, Director, Marketing and Promotions, NTB, who was in the city yesterday, claims: “Due to limited natural resources, the Nepal Government has decided to promote its culture, traditions and religious festivals to attract international tourists. No doubt, the Maoist terrorism and hijacking of Indian Airlines plane in 1999, have badly affected the flow of tourists. But we are visiting different tourists centres in India and other countries, to assure them that despite emergency in the country, they will enjoy a three-month long festival of life, to begin from May 1.” Experts point out that Punjab can also promote religious and cultural tourism by developing infrastructure around the Golden Temple and other historical Sikh Gurdwaras, Ranjit Sagar and Nangal dam, Harike Patan Lake. They say Punjab may learn some lessons from the innovative policies of the NTB, like launching of marketing campaigns to attract tourists to the festivals. Mr Dangi disclosed that they had joined hands with Royal Nepal Airlines, Hotel Association of Nepal, casinos, shopping arcades and other agencies involved in tourism in the country. Huge discounts are being offered by the hotels and restaurants, the shopping areas for tourists, participating in the festival. The tourists travelling in the aircraft of Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation, will be offered attractive prizes through scratch and win contests. A package would be shortly announced for the Indian Airlines passengers. |
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E-mail can wreck your life London, April 24 His confidence that e-mails are inferior to paper and pen might be justifiable as far as literary merit goes, and it is possible that the university board might have been more impressed by a thumping great pile of erotic letters. However, even in the past 12 months, the e-mail, imagined to be a convenient, off-the-cuff and easy-to-delete form of communication, has come to be regarded as more and more useful as hard evidence — in courts of law, in the Press and within relationships. Last week, Relate, a British relationship counselling organisation, speaking in advance of the first report by the UK Government’s marriage and support group, said one in 10 of the 90,000 couples who seek their help each year blames the Internet and e-mail for creating relationship difficulties. Obsessive web-surfing, Internet pornography and e-mail romances and flirtations were cited as adding new strains on the modern couple. Far from being transitory, free flowing and private, e-mail is terribly easy for others to access despite the obscure password you probably spent so long devising. And to top it all, each e-mail also contains what is called an IP address in the header, which reveals the location of the computer it was sent from. So if someone really wants to read your e-mails, it’s not difficult for them to do so, however assiduously you try to cover your tracks. Graham Smith, a partner in the digital media group of solicitors Bird and Bird, says: “One of the paradoxes of e-mail is that while it is used as informally as a telephone call, actually e-mails are documents like any other document and can be used as legal evidence. What really distinguishes them from corridor chat or the ordinary telephone conversation is that they are self-recording. Janet Wilson, a 37-year-old textile designer, discovered this to her cost. A couple of nights a week she would retire to her studio where her husband Ian would hear the reassuring sound of her keyboard tapping. When he thought she was writing invoices to clients, she was swapping e-mails with an old boyfriend, who lives in New York. Janet took the precaution of deleting both incoming and outgoing e-mails after each session and when her husband asked if he could use her computer to check up on his work e-mail she agreed without hesitation and reminded him of the password. That is why email has become a liability nightmare. In America, e-mails are now regularly used as evidence to back up divorce and custody battles. E-mail first made an appearance at a court in Britain in 1997, when financial services group Norwich Union had to pay over $1 million in damages and costs to the health Insurer Western Provident Association after libelous messages circulated around Norwich Union’s internal system. The chief executive of WPA, Julian Stainton, warned: “People think e-mail is private, but it is the most exposed form of communication on earth. Unless you have a strong and well-defined framework of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, you are bound to have problems.” Observer News Service
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500 businessmen turn spiritual
New York, April 24 The meet was for a different kind of stock checking — that amid the push for the bottom line, a need has arisen in the post September 11 and Enron scenarios for integrating business and spirituality. Declaring that the bottom line alone no longer measures the success of a business, the three-day conference roped in leading religious scholars and explored the emerging responsibility of business leaders "to provide values and be a model of good global citizenship." Labelled the Spirit in Business Conference, the business executives from top American firms, including Goldman Sachs, Hewlett Packard, American Express, McDonald's Corporation as well as from Mitsubishi and other international firms made repeated references to India. The constant refrain was that Indian systems, including meditation and yoga among others, would contribute to this exercise significantly. S.N. Goenka, who propounds Vipassana meditation, and Kiran Bedi, Joint Commissioner for Training with the Delhi Police, were among those who enlightened the executives ranging from CEOs to middle-level officers how they can better their personal and professional lives by looking inwards through meditation, yoga and other practices. Subhash Chandra, CEO of Zee TV, was scheduled to address the gathering but had to cancel it and rush to India due to an emergency, it was announced by the organisers. Andrew Ferguson, Chairman and President of Spirit in Business, explained