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Wednesday,
July 24, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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A VIEW FROM PAKISTAN Amarinder to meet
employees body Punjab seeks $ 1 b help
from UN agency Punjab
CM calls on Sharad Yadav |
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Free UTI
Board of other FIs A-I has
maximum staff per plane Bank of
Punjab in pact with Western Union UTI Bank
chief proceeds on leave WorldCom
pays 300 cr to VSNL CORPORATE NEWS
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A VIEW FROM PAKISTAN PAKISTAN
is likely to make its mark on regional trade in South Asia as it has almost finalised a preferential bilateral trade agreement with Sri Lanka while negotiations with Bangladesh for similar deal are under way. Pakistan lags far behind all South Asian countries that have managed to enter into bilateral trade agreements after their failure to merge in a regional trade block. India is already conducting preferential bilateral trade with almost all the countries of the region except Pakistan. Bilateral trade between India and Bangladesh and India and Sri Lanka was beneficial mutually in some fields like textiles and engineering, as both Bangladesh and Sri Lanka needed these products for domestic consumption and value addition for exports. India maintains a huge trade surplus against these two countries. Pakistan on the other hand is not in any direct competition with these two South Asian countries in any sector. Exporters in Lahore say Pakistani garments and knitwear have carved their own niche market that is not in any direct competition with these two countries. Pakistan is a very lucrative market for tea, beetle leaves and many of the fruits produced in these two countries, which they could not export to India. Pakistan could supply high quality yarn and fabric to these two countries. It could export better quality engineering goods because its engineering units comprise of machines imported from the West. The Indians on the other hand manufacture most of the engineering products on Indian machines based on outdated technology. Despite these mutual advantages bilateral agreement between Pakistan and the smaller regional countries remained elusive. Pakistan government had been trying for last two years to enter into any agreement with them. A few months ago, Pakistan’s Commerce Minister Razzak Dawood said these countries have some apprehensions about a free trade agreement with Pakistan which Pakistan is trying to address. The Commerce Minister, during past two years, has visited Sri Lanka several times to arrive at a mutually beneficial trade accord. His recent visit at the beginning of this month bore some fruit. Commerce Ministry officials are optimistic that a bilateral trade accord would be signed between the two countries during the forthcoming visit of President Musharraf to Sri Lanka. The trade between the two countries is likely to increase in volume once the duties on Pakistani goods come at par with India. Presently the trade between the two countries has been nominal. The trade balance has always been in favour of Pakistan during past decade. Pakistan’s exports to Sri Lanka stood at Pak Rs 4397 million in FY 2001-2002 and imports were at Pak Rs 2000 million. Thus, the mutual trade between the two countries has ranged between $100-125 million per month. This is peanut when compared with $20 billion annual import/export trade of Pakistan. As far as the potential is concerned, Pakistan’s import of tea alone has average Rs10,000 million during past seven years. This amounts to a little over $150 million per year. Sri Lanka could substantially increase its tea export share in Pakistani market if it is granted a preferential treatment under a trade agreement. Similarly Pakistan can grab a loin’s share in the increasing textile market of Sri Lanka. Pakistan in fact is the largest exporter of cotton yarn in the world. Its presence in Sri Lanka, however is nominal as the market is dominated by India who presently enjoys duty concession that Pakistani exports do not have. Pakistan’s share in the Sri Lankan steel pipe market is presently less than that of India. But when the duty advantage enjoyed by the Indians is nullified, its share is likely to increase. Steel pipes in Pakistan are manufactured from high-tech European plants while Indians still rely on their locally made plants. Pakistan can have similar advantage in fans and many home appliances. It could export top quality pharmaceutical to Sri Lanka. There are 31-world known multinational pharmaceutical concerns operating in Pakistan. Fertilizer is another item where Pakistan has advantage over India particularly in Urea, which is produced from natural gas abundantly available in the country.
