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Wednesday,
February 26, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Budget
likely to have sops for common man Ex-Tata
Finance MD arrested
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HPCL
employees want plus 5 pc stake
Panel for
identifying vanishing firms formed Mufti
calls for airlink between J&K, Punjab WWICS
hails decision of Canada court Dr
Reddy’s files suit against Pfizer Pfizer
sues Ranbaxy on Lipitor Connect
denies takeover report Aircraft
deal after CCD meeting Punjab
signs MoU with ESC Keane
plans to invest $ 15m
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Budget likely to have sops for common man
New Delhi, February 25 It is widely expected that the Budget 2003-04 will bring relief to the man on the street in view of the impending elections to the state assemblies and national elections in 2004. Indications are that Mr Singh will show healthy growth in receipts which will enable him to project a satisfactory level of fiscal deficit of about 5 per cent during the next financial year. Besides, the low GDP growth will make it possible for the Finance Minister to forecast a higher growth target for 2003-04. With more than 80 per cent of the working class employed in the informal sector, Mr Singh is expected to announce a package for this vote bank for which sufficient ground work has been on for quite sometime now. Experts say this could be insurance scheme for the unorganised sector, including for agricultural workers, a general health insurance scheme and a pension scheme for the working class in this sector. The Labour Ministry, being the nodal Ministry, will be operationalising these schemes. The insistence of the Labour Ministry to spearhead the initiative virtually led to dumping of Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) sponsored pension scheme for the unorganised sector. The small-scale sector is likely to be dereserved further with as many as 80 more items added to this sector. The government has committed itself to dereservation of the SSI sector by 2007. Other initiatives for this sector could include reducing interest rates by one percentage points. The sector has been demanding that interest rate applicable to it should be of the PLR (Prime Lending Rate) of 11.5 per cent. Indications from experts are that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in this sector would be encouraged by taking the FDI cap from 24 per cent to 49 per cent. However, increasing the limit for definition of SSI from Rs one crore to Rs 5 crore is unlikely as is being demanded by certain sections of the industry. Addressing the fiscal problem of states is a major issue for any Finance Minister. With the debt burden of the states going up to Rs 6,68,000 crore, this burden is at an unsustainable level. The Centre is encouraging states to swap their high interest rate loan with low interest rate borrowings. Public finance experts are expecting a minimum one percentage point reduction in the central loans to states in the Budget. The common man is expecting an increase in standard deduction, which he fears will be neutralised by reduction in tax exemptions on savings in line with the suggestions made by the Kelkar Committee. The common man also fears reduction in tax exemption on interest on housing loans. Experts say that this tax rebate is not benefiting just the lower middle class but benefits are substantially being cornered by upper middle classes as well.
UNI
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Exempt textile from VAT Amritsar, February 25 Urging the CM to exempt textile trade from levy of the proposed tax he said the economic revival of the state was one of the pre-poll promises of the Congress. However, this proposal might sound the death knell for the industry which was already passing through severe recession due to cheap imports by China. Earlier there was no sales tax on cloth in Punjab as the same was abolished in 1957.
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Ex-Tata Finance MD arrested New Delhi, February 25 The arrest came a day after the Delhi High Court rejected his anticipatory bail plea in the case. The case was handled by the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police. According to the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Mr U.K. Katna, sleuths nabbed Pendse in New Delhi area at around noon. The Crime Branch had registered a case against him in September last year and initiated investigations against Pendse on a complaint filed on behalf of Inshaallah Investment Ltd. (IIL), a TFL subsidiary, alleging that the former MD had issued cheques worth Rs 2 crore to brokers for payment of personal transactions of a former TFL Director, he said. The Joint Commissioner of Police said that a case of cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and misappropriation of funds belonging to the IIL was registered and a non-bailable warrant (NBW) was issued against him recently. The police, while opposing his anticipatory bail in the court yesterday, had stressed the need for his custodial interrogation, citing that former MD’s personal secretary had disclosed that Pendse after resigning from the company had given away some important documents.
