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Oil ministry justifies rate hike
Lloyds to ship 1,000 more jobs to India
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Infy to hire 2,000 this fiscal, eyes buys
Virus threat makes Indian IT firms edgy
Himalaya launches baby care products
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Oil ministry justifies rate hike
New Delhi, November 9 An internal note of the ministry stated that a 14.5-kg LPG cylinder in Delhi at the new price of Rs 281.60 was cheaper than cooking gas sold in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The government had also announced a Rs 2.20 per litre increase in petrol price and Rs 2.10 a litre raise in diesel price. However, kerosene was spared from the increase, that had been necessitated due to a surge in the cost of the raw material (crude). A similar quantity of cooking gas in Karachi (Pakistan) is sold for Rs 411.99, at Rs 283.05 in Dhaka (Bangladesh), Rs 372.62 in Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Rs 462.25 in landlocked Kathmandu (Nepal), the note said. A litre of kerosene in Delhi, priced at Rs 9.01, is cheaper than Karachi (Rs 18.68), Dhaka (Rs 15.44), Colombo (Rs 11.30) and Kathmandu (Rs 15.30). “No change has been made in the case of PDS kerosene, even though international prices of kerosene rose to $ 58.29 per barrel in October 2004 (an increase of 147 per cent) from $ 23.65 per barrel since March 2002, when the last price change was made. Kerosene requires an increase of Rs 11.28 per litre in Delhi and yet no change has been permitted,” the note said. While international LPG prices have risen to $ 467 per tonne currently from $ 194 per tonne in March 2002, an increase of 140 per cent, domestic LPG retail prices have been raised to Rs 281.60 per cylinder from Rs 240.45 (in two tranches — one in June and the other last week), an increase of 17 per cent. “As against the required increase of Rs 158.15 per cylinder in domestic LPG in Delhi, only an increase of Rs 20 per cylinder has been permitted,” the note said. The retail-selling price of diesel was adjusted by 9 per cent in November, though international prices have risen by 26 per cent since the last price change in August. The price increase required for diesel in Delhi was Rs 4.24 per litre, whereas the hike has been restricted to Rs 2.12 per litre. The note blamed the spike in international crude oil prices for the increase. “Crude imports were valued at Rs 60,942 crore for the first half of 2004-05 (for crude oil imports of 49.6 million tonnes) as against Rs 38,665 crore (for crude imports of 44 million tonnes) during the same period in the previous year, an increase of 58 per cent.” The Indian basket of crude prices averaged $ 43.88 a barrel in October 2004 or about 190 per cent of March 2002 price of $ 23.31 per barrel and 22 per cent higher than those prevailing in May 2004, when the UPA government took over. “Price increase is necessary to keep our oil PSUs healthy and maintain their ability to service the nation. Oil marketing companies — IOC, BPC and HPC — have shown much lower profits in the first half of 2004-05 as compared to 2003-04. IBP has shown a loss during April-September 2004-05,” the note added.
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Lloyds to ship 1,000 more jobs to India
London, November 9 The banking group said it would increase the number of offshore staff in locations such as Bangalore and Mumbai for its insurance, IT and group operations activities. It said some jobs would be newly created positions, while many would replace existing back-office operations in Britain. Though the bank said it was confident of achieving the transfers through natural wastage and redeployment of UK staff to other roles, its unions attacked the move, saying that it would pave the way for the eventual transfer of up to 10,000 jobs overseas. However, a Lloyds spokesperson maintained that any employee affected by the outsourcing would be guaranteed a job elsewhere in the group.
— UNI
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KFC outlet in city next week
Chandigarh, November 9 Ms Sharanita Keswani, Director, KFC Marketing, was in the city today to put loose ends together for the opening of their eatery in Sector 8 (Madhya Marg) in about a week. In an exclusive talk with The Tribune, she said their survey showed that City Beautiful had a good retail market and the cosmopolitan nature of the city suited their plans to target the young customers and children. Founded by Colonel Sanders in the 1930’s, KFC has grown from one small restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky, to an international chain of more than 12,300 restaurants in more than 80 countries, serving eight million customers everyday. It is a part of Yum! Restaurants International (YRI), which also owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, A & W and Long John Silver’s. The trademark taste of Colonel Sander’s original recipe chicken made with a secret blend of 11 herbs and spices remains a closely guarded secret, locked in a safe in Louisville, Kentucky. In keeping with Indian sentiments, KFC has developed vegetarian products. Besides chicken burgers and wraps, there is vegetarian spicy curry, pepper rice, fresh green salad and Cole slaw as also sundaes and desserts.