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Amarinder to meet employees body Chandigarh, July 23 He said the Chief Minister had agreed to meet the delegation of Punjab State Co-operative Board Corporation workers/employees Mahasangh, a state level body, to discuss the issues of disinvestment, winding up of some corporations and freezing of DA and cut in other allowances. He claimed that the CM was concerned about the resentment among employees, and was interested in finding a way out to resolve the matter at the earliest. The insiders told that a section of state bureaucracy is also working hard to convince the CM to offer some concessions to the employees, as some of the union leaders have already approached the media to highlight various corruption cases of the management. The employees union of Punjab Finance Corporation and Punjab State Industries had recently issued a list of defaulters, having links with management and some political leaders. These unions have now approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court to issue instructions to the state government, to take action against corrupt officials and withdraw the announcements on cut in allowances. An impressive state level rally of the Mahasangh was also held at Sector 17 here today. The employees of almost all the corporations in most part of the state observed mass casual leave on the call of Mahasangh. The speakers in the rally warned the government if the recommendations of the disinvestment commission were implemented, they would organise protests in all the parts of the state, and would give a befitting reply to the government. They urged the government to withdraw anti-employee decisions. Among others, employees from PSIEC, PFC, Poultry Corporation, Tubewell Corporation, Co-operative Bank, Punsup, Markfed, Forest Corporation, Punjab Tourism, participated in the rally. |
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Punjab seeks $ 1 b help from UN agency Ludhiana, July 23 Mr K.R. Lakhanpal, Principal Secretary (Finance) Punjab told this reporter that three major projects including rural drinking water supply and rural sanitation and urban sanitation, urban drinking water supply and solid waste treatment have been submitted to the Asia Pacific office of the United Nations International consortium at Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. He alongwith the Chief Secretary, Mr Y.S. Ratra will have discussions with the officials of the agency in Kuala Lumpur and this would be followed by the discussions in New York at the UN headquarters where the Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh will lead the delegation. Mr Lakhanpal said that these projects were estimated more than Rs 8000 to Rs 10,000 crore and they were hoping that projects worth over Rs 5000 crore would be approved which would be spread over a period of five years. Mr Lakhanpal maintained that since Punjab has been insulated and isolated during the past five years from international multilateral funding, this was just an exploratory exercise being made by them. Mr Lakhanpal said that contact had also been established with Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia who is with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and he would arrange some meeting with the leading NRIs and IMF officials with the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister will also meet NRIs in UK. The Punjab team which has held preliminary discussions with the World Bank officials in Delhi and sought assistance for some projects would also meet be World Bank officials in Washington. The Punjab team, besides, the Chief Minister will include Mr Lal Singh, Finance Minister, Mr Y.S. Ratra, Chief Secretary, Mr S. Sinha, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, Mr K.R. Lakhanpal and two Congress legislators namely Mr Surinder Singla and Mr Rana Sodhi.
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Punjab CM calls on Sharad Yadav New Delhi, July 23 The feasibility of making monthly fund releases to the state government based on the stocks held by the state would also be examined. These were among the various issues discussed in the meeting between Union Minister of Food and Public Distribution Sharad Yadav and Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh held here today. Mr Yadav has assured the Punjab Chief Minister that the movement of foodgrains out of Punjab would continue to get high priority as in the past. The Union Minister has agreed to sympathetically consider the demand of the state government to extend the time limit for milling of about 2.1 lakh MT of paddy procured during the kharif marketing season, 2000-01. Capt Singh demanded that the establishment /administrative charges as an element of procurement of wheat during 1997-98 Rabi season onwards may be allowed on actual expenditure basis and reimbursement of the infrastructure development cess. He also urged the Centre to allow extension of two months so that balance paddy of Kharif 2000 can be got milled and delivered to save the agencies. The Punjab Chief Minister also demanded that the supply of levy sugar may be released to the neighbouring states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan from Punjab rather than from far flung states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
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Free UTI Board of other FIs New Delhi, July 23 The draft report of the JPC said IDBI as well as other trustees like State Bank of India, Life Insurance Corporation and other financial institutions should divest their control from the UTI. Referring to the S.S. Tarapore panel report, the Committee criticised members of UTI’s board of trustees for “gross negligence” and “violation” of prudential norms to declare dividends from the fund’s reserves for four successive years to the extent that the reserves became negative. UTI’s reserves and surplus turned to a negative Rs 1,098.49 crore mainly due to payment of high dividends during 1994-98. Pointing to UTI fiasco, the JPC recommended that suitable action should be taken against trustees of UTI. The report quoted current UTI chairman’s deposition and said “over time UTI got into mismatch problem. If it was a pure mutual fund, it would not have got into some of these (long term) investments.” On the role of other trustees, the JPC said “both LIC and SBI floated their own mutual funds but chose to retain their representatives on the Board of Trustees of UTI despite the conflict of interest.” Despite Tarapore committee’s clean chit to SBI, the JPC report said “the incidents highlights the anomaly of an institution, which is a competitor, client as well as a banker of UTI, being on the Board of Trustees.” The JPC also criticised Bank of India for appointing U H Somaiya with “tainted record” as the Assistant General Manager in its Bombay Stock Exchange branch, who allowed discounting of payorders issued in favour of Maddhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank (MMCB). Holding that Somaiya and stock broker Ketan Parekh “colluded”, the Committee said, “it would be necessary to carry out further enquiry regarding financial benefits reaped by U.H. Somaiya, his present wealth and the mode of acquisition.”
