New Delhi, November 18
The Planning Commission, in its ongoing mid-term Plan review, will focus on four areas: reviving agriculture, strengthening irrigation and ensuring better water management, improving social sector and building infrastructure. Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, its Deputy Chairman, said this while addressing the Economic Editors Conference here today.

However, when a participant pointed out that grand projects are announced, but not effectively implemented, he admitted that past performance has been poor. “But we are looking ahead”. One reason for this is the fund constraint both at the Centre and in states.

Suggesting public-private partnerships as a way out, he promised to remove policy irritants that muck up private investment. Over-exposed to media, he said: “It’s difficult to say something which the Press doesn’t know”.

Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, who spoke next, asked the consumer to live with the anomaly that the petrol price is falling and the diesel price rising. That is how petro-prices behave globally. He promised a scientific assessment of demand for petro-products, specially kerosene and gas, and then build additional capacities, reaching out to remote and rural areas as well.

India has vast oil and gas reserves waiting to be discovered by foreign explorers. Mr Aiyar plans to use oil diplomacy to promote commercial activity, build transnational pipelines to get supplies from gas-rich neighbours in Asia, restructure oil PSUs and re-rank discretionary quota beneficiaries of petrol and gas dealerships.

Low-profile, lesser known Highways Minister Thiru T.R. Baalu complained of getting a bad press. “Whatever politicians say, you publish without verifying whether it’s correct”, he lamented and gave an example: the media used to say the NDA government built 11 km of highways daily. The correct figure is 2.2 km a day. Now under him the building speed is 4.5 km per day.

His ministry’s handout claimed the Jalandhar bypass among the projects completed in the last six months. The bypass became operational much before that.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel impressed with his clarity and hold on facts. Problems are known: capacity constraints, choked airports, ageing fleet. No plane has been purchased for the past 16 years.

His ministry has high-flying projects on paper. He hopes to upgrade 30 airports to global standards. One such airport takes 1,000 acres. The land, he says, is no problem. The blueprint is ready. Work will start by next February and be over in two years. He is enthusiastic about raising funds and has hired top experts.

A new comprehensive civil aviation policy will be in place soon based on the Naresh Chandra Committee report. Amritsar figures among the airports to be upgraded. The minister sounded positive about a new airport between Jalandhar and Ludhiana.

New Delhi, November 18
The World Bank today promised to extend loans worth $ 9 billion to India in the next three years, most of which is intended for railway, power, road and water resource sectors.

“We are prepared to extend 9 billion dollars in the next three years or 3 billion dollar annually,” World Bank president James Wolfensohn said after a high-level meeting in Planning Commission.

The meeting was attended by the Commission’s Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Power Minister P. M. Sayeed, Water Resource Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, Railway Board Chairman R. K. Singh and others senior government and World Bank officials.

Officials of the ministries of power, railways, roads and water resources made detailed presentations before the World Bank chief and projected the funding requirements totalling $19 billion over the medium to long term in their respective sectors.

“What I thought was most important in dealing with infrastructure is the scale at which things should be done and the apparent advances that have made by each of the ministries in organisation to implement these plans,” Wolfensohn said.

“So, the bank has assured each of the ministries about the support. We look forward very much to working with water, highways and power,” he said.

Although the Country Assistance Strategy of World Bank stipulated assistance is worth $ 3 billion annually, government officials said the requirement could be much higher at about $ 4 billion per year. — PTI

Chandigarh, November 18
Banks today resolved to improve their credit delivery mechanism by increasing the limit on loan advances under priority sector for dealers in agriculture machinery from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 30 lakh and for distribution of inputs for allied activities from Rs 25 lakh to s 40 lakh, informed Mr D.L Rawal, general manager, Punjab National Bank (PNB) .

Addressing the 90th state-level bankers’ committee meeting here today, Mr Rawal said agriculture advances increased from Rs 6,610 crore to Rs 8,869 crore in Punjab, up by 34.2 per cent, compared to 27.5 per cent in the previous year. The advances to agriculture are 31 per cent of the net bank credit against the national goal of 18 per cent.

The aggregate deposits of the banks in the state have increased by 8.6 per cent during this period against 8.4 per cent in the previous year. The deposits increased by Rs 4,987 crore and the gross credit increased by 21.8 per cent .

The priority sector advances increased from Rs 14,458 crore to Rs 17, 704 crore, up 22.4 per cent. the advances to small scale industries in the state increased from Rs 3,959 crore to Rs 4,482 crore, showing a 13.2 per cent hike during this period.

Mr Harwant Singh, General Manager (PNB), Punjab, said that for achieving the targeted growth of doubling the agriculture credit and implementation of relief measure, the convener bank had already taken various steps such as fixation of revised targets, realistic assessment of scale of finance, organising awareness programmes for its branch managers and publicity for creating awareness among farmers. He told that banks in the state had disbursed Rs 5,718 crore as against the target of 4,958 crore and this surpassed the budget for disbursement to agriculture for half year ended September 2004.

Mr A.K Dubey, Financial Commissioner, Cooperation, Punjab, said, “We have cases of industrial advances and one-time settlement done by financial institutions and commercial banks. A similar approach needs to be adopted with regard to the Punjab farmers so that they do not lag behind other states.”

He also emphasised on the need to double the crop loan and said the departments concerned were working in this regard.

New Delhi, November 18
Intel, the global chip manufacturing major, today said it was evaluating India as one of the possible destinations for manufacturing chips while exuding confidence that the company was on track for improved performance worldwide.

