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Tuesday,
October 1, 2002,
Chandigarh, India  
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From salesman to entrepreneur
Tension with Pak not to hit ‘India’s deficit’
GDP rate clocks 6 per cent growth
Demand for IT workers drying up in UK |
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Minister’s assurance to ‘border’ traders Reliance ups dividend to 47.5 pc
Biometric smart card launched
UB to launch sports car
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From salesman to entrepreneur New Delhi, September 30 From working as an underpaid assistant to a steel pipes merchant in Lahore, now in Pakistan, to creating a conglomerate with interests in tyres, steel tubes, pharmaceutical and automotive components, he was a textbook rags-to-riches icon. That's Raunaq Singh for you, widely hailed as the grand old "sardar" of the Indian industry. Raunaq Singh's corporate journey from Lahore to New Delhi, first as a steel tube merchant, then as a steel tubes manufacturer and finally as the founder of Apollo Tyres, has been the stuff of corporate folklore. He started his corporate journey without a pedigree, higher education or money, essential ingredients for success in corporate India, making it possible for ordinary folks to dream big. He was among the first post-partition breed of businessmen who came to India after the creation of Pakistan with nothing to fall on. Born on August 16,1922, at Daska in Pakistan, Raunaq Singh learnt the elementary lessons of business skills while being employed as a salesman of a steel pipes merchant in Lahore earning Rs 8 a month — a princely amount in those times. The seeds of entrepreneurship were planted when Raunaq Singh cashed in on an opportunity thrown up by the dearth of waterpipes in the areas around Lahore. The profits he, thus , earned were ploughed back in the form of setting up his own business in steel pipes. The pangs of post-Partition and its aftermath soon pushed Raunaq Singh back to the brinks of penury. However, displaying exemplary determination, he put brick by brick to take on the might of established giants in steel tube manufacturing - an area of business where Tata Tubes and Kalinga Steel were deeply entrenched and had established roots. The success in steel tube manufacturing was the stepping stone towards greater achievements leading the establishment of the Raunaq Group of Companies about three decades ago having diversified business interests. The group companies are : Apollo Tyres, Bharat Steel Tubes, Bharat Gear Limited, Raunaq International Limited, Menarini International Limited and Raunaq Automotive Components Limited. Raunaq Singh has been a prominent industry leader and the President of the Ficci,Assocham, the PHDCCI and the Federation of Indian Export Organisation. "I thank god for giving me whatever I could have desired. Now all I want is to be able to help people and generate as many jobs as possible," Raunaq Singh said in a recent media interview. "If you give one person a job, you feed six mouths. That is the way I look at it. It is this desire to do something good that has kept me so active way past the age a normal man would have retired."
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Tension with Pak not to hit ‘India’s deficit’
Washington, September 30 "I have the first hand knowledge and experience of both — what the current defence budget is and about the management of the defence budget. It will not, and I will not permit it to, add to the fiscal deficit of the government," he said at a press conference here on Sunday at the end of the World Bank-IMF annual meetings. "Absolutely, the first requirement of security is economic security." To the criticism in certain quarters of the WB about India's growing fiscal deficit, he said: "We must understand that when we talk of the fiscal deficit, three quarters of it is the revenue deficit." He said these countries had come to grief. Those who were critical of India in the past for the delay in the field of capital account convertibility now cite India as a model to be followed. The slowdown in disinvestment should not be seen as a setback to the reform process. "What the government has done is to order a review of what had been done so far and set the course for the future." In a global climate of uncertainty, India and China continued to stand out as islands of stability and growth. The fundamentals of the Indian economy were sound. To drive home his point, he said the country's "balance of payment position continues to mount. Current account deficit is less than 1 per cent." The inadequate monsoon had affected certain parts of Karnataka and Rajasthan, but "I believe at the end of the kharif (summer) crop, the decline in the agriculture production will be marginal". He, no doubt, appreciated the need for reduction in fiscal deficit and lessening of the debt burden but said it was premature to draw the conclusion that the growth of the economy had slowed. Commenting on deliberations of the Bank-IMF meetings, he said both multilateral institutions and participants were very eloquent about what needed to be done, but there was a wide gap between what needed to be done and what actually had been done and this gap had to be narrowed. The Finance Ministers of the G- 20 countries will meet in New Delhi in November and discuss this crucial issue there.
IANS
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GDP rate clocks 6 per cent growth New Delhi, September 30 The quarterly estimates of GDP for the first quarter (2002-03) released by the Central Statistical Organisation showed that the growth rate of 6 per cent much higher than that of 3.5 per cent clocked during last fiscal’s first quarter. The higher growth rate was primarily due to good performances in sectors such as finance, electricity,
construction and trade and hotels. While financing, insurance, real estate and business services registered a growth rate of 9.7 per cent as compared to 7 per cent in the previous year. Construction registered a 6.3 per cent growth, a substantial increase as compared to -0.2 per cent in the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Agriculture, forestry and fishing clocked a 4.4 per cent growth, up from 1.1 per cent in 2001-02 and mining and quarrying registered 5.3 per cent growth— a significant jump as compared to the negative 0.3 per cent growth in the previous year. Trade, hotels, transport and communication clocked 7.4 per cent growth as compared to 4.5 per cent growth in the previous year. Among the services sector, the key indicators of Railways, namely, the net tonne km and passengers have shown growth rates of 8.7 per cent and (-) 0.7 per cent, during the first quarter of 2002-03.
