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Yahoo! identifies India as major growth
area Warrants against Mukesh Ambani Gold soars to 9-month high |
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Post office plan better than LIC’s
Why different rules for A-I, AAI
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Yahoo! identifies India as major growth
area New Delhi, November 15 The company is at present in an “expansion mood” and will continue to offer free e-mail and messenger services even as it seeks to penetrate further into mobile telephony space. “With close to over 30 million registered users, India is one market which will continue to be strategic to Yahoo!’s global scheme of operations”, Country Manager of Yahoo! India Neville Taraporewalla said in an exclusive interview. At the same time, he said the company will “invest in appropriate human resources”. The “efforts to build communities is bearing fruit in India” and the company will continue to provide value as we go ahead”. Pointing out that Internet audience reaches one-third of the cable and satellite households in India, he said this audience is more than some of the largest print dailies in the country collectively. “So it is a medium to reckon with, as you will see in 2004”, he said. In the near to medium term, Yahoo! India will enter more strategic alliances to expand its domain in the Internet space. “Going ahead, we will continue to build on the base built up this year and you will see more strategic alliances such as Yahoo! India Matrimony, a new property launched and powered by India’s largest matrimonial vertical www.Shaadi.com. Since the dotcom bust, this is a significant alliance on the Internet space”, he said. In fact, he said the strong brand equity that Yahoo ! enjoyed globally is one of the major reasons why the company survived the dotcom bust that swept the sector in a globally afflictive phenomenon. “We were never just another dotcom. The strong Yahoo! brand name and the host of innovative services we offered not only ensured our survival, but also saw us becoming leaders in the Indian Internet space”, he said. As purely business proposition, he said Yahoo! India has “certainly turned the corner”. “Our advertising and mobile features have grown substantially in India. We have seen aggressive growth rates for the past 18 months and that will continue as we forecast for the next year”, he said. Online advertising has evolved rapidly over the last decade. But from an Indian perspective, several lines of businesses still prefer the traditional media vis-a-vis the Internet. He, however, said online advertising is “effective and it works”. In India, Yahoo! India has been first out of the blocks launching innovative options to achieve marketing objectives to capture the mindshare of users online. Another area that has been debated is that free services and the issue that has dominated is to what extent can service providers such as Yahoo! continue to provide content and e-mail services free of cost and depend primarily on advertising for revenue. The Yahoo! India chief said the company considers the space in mobile telephony as one of the major potentially emerging business areas. “We consider the mobile space and the online media sales as equal and important business opportunities. We are constantly innovating and entering new areas of business and, hence, are not solely dependent on advertising revenue for survival”, he said. At the same time, he allayed fears about any price tag being imposed on the e-mail or messenger services. He disagreed that while Yahoo! enjoys fair amount of popularity as an e-mail platform or chat, the same cannot be said about its web directory services vis-a-vis Google. “Yahoo! attracts the largest traffic of netizens in India and this is not only because of our services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Chat or Yahoo! Messenger. We are different from other websites in the sense that we offer a plethora of services, which others don’t”,
he said.
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Warrants against Mukesh Ambani Hisar, November 15 Chief Judicial Magistrate Ajay Tewatia yesterday issued the warrants against Ambani on a complaint filed by Bhupinder Singh. Bhupinder Singh, a resident of Urban Estate, Hisar, alleged in his complaint that he had applied for a mobile phone connection on February 16 this year and deposited a draft for Rs 3,000 and submitted 12 post-dated cheques for Rs 1,800 each. The complainant alleged the company, at the time of accepting his application, had assured him of releasing his connection early. He alleged that the company had encashed one of his cheques for Rs 1,800 on May 5 this year without providing him the connection, thus cheating him in the process. He said the company later issued him a mobile set, but had failed to activate it. He alleged that despite bringing this to the notice of the company, it had not given him the connection. —
PTI |
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Gold soars to 9-month high
Mumbai, November 15 Pure gold (99.9 purity) opened firm at Rs 5930, a level not seen since February 5, 2003, on heavy speculative buying, but failed to attract further demand and closed at the same level, showing a gain of Rs 30 over the last close of Rs 5,900. Standard gold (99.5 purity) also started firm at Rs 5,890 and after moving narrowly in line with pure gold, closed at the same level, revealing a gain of 35 over yesterday’s close of Rs 5,855. Dealers said firm overseas advices mainly contributed to the sharp rise in gold prices in the local market. Gold had rallied to a 7-year high of $396.70 per ounce during the London afternoon fixing on Friday on hectic buying following a fall in dollar rates coupled with jump in wholesale inflation. —
PTI |
Post office plan better than LIC’s Q: One of your articles mentioned that the PO-MIS (under which I can invest upto 6 lakh) makes better investment sense as the LIC’s 9 per cent return is taxable whereas PO-MIS’ 8 per cent is tax free. I would like to confirm this — is the 8 per cent return under Post Office Monthly income scheme tax free? — Anuj Poddar A: You have read me wrong. I claim that POMIS is better than the LIC scheme for several reasons — The pension scheme of LIC gives an effective rate of 9.38 per cent on an annualized basis. POMIS the monthly payment at 8 per cent p.a., with the bonus of 10% at its maturity period of 6 years works out at an annualized rate of 9.66 per cent. Benefit of Sec. 80L does not appear to be available on the LIC pension scheme but it is definitely available for the POMIS. Application of TDS carries a question mark with but POMIS definitely does not attract TDS. Liquidity of the LIC scheme is very poor when compared with that of POMIS. It allows premature withdrawals any time after expiry of one year. Penalty of 5 per cent of deposit amount shall be deducted if withdrawals are effected within 3 years; no penalty thereafter, other than loss of the bonus. The LIC has no premature withdrawal facility but offers a loan facility to the extent of 75 per cent of purchase price after 3 years. The rate of interest on loan is 10.5 per cent. Moreover, there is no certainty in this respect. The interest rate on loan will be decided by the LIC from time to time. POMIS is available for all, senior citizens or not. The LIC scheme is available only to those who are over 55 years nearest birthday. And finally, the ceiling on the contribution of POMIS is Rs. 3 lakh for single accounts and Rs. 6 lakh for joint accounts. This is far superior to the ceiling on the LIC scheme. All this means that one should look at the “Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana” only investing in the POMIS to the hilt. Need not prepay loan