“I am not going to say no to that question (whether Intel plans to set up chip manufacturing facility in India). India is one of the several countries that we are currently evaluating from a manufacturing perspective,” company CEO Craig Barrett told reporters here.

“But nothing is going to happen overnight nor are we ready to announce the location of our next manufacturing plant in Asia. India is just one of the several competitors where we are evaluating setting up manufacturing plants,” he added.

On the expansion plans at its Bangalore development centre, Mr Barrett said: “We have a target but we will not divulge it. We have 2,400 employees here in India and are substantially increasing our staff here. We will continue to focus on engineering hardware development, software development and will continue to grow our development centre in Bangalore.”

Lauding China, he said: “The reason that we have made additional investments in China is that China has further developed its manufacturing, utility, customs, transportation infrastructure and ease of movement of products in and outside of the country.

Intel pumped $ 302 million additional investment in its manufacturing plant at Shanghai in China. The total investment in China plant by Intel is to the tune of $ 500 million so far.

“I have seen in both countries infrastructure increase substantially. In both the countries, Governments are putting a lot of emphasis on the infrastructure and particularly in IT education infrastructure. Whereas India has moved much ahead in software development and engineering, China has manufacturing expertise in high tech engineering.

On its financial performance, Mr Barrett said, “We are on track to improve the performance which we were not meeting earlier as per our old standard.”

He said still the company is on the track to introduce the next generation process technology — 65 Nanometer — in the second half of next year. With this, Intel will be the first major corporate to have production in that technology.

“We already have two microprocessors designed on that technology. It is a process that is being debugged and getting ready for manufacturing next year,” he said.

Intel has rebounded from a low period of sales and revenue last year and in the first half of 2004, it posted a revenue of $ 16.14 billion.

“I am looking for improved performances in 2005 over what it was in the first half of 2004”, he said.

Intel posted third-quarter results on a good note as its profit rose, driven by record sales in Asia and stronger demand for notebook and server computer chips as it struggled with lacklustre PC sales, excess inventory and stiff competition. — PTI

Washington, November 18
The wages of Indian textile workers are the second lowest in the world, a media report has said.

An analysis of the wages of workers in a dozen textile-exporting countries by the Washington Post yesterday found that only Cambodian workers had wages lower than that of Indian workers.

According to the Post, India’s annual export of textiles stood at $12.9 billion, with the worker being paid an average wage of $0.38 an hour.

This was only bettered by Cambodia, which had an average wage of $0.32 an hour and exported $1.9 billion worth of textiles.

Pakistan, which exported textiles worth $12.3 billion, had a wage of $0.41 an hour, Sri Lanka with exports of $2.8 billion paid its workers at $0.48 per hour.

China paid its workers in the industry at a rate of $0.68 an hour, exporting a mammoth $79.7 billion worth of textiles.

The figures for Thailand stood at $0.91 and $6.1 billion.

The report which analysed the rates of the industry in India, Cambodia, China, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Jordan, Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, Turkey and Mexico also found that China topped the list of textile and apparel exporters to the United States, notching an impressive figure of $11.6 billion.

India came fourth after Mexico ($7.9 billion) and Hong Kong ($3.8 billion), exporting $3.2 billion worth of textiles to the US.

Pakistan came 10th , with exports standing at $ 2.2 billion.

The abolition of textile quotas at the end of this year have, however, left many exporters worried about the impact.

Most exporters are worried they will lose much of their present markets to China.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Trade, Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, whose country depends on the garment industry for 4,50,000 jobs, said: “You are dropping us in the well on the first of January with no rope. Fifty to 100 factories will be closed.”

With the new quota-free system so close, buyers from US companies like the giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. say they have already set plans to collapse their business from factories in dozens of countries. — PTI

New Delhi, November 18
Haryana Government has called upon the big industrial houses to come forward to invest in Special Economic Zone (SEZ) that is being set up near Gurgaon spread over 3,000 acres of land.

“Facilities available at the SEZ would include a helipad, trade towers, shopping malls, cargo handling and financial institutions,” said Mr Ashok Lavasa, Chief Administrator of Trade Fair Authority of Haryana here today.

He was in the city to visit the stall of Haryana in the International Trade Fair currently held at Pragati Maidan. The stall is attracting a large number of businessmen.

The Haryana Government will invest around Rs 948 crore for setting up an SEZ in a phased manner spanning over an area of about 3,000 acres at Garhi Harsaru area in Gurgaon.

An area of 1,715 acres was being acquired in the first phase by the Industries Department and 1,300 acres of land would be acquired in the second phase to development this township.

The SEZ would be deemed as a foreign territory and the acquired land would be reserved for industrial, commercial and institutional purposes, Mr Lavasa, told reporters at the Haryana Pavillion set-up at the ongoing India International Trade Fair (IITF)-2004.

One hundred per cent foreign direct investment would be freely allowed in the manufacturing sector in the SEZ units and custom-clearing facility would be provided at no extra charge, he said.

Mr Lavasa said a world-class cyber city was being set up in private sector over an area of 72 acres in Gurgaon.

Two Food Parks at Saha and Rai have already become operational and development work is in progress at the Food Parks in Narwana and Dabwali, he said.

Mr Lavasa said hundred per cent foreign direct investments would be freely allowed in the manufacturing sector in SEZ units. Customer clearing facility would be available at no extra charge.

The units would also be eligible for a corporate tax holiday as per the provisions of Section 10-A of the Income Tax Act up to 2010, he said.