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Infy to hire 2,000 this fiscal, eyes buys
New Delhi, November 9 An additional 3.5 million sq ft of office space will be available to Infosys Technologies in the next few months as it hires people to achieve the targeted 48 per cent growth in business this fiscal. “Today we are about 32,000 people globally. In the remainder of this fiscal, we’ll add 2,000 people across the world. Majority of this will be in India,” Infosys COO and Deputy Managing Director Kris Gopalakrishan told reporters here. On acquisition, he said: “Our strategy has been to look at acquisition as a means to enter a new service or new vertical or new geographies like Europe, where language and culture are an issue. That continues to be our focus.” He said the additional 3.5 million sq ft infrastructure is coming up at all nine development centres in India. “We are growing all across India. We are present in Bangalore, Mangalore, Mysore, Pune, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram and Mohali. Infosys is growing in all these centres,” he added. The company’s Chandigarh centre, Mr Gopalakrishnan said, will be ready over the next six months. “We will grow the numbers there from 450 now,” he added without quantifying the proposed increase. He said Infosys was not looking at setting up new centres in the near future. “We are working at it but will talk only when we are ready and running. When we look at expansion, Kolkata will be one of cities we will consider,” he said. The company’s total office space in nine Indian cities where it has development centres is about 5.04 million square feet. — UNI
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Virus threat makes Indian IT firms edgy
New Delhi, November 9 Significantly, recent proliferation of viruses and the resultant business disruptions are forcing corporate India to invest heavily in virus detection software and firewalls, the survey said. Moreover, primitive methods of attack are still prevalent. “About 36 per cent of the respondents saw security breaches due to abused user permissions, guessed passwords, poor access controls and human error and unintended configurations,” the survey said. Importantly, over 40 per cent of businesses plan to obtain security certification during the next 12 months. The study also determines that the most frequent impact of cyber attacks is unavailability of email and/or applications.
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Himalaya launches baby care products
Bangalore, November 9 Dr S.K. Mitra, Research and Technical Services, said the range was first tested on cellular models in the laboratory, and subsequently was subjected to extensive clinical trials at CMC in Kolkata, Apollo in Chennai, and PGI at Chandigarh. Over 500 babies over six months of age had participated in the trials, he said. All clinical trials were conducted with teams headed by both dermatologists and paediatricians, and the Helsinki Declaration norms and good laboratory practices were followed in the trials, he stated.
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Auto scene
Mumbai/Chandigarh, November 9 The Indian utility and tractor manufacturer is to pump in $ 8 million into the joint venture and hold 80 per cent stake in the company which had a turnover of $ 700 million last year, an M&M spokesman said here today. The value of the joint venture is estimated at $ 10 million. The planned joint venture will acquire assets from Jiangling Tractor Co, a subsidiary of JMCG, which has a capacity of 12,000 tractors per annum, he said. Jiangling Tractor would provide the joint venture with a strong manufacturing base, an existing distribution network in China and a complementary product range. Skoda Auto
Backed by healthy sales of its products in various segments, Skoda Auto India hopes to achieve operational breakeven by selling 8,000 units this year and has set a target of 10,000 units for the next year. Announcing the expansion plans for 2005 at a press conference, Mr Shashank Vaid, marketing manager of the company, said they would be launching a bunch of new products within the next one year, including Skoda Octavia II and Skoda Fabia. The latter would be targetted at the lower segment. Mr Vaid said the company would start exporting the car to South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka to begin with and plans a plant at Shendra, Aurangabad in Maharashtra as the manufacturing hub for the South-Asian region. They would also subsequently export the car to Malaysia and Philippines.
Honda Siel
Honda Siel Cars India (HSCIL) today launched a variant of the sports utility vehicle, CR-V, to tap the growing SUV market in India. The CR-V with manual transmission has been priced at Rs 14.57 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) while the automatic version would cost Rs 15.57 lakh, HSCIL President and CEO H Yamada told a news conference. HSCIL, which is 99 per cent owned by Japanese automaker Honda and the rest by the Siel group of India, will bring CR-V as completely built unit from Japan and aims to sell 1,500 units during 2004-05.
— TNS, Agencies
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