Q: I am planning to take a housing loan from ICICI. The offer that they have made is 8 per cent floating and 8.25 per cent fixed for 10 years. They have also offered zero penalty on foreclosure of the loan. So I plan to pay out the loan in 5 years or so. For this I will do prepayments from time to time. Can you please suggest whether it will be better to take fixed rate or floating rate of
interest? I feel the interest rates are not going to fall any further and they may be revised upwards in future. My feeling is it is better to go for fixed rate since there is a difference of only 25 basis points and it seems less risky if the rates are revised upwards. — Utpal A: The repayment of loans and the interest paid carry certain tax concessions. These are so much that, it is always advantageous to take a loan for purchasing a house and invest your own funds gainfully, if you have taxable income. Take a loan for as large an amount as possible and for as long a period as possible. There is no need to prepay the loan. I feel that the market interest rates are going to decline and, therefore, I would opt for a floating rate. However, the future has always a large unpredictability associated with it and I concede that your guess is as good as that of mine.
Capital gain status
Q: I am much beneficiary through your column in “The Tribune” please guide me about the status of capital gain for the shares and units of Mutual Funds purchased after March 1, 2003, as announced by the Finance Minister that these should be free from Capital Gain Tax. — Raja Punjabi A: The newly amended Sec. 10(33) of ITA states that any income arising from the transfer of a capital asset, being a unit of the unit scheme, 1964, referred to in Schedule I to the Unit Trust of India (Transfer of Undertaking and Repeal) Act, 2002 (58 of 2002), and where the transfer of such asset takes place on or after the April 1, 2002, is exempt. With a view to boosting the share market, FA03 has inserted Sec. 10(36) to provide for long-term capital gains arising from transfer of shares purchased through a recognised stock exchange, on or after 1.3.03 but before 1.3.04 exempt from income tax. This exemption will be restricted to only those shares figuring in the BSE-500 index as on 1.3.03. If, during the course of the year, any of these shares are replaced with another stock in the index, investors who had purchased the share prior to its replacement will continue to enjoy the benefit. Since the word used is purchased, the benefit is not available to bonus shares, even if these are issued by the BSE-500 companies and even if the issued during the specified period. The benefit is also extended to shares of companies making initial public offers during the year. In both the cases long-term capital gain is exempt. Consequently, long-term capital loss is also exempt. In other words such a loss cannot be set off against any capital gains. And I have not come across anyone who has earned capital gains on US-64 units. Have you? |
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Why different rules for A-I, AAI K.R. Wadhwaney Air-India, Indian Airlines and the Airports Authority of India are three autonomous aviation units, which function under the direct patronage of the government. Yet the Civil Aviation Ministry has one rule for the AAI and another for the two national carriers. The AAI is the wealthiest aviation body in the country. It makes money through rental charged from users for landings, parkings and through several other means. It is more a profit-making unit than service-oriented body. It makes heavy profit every years and has mammoth balance in kitty. In sharp contrast, the two national carriers is passing through rough weather. Yet, shockingly, the ministry has shut doors on the national carriers to let the AAI earn huge profits by undertaking X-ray of check-in baggage at four international airports (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore). Observers of aviation opine the AAI’s over-all performance at the metro airports has been far from efficient. It is at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) where a child was crushed under the wheel of the conveyor belt. Security lapses are galore at these airports. Why should the AAI be burdened with an additional responsibility when the system has been functioning satisfactorily. The national carriers have trained personnel, who X-ray the baggage of passengers quickly. Statistics show there is no congestion at these X-ray machines even when there is bunching of flights. The AAI’s official says there will be less congestion at these X-ray machines than before. It is great that all four gates will be available for departing passengers at the IGIA. But the single-agency concept for X-ray baggage will be detrimental for smooth functioning. This is also in violation of guidelines of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). There is an urgent need to have a trouble shooter at IGIA, which is a prestigious airport. But the greater need is of decentralisation of functions. If one agency is “bestowed” upon all functions, there will be nothing but chaos.
Privatisation There is a move to privatise 2 international airports in Delhi and Mumbai. The proposal, pending clearance for quite some time, may be good as there will be greater efficiency at these two busy airports. But will the move become a reality? It is difficult to say at this point of time because there are wheels within wheels in the government. Ministries are sharply divided. Some are in favour of privatisation and others are not. While privatisation move is being talked about, there was a near-miss near Mumbai airport. Both aircraft were foreign. One was flying from Male of Dubai while another was coming from Kenya to Mumbai. Air Traffic Controllers had erred in maintaining the minimum separation stipulation. This was a serious lapse. According to aviation sources, one ATC has been suspended pending inquiry. |
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New Delhi, November 15