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Demand for IT workers drying up in UK
London, September 30 The report, released in London on Monday, says a block has been placed on new recruitment of IT specialists from India after the sector was taken off the "shortage list" of the Home Office. The shortage list includes professions where Britain is particularly short of skilled labour and is looking for migrant workers to fill the gaps. The shortage list still includes health professionals, including primarily nurses, teachers and policemen. But the removal of IT from the shortage list earlier in September will be a serious blow to many Indian IT professionals who were looking for a career in Britain. Of about 17,000 IT workers who came to Britain in 2000, about 11,500 were Indians. Removal of IT workers from the shortage list means it might still be possible for an IT worker to come to Britain if a firm is willing to employ him or her, but it will not be so easy to secure work permits. IT workers were removed from the shortage list because highly skilled Indian workers were taking on employment on relatively low pay. This meant British staff trained in IT was finding it difficult to get suitable jobs. Migrationwatch UK, a think-tank on migration issues, says the government's decision to raise the number of work permits issued to foreign workers will mean that a record level of 175,000 migrants can be expected next year compared to 30,000 per year in the early 1990s. That figure could include a large number of Indian nurses, but no longer the rush of thousands of IT workers. The report suggests this could lead to a substantial increase in immigration from 2007 onwards since, after four years, permit holders can apply for settlement — 95 per cent of such applications are granted. The new level could be as high as 80,000 people a year, including dependants compared to about 9,500 in recent years, the report says. But workers coming in can still beat the work permit systems. "The rapid response times, and the lack of post entry controls, leave the work permit system wide open to fraud and abuse," the report says. It also found that, contrary to government hopes, there would be little or no reduction in pressure from illegal immigrants. Except for China, the top 10 source countries for work permit applications are different from the top 10 for asylum seekers.
IANS
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Minister’s assurance to ‘border’ traders Amritsar, September 30 Addressing a gathering of businessmen from Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Batala and Ferozepore organised by the All-India Mink Blanket Manufacturers Association, Dr Kathiria echoed the sentiments expressed by the Minister of State for Industry and Tourism, Mr Ashwani Sekhri, that a majority of small-scale units in the region had suffered immensely during the past two decades and required special incentives like those provided to Jammu and Kashmir. Mr Sekhri presented a memorandum signed by 38 MLAs of border districts from all political parties, including eight Cabinet Ministers, to the Union Minister to strongly recommend to the Cabinet for giving incentives to bring back the glory of the area through industrialisation. Dr Kathiria, while accepting the memorandum, said Punjab Industrial Culture had suffered during the initial period of terrorism and later due to tension on the borders, and it required special attention to bring economic prosperity to the frontline state like Punjab. He said thrust should be on agro-industry and revival of the traditional textile industry. He said a special team of senior officers would be deputed to visit Punjab and study the problems being faced by the industry to prepare a comprehensive plan to revive it. Later talking to newspersons, the minister said the Central Government was preparing a plan for developing industrial infrastructure in all corners of the country. Expressing satisfaction over industrial growth during the results of the first quarter, Dr Kathiria said India was the second country in the world which had shown a six per cent growth in the gap only next to China. Among those who addressed the meeting were Prof Darbari Lal, Deputy Speaker of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha, Mr Jugal Kishore Sharma and Mr Harjinder Singh Thakedar, both MLAs, Mr Mohinder Singh Kochar, general secretary, All-India Mink Manufacturers Association, Mr Hardit Singh Makhni, Mr Gunbir Singh, Mr Rajeev Setia, president, Punjab Rice Millers Exporters Association, Mr Harminder Singh.
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Reliance ups dividend to 47.5 pc
Mumbai, September 30 The Board, which met this morning, recommended an increase in the dividend to 47.5 per cent (as against 42.5 per cent in 2000-01) on enhanced capital of Rs 1,396 crore with a total payout at Rs 663 crore. The company had in March announced an interim dividend of 47.5 per cent but later withdrew it following changes in the dividend tax in the budget proposals. Gross turnover stood at Rs 57,120 crore as against Rs 28,008 crore for the previous year. PTI
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Biometric smart card launched New Delhi, September 30 “Biometrics are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions,” said Mr Varun Prasad, Director, CMS Computers in a press note. Among the various features measured using this technology are face, fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris and voice.
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Price index up Kribhco profit BoP office Steel production BHEL net surges Bharati Tele ABB wins deal Bank loans Deepak Sanan BSE margin |
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New Delhi, September 30