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A-I has maximum staff per plane New Delhi, July 23 According to figures tabled in the Rajya Sabha today, the airlines, which has a fleet of 28 aircraft, has 588 employees per plane while most leading airliners of the world have half this employee-aircraft ratio. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Shripad Naik informed the House in a written reply that the government was aware of this and as part of rationalising manpower, the airlines had gone ahead with freeze on external recruitment in non-operational fields, abolition of posts abroad, rollback of retirement age from 60 to 58 years and introduction of two voluntary retirement schemes. Giving comparative figures, Mr Naik said British Airways, a leading airline, had a fleet of 263 aircraft with an employee-aircraft ratio of only 239 while American Airlines, which has 729 aircraft, has a ratio of 128. The minister said a proposal by Indian Airlines’ Board of Directors for acquisition of 43 aircraft, including 19 Airbus 319, 4 Airbus 320 and 20 Airbus 321 fitted with advanced CFM-56 engines, was under active consideration of the Cabinet. He, however, said there was no decision yet to buy new aircraft for Air India.
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Bank of Punjab in pact with Western Union
Chandigarh, July 23 Addressing a press conference on this occasion, Mr D.P. Singh, Executive Vice President, Bank of Punjab, said,
‘‘Initially the Western Union money transfers would be available at 44 branches of BoP, including 35 branches in Punjab, and would be eventually extended to other branches across the country.’’ Mr
H. P. S. Sethi, Senior Vice-President, asserted that the bank had entered into alliance to facilitate the NRI customers and their relatives back home, as well as to foreign tourists wanting to remit money into India. This alliance will ensure quick, economical and safe remittance to customers through the extensive network of Western Union worldwide. Mr Cedric Dias, marketing manager — India, Western Union, said, “The Western Union has over 6500 agent locations across 600 towns and cities in the country. Since, out of about $ 20 billion money exchange market in India, Punjab has a significant share due to high number of Punjabis settled abroad, the company is trying to ensure money transfer service at customers’ door step.”
TNS |
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UTI Bank chief proceeds on leave
Mumbai Let that bank board conduct an enquiry and decide”, Nayak, who has proceeded on four weeks’ leave. Nayak said he has handed over charge to the Executive Directors S. Chatterjee to manage the bank’s affairs in his absence. Charging that the UTI Bank Chairman stood to gain personally from the merger” JPC, probing the stock scam of 2001, said in its draft report yesterday that “The board of UTI Bank should conduct an independent enquiry into the failed merger.”
PTI |
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WorldCom pays 300 cr to VSNL
Mumbai, July 23 VSNL in a statement here said it would take all steps necessary to recover its remaining dues, seek to be on WorldCom’s Creditors’ Committee and identification of the Tata group company as a critical vendor with the consent of the US entity. VSNL sources said the issue of getting a status of critical vendor was being pursued vigorously with WorldCom and was likely to be resolved tomorrow. The Indian company enjoys a long-standing relation with WorldCom and was “quite optimistic about receipt of its dues”, the release said.
PTI
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CORPORATE
NEWS Kolkata, July 23 The profit before taxation for the period between April to June 2002 stood at Rs 73.42 crore as against Rs 20.80 crore in the same period last year. The earning per share for the period stood at Rs 1.79 from 50 paisa in the same period last year. Total income for the period was at Rs 1,827.27 crore as against Rs 1,611.41 crore in the corresponding period last year. Operating profit for the period was at Rs 338.63 crore as compared to Rs 309.88 crore in the same period last year.
Castrol India Castrol India Limited, today announced a 30 per cent increase in its net profit for the second quarter ended June 30, 2002. During the period under review the net profit increased to Rs 43.6 crore as compared to Rs 33.6 crore during the same period last year. Pre-tax profit during the quarter rose by 36 per cent to Rs 63.5 crore as compared to Rs 46.8 crore for the same period last year.
Wartsila India Wartsila India Ltd has reported a net profit of Rs 1.4 crore for the second quarter ended June 30, 2002, compared to Rs 3.5 crore in same period of previous fiscal. The total income in the reporting period was Rs 48.3 crore as against Rs 74 crore in the same quarter of last year.
Hikal Speciality chemicals company Hikal Ltd has posted a 15.56 per cent rise in its net profit at Rs 4.53 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, 2002 compared to Rs 3.92 crore in the same period of previous year.
Agencies |
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