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HPCL employees want plus 5 pc stake
Mumbai, February 25 Senior HPCL officials including directors raised several issues regarding the “security of HPCL employees after disinvestment” on February 14 before the Joint Secretary and Financial Advisor Surajit Mitra of the Petroleum Ministry and Disinvestment Ministry Director Sanjeev Kumar, a senior HPCL sources told PTI here today. “Post-divestment, HPCL will go through a change of culture, management thus ensuing job insecurity. No such changes are expected in BPCL, then why HPCL employees should get the same 5 per cent equity like BPCL. We should be given more than that”, they said. HPCL officials have also expressed to Mitra and Kumar, their concern over the government’s decision to sell HPCL via a strategic partner as against an IPO for BPCL. In view of the latest upward trend in HPCL share price, the officials have demanded that 1.7 crore shares should be allocated at 1/3rd of previous six months’ (August-January) market average price at around Rs 246 per share, sources said adding there should be no lock-in period and the corporation should provide loans for purchase of shares at subsidised interest rates.
PTI
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Panel for identifying vanishing firms formed
New Delhi, February 25 While the Secretary in the Department of Company Affairs would be its Chairman, the SEBI Chairman would be its co-Chairman, Finance and Company Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh said in a written reply. The criteria for coming under the gamut of the committee include those companies that have not complied with listing requirements of stock exchanges for a period of two years and companies that have not complied with the filing requirements of the concerned Registrar of Companies for a period of two years, the Minister said. Companies from which no correspondence has been received by the stock exchange for a long time and absence of company office at the mentioned registered office address of the company at the time of inspection of the stock exchange would also come under the scrutiny of the committee. The Minister said on the basis of 750 issues which came during 1992-98, 175 companies have been identified as “vanishing companies”. Out of these 175 companies, 82 with total issue size of about Rs 600 crore had responded to the letters issued by SEBI and have been
classified as “resurfaced Vanishing companies”.
PTI
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Mufti calls for airlink between J&K, Punjab Chandigarh, February 25 Speaking at a special interactive session organised by
ITFT-Chandigarh (Institute of Tourism & Future Management Trends), the Mufti said such a link would go a long way in promoting tourism in the state. Interacting with the local travel trade, the Chief Minister said that the possibility to introduce air services with smaller aircraft should be explored, which would enable film producers and directors from Bollywood to come to the state for film shooting, besides the visitors who are keen to come but could not stand the hassles of long journeys. The Chief Minister endorsed the suggestion for extending the Shatabdi train from Amritsar to Jammu which would boost tourism to the state besides providing a convenient link for the pilgrims to visit Vaishno Devi shrine. He disclosed that every year more than five million devotees visit the holy shrine bringing considerable economic gains to the people. He said tourism was a great economic multiplier because it generated employment opportunities, earned precious foreign exchange besides being a pollution and environment friendly industry. He also informed that the Lakhanpur check-post would be fully computerised shortly which would greatly facilitate the visit of the tourists to the state. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed invited media officials, travel agents and tour operators from Punjab, particularly Chandigarh on a FAM Tour to J&K to see the ground realities themselves and to work out tourism packages under ITFT coordinating arrangements and led by Mr Ashwani
Sekhri, Tourism Minister Punjab. He also said that he had requested the Chief Minister Punjab for an early meeting of the North Zone Council to thrash out problems in regard to streamline the entry point taxes and other matters. Earlier, Punjab Tourism Minister, Ashwani Sekhri invited the Chief Minister J&K for participation in the ensuing Conclave on “Integrated Tourism Development in Northern India” being held at Amritsar on March 2 and 3. |
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WWICS hails decision of Canada court Chandigarh, February 25 The decision ordered the Citizenship and immigration Canada to process 102 applications under the rules that existed before June 28, 2002, when the new regulation came into effect. But the decision had an impact on more than 1,70,000 immigration applications now in pipeline. Although the Judge had applied the decision to only 102 cases, people who filed their cases before December 31, 2001, have much broader implications and applications, said Col B.S. Sandhu, chairman of M.D. of WWICS. He further said the Indian health workers had a lot of scope in Canadian economy. According to Statistics Canada, nearly 4.5 million Canadians report that they are finding it difficult to find a family physician. Also the Canadian Nurses Association has projected a shortfall of 78,000 nurses by 2011 as the country has not trained enough nurses to replace the retirees, he added.
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Dr Reddy’s files suit against Pfizer
New Delhi, February 25 The Hyderabad-based pharma company filed a lawsuit in the District Court of New Jersey, claiming that it should be permitted to sell its proposed copycat version of Zoloft in the USA. DRL said it was already seeking marketing approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) to sell the copycat and has filed a challenge to four of the Pfizer’s five key patents over Zoloft. Dr Reddy’s had filed an abbreviated new drug application with the USFDA for Sertraline HCl, the generic version of Pfizer’s Zoloft tablets. It notified Pfizer of the filing. Pfizer did not file a lawsuit against Dr Reddy’s within the 45-day period prescribed by the Hatch-Waxman Act, DRL said in a statement here.