the rationale of the conference. "For the last 150 years or so, Americans, faithfully following the dictum of separating the church and the state, have engaged in the total and relentless pursuit of material success." "As a result, we are perhaps the most materially successful society in the world today, but with it, came suffering as well. Americans spend about 70 per cent of their gross national product on health. Thousands of Americans have serious problems of stress, depression and a lot of other deadly and less serious ailments. "So we have money but are not happy. This has now led us to search inwards and this conference is essentially to explore spirituality and to integrate it in our lives to make it more meaningful both personally and professionally." Co-hosted by Tibet House U.S. and Trusteeship Institute, and co-produced by NY Open Center, the conference was sponsored by Forbes Magazine, Calvert Group, Verizon Communications, American Express, and Ruder Finn, among others. A major outcome of the meet was the launching of the Spirit in Business World Institute with headquarters in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
IANS
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Lowest GDP growth in Ninth Five-Year Plan New Delhi, April 24 Moreover, the picture is unlikely to get better in the coming years with a Parliamentary committee expressing serious doubts over attainment of an 8 per cent growth rate suggested by the Planning Commission for the Tenth Five Year Plan period (2002-07) in the backdrop of a dismal performance during the Ninth Plan. Poor
agricultural performance and short fall in public investment and savings were the reasons for the steep fall in the growth rate, the CSO said. The lowest growth rate during the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1997-2002) was registered in 2000-01 at 4 per cent, while the growth rate was 6.1 per cent in 1999-2000. The GDP growth rates for the last three Plans were 5.6 per cent (sixth 1980-85), 6 per cent (seventh 1985-90) and 6.7 per cent (eighth 1992-97). The average annual growth rate of GDP at factor cost at constant (1993-94) prices in the sectors “agriculture, forestry and fishing,” was 3.1 per cent during the period 1990-91 to 1999-2000, while in mining, manufacturing, electricity, gas and water supply and construction it was 5.8 per cent. The growth rate of services during 19990-2000 was estimated at 7.5 per cent. On the Tenth Plan, the Standing Committee on Finance report on demand for grants of the Ministry of Planning said “the committee are seriously apprehensive of likely spurt in the economic growth rate to 8 per cent as envisaged in the Tenth plan.” the Standing Committee on Finance said. |
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Cooking oil made from rice bran Chandigarh, April 24 The technology developed by the Regional Research Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, and bought over by AP Solvent in Dhuri of Sangrur district along with four others, including one in Taraori in Karnal district, is likely to bring major gains to rice-producing Punjab, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh. Dr Surendra Batra, the Head of the Science and Technology Division of the Union Agriculture and Cooperation Ministry, revealed this here today. Dr Batra said its technology converted rice bran oil to create a balance of saturated fatty acids, mono and poly acid fats, the key components for any of the healthy cooking oils. He claimed that the oil would challenge the best of branded oils at a possible competitive rate of Rs 35 to 45 per litre. The Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO) today transferred technologies of iodine value meter, oil spectrophotometer, digital titrometer and digital aflatoxin meter to private parties for mass use by farmers and procurement agencies to determine crucial components in oil and agriculture produce. While releasing the technology, the CSIO Director, Dr R.P. Bajpai, said he had approached the United Nations Industrial Development Oraganisation (UNIDO) and the World Bank to find market for this technology and the equipment to be produced by Indian companies. Dr Bajpai informed that the international bodies were assessing the demand and specifications for the these crucial agriculture implements of mass use. He said the focus of the Mission, now rechristened as a Technology Division on Oilseeds, Pulses and Maize in the Tenth Plan, would take the research to the field setting up demonstration units on palm oil in Karnataka and Maharashtra to reduce the import burden. Dr Batra said palm crop gave the highest oil yield per acre. He informed that the Division had developed technology for oil expellers upto 6 tonnes per day, with features as less space requirement, low power consumption and higher oil extract. |
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HDFC Life declares bonus Chandigarh, April 24 The directors declared a reversionary bonus at the annual rate of 8 per cent of the sum assured for all single premium whole-of-life policies and personal pension plans that were in force on March 31, 2002. They declared a reversionary bonus at the annual rate of 4.25 per cent of the sum assured for all regular premium endowment assurance policies, money-back policies and personal pension plans that were in force on March 31, 2002, and have paid all premiums in full when due.
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HP-Grasim pact for cement plant Shimla, April 24 The cement plant of 1 million tonne per annum capacity will provide direct employment to about 350-400 persons and indirect employment to about 5,000 persons besides generating other economic activities in the areas, which will bring revolutionary changes in socio-economic conditions of the people. Mr Kishori Lal, Industries Minister, said in the northern region this was the only state which has vast deposits of limestone suitable to sustain large cement plants.
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Srinagar summit Max NY Life Philips TV Munjal nominated Airtel plans JK Paper |
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