UNI
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Pfizer sues Ranbaxy on Lipitor
Wilmington, February 25 The federal lawsuit, filed on Friday in Delaware, asks a judge to prohibit Ranbaxy from making and marketing the drug before Pfizer’s 1987 US patent expires in 2010, and to award legal fees and expenses. Officials of Ranbaxy’s Princeton, New Jersey-based unit didn’t immediately return telephone calls seeking comment on the lawsuit.
Bloomberg
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Connect denies takeover report
Chandigarh, February 25 In a rejoinder issued here, Mr Jayant Keswani, General Manager, Marketing, Connect said it had been already made clear by General Manager, Corporate Communications, HFCL Group, Ms Rashme Mehta, that there were no talks in progress with Tata Teleservices for a possible takeover of Connect. Mr Keswani also said that there had been no negative growth in the subscriber base. Connect had grown from a subscriber base of 55,000 in January, 2002 to a subscriber base presently of 125,000. He pointed out that inter operator churn was a world wide phenomenon and was not unique to the Indian telecom industry. In the GSM industry, the churn figures varied from 4-5 per cent in the post-paid segment and 7-9 per cent in the pre-paid segment. In that context, Connect churn was below 2 per cent, which made it the best brand in managing its churn in the telecom industry in Punjab. Connect launched its services in October 2000 and it was common knowledge that in a capital-intensive industry like telecom, no company had achieved cash break-even within two years of launch. Mr Keswani said that it was incorrect to say that the company was finding it difficult to meet the operating expenses with around Rs.100 crore annual revenue. It was also not proper to say that the company had failed to make investments even to provide SMS service easily available on the CDMA networks worldwide. Under the present licence terms, different operators were interpreting availability of services such as SMS and roaming differently. These matters were under debate and discussions in the TDSAT also.
TNS
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Aircraft deal after CCD meeting New Delhi, February 25 Replying to supplementaries during question hour in the Rajya Sabha, Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain said after the September 11 attacks, the interest for bidding in these two airlines had waned and the matter had been referred to the CCD for a final decision on whether to go ahead with the disinvestment in these air carriers or not. The decision to go ahead with the Rs 10,095 crore deal for purchase of 43 aircraft for Indian Airlines, besides another deal for Air-India, would depend on the outcome of the CCD meeting, the minister said. Though the government had initially planned to disinvest in the aviation sector, in the changed scenario after the September 11 attack, the decision was reconsidered, he said. The only formality was now left to the CCD to remove it from the list of disinvestment. As soon as the CCD did that, the Civil Aviation Ministry would go ahead and purchase new aircraft, the minister said in reply to various supplementary queries on the subject. As per international practice and as was done by the two carriers on earlier occasions, they would raise fund for fleet acquisition through commercial borrowings in international/Indian market, he said. Stating that no new addition had been made to the fleet of Indian Airlines after the deal of A-320 aircraft in 1989, Hussain said the airline had proposed to acquire 43 new aircraft for replacement of the entire fleet of old aircraft and for capacity expansion. Currently Indian Airlines had a total fleet of 58 aircraft, including 12 taken on dry leasing, the minister said, adding that if the proposal of acquiring new aircraft fructified, Indian Airlines would have a total of 73 aircraft after returning the dry leased aircraft and phasing out old ones.
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Punjab
signs MoU with ESC Chandigarh, February 25 The parties have agreed mutually cooperate for promotion and development of IT, business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT enabled service and to effectively make joint efforts towards growth of electronics and computer software services industry in Punjab. ESC will open an office in Punjab and Punjab Infotech will provide office space to ESC at Chandigarh.
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Keane plans to invest $ 15m New Delhi, February 25 The company anticipates this investment towards expansion of its resource base, infrastructure and facilities in India. "Keane India has emerged as a strategic differentiator for Keane Inc due to which we are committed to leveraging India as a part of our global delivery strategy so that our clients are able to capitalise on the economic and quality advantages of offshore delivery", he said. Keane has increased its headcount in India by more than 200 resources and is providing services to over 25 clients from its ADCs in India. "There will also be an additional recruitments of 300-350 persons in 2003", Mr Keane said. With a view to capitalising on the emerging European IT market, the company has also signed an agreement with the Unilog group, a European IT consultancy, to form a translatic business
allliance.
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HDFC Bank UTI Bank Loans sanctioned L&T Punjab Alkalies |
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