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Women who made it
Decision on VAT variations today
SIDBI to promote knowledge-based units
Tighten belt, Pranab tells PSUs
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No impact of ADC order on current tariffs, says TRAI
India to triple gas imports from Qatar in 10 years
Corporate results
Govt to offload stake in A-I, IA
Pak no to MFN status
Jute exports to touch Rs 5,000 cr
by 2010
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Women who made it
Chandigarh, April 15 Walk into the beautiful office in the showrooms of Sector 8 on Madhya Marg, and one finds the gracious woman in a crisp cotton sari at work amidst papers, sketches and plans. She is just back from Kerala where she is building a 500-crore Naval Academy on the northern tip of the state at Ezhimala, near Calicut. “This is the largest project that I have handled so far. The buildings of this project are spread out over 2,500 acres. There is a variety of buildings, including hostels, administrative block, classrooms, clubs, residences, parade grounds etc,” says Namita. She reveals that this project was won in an all-India competition. Among the numerous other prestigious projects that Namita has handled are Welhams School at Dehra Dun, Yadvindra Public School, Patiala, Dasmesh Academy and Martial Arts Academy at Anandpur Sahib, Cardiac Centre at the PGI and the PSIDC building in the city’s Sector 17. Ask Namita who her role model was and she says Ramwati Devi. That is her grandmother’s name who had done Ratan and Prabhakar in the old times and voiced the injustice at being married very young to a widower much older than her. “So she made it a point educate my mother, Sarla Joshi, who did her masters in English from a Lahore College before becoming a lecturer. My father was a civil engineer like his father. I was the eldest of four daughters. We were all brought up to be career women,” says Namita. She was in school at Nangal where her father was posted as a design engineer with the BBMB when she came into contact with Le Corbusier who had designed a part of the railing there. “I did my pre-engineering from Government College, Hoshiarpur, my hometown. Architecture was coming up as a new profession in the sixties and there were few women in the field. I opted for it and we were just three girls in a class of 30,” she says. She graduated from the Chandigarh College of Architecture in 1970 as a student of the fifth batch. At that time a graduate of the first batch was setting up his own little firm in an office in Sector 17 and he asked Namita to join him as a junior architect. The man was later to become a life partner. “It was a purely professional arrangement but we clicked well together as a team. We got married even though I came from a Hindu Brahmin family while he was a Sikh.” And how did she cope up all these years without him. “I was emotionally shattered but professionally it did not make a difference for both of us handled our projects independently. He also had a real estate business in which our son, Vishal, had joined and now he is handling it,” she tells. Namita’s daughter, Preeti, became an architect and the mother recounts with pride: “Instead of enterprise, my daughter has chosen to work with an NGO in the area of slum development.” Ask Namita what was the motivation with which she achieved so much, and her reply is: “We were always brought with the value that we must make something of our lives and we worked hard to strive for this goal.” She is now giving the finishing touches to the Kasauli Club interiors. She rebuilt the club, which was destroyed in a fire, keeping the traditional exterior and giving it a fine makeover inside.
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Decision on VAT variations today
New Delhi, April 15 “Any decision on that ( variations in VAT rates) will be announced tomorrow”, West Bengal Finance Minister and Chairman of the Empowered Committee Asim Dasgupta told newspersons here. There have been reports of variations across different states on tax rates after the new regime has come into force from April 1. The committee today held widespread discussions lasting about four hours with state Sales Tax Commissioners on the tax rates and other issues pertaining to implementation and administration of the new structure. “If we take 21 states that implemented VAT collectively, there have not been significant variations from their committed stance. In a few states, we have noted deviations”, Mr Dasgupta said. Under the VAT system covering about 550 goods, there would be only two basic VAT rates of 4 per cent and 12.5 per cent, plus a specific category of tax-exempted goods. There would also be a list of 46 commodities under the exempted category comprising natural and unprocessed products in the unorganised sector, items, which were legally barred from taxation, and items that have social implications. Included in this exempted category was a set of maximum of 10 commodities flexibly chosen by individual states from a list of goods, which were of local and social importance for the respective states and did not have any inter-state
implications. The rest of the commodities in the list would be common for all states.
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SIDBI to promote knowledge-based units
New Delhi, April 15 To finalise its lending policy for the next year, the SIDBI Board will meet on April 18. “We are targeting to increase our lending to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to Rs 5,000 crore by the end of current financial year as against Rs 3,200 crore attained till March 31,2005,” said Mr N. Balasubramanian, CMD, SIDBI, here today. Talking on the sidelines of a seminar organised by Assocham, Mr Balasubramanian said: “Considering commercial banks’ resistance to finance small and medium enterprises, the bank has already started direct funding to the enterprises. Further, on the line of Crisil and ICRA, we are also floating a 100 per cent subsidiary credit rating agency.” Mr Ajay Kumar Kapur, CEO, SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd., a subsidiary of the SIDBI said: “The SIDBI Rs 100 crore venture fund floated in 1999 for 10 year has already committed funding for 30 small and medium enterprises in software, IT education, software infrastructure and other knowledge based industries.
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Tighten belt, Pranab tells PSUs
New Delhi, April. 15 After presenting the Raksha Mantri’s Awards for Excellence for 2002-03, the Defence Minister said that the defence PSUs, which had done very well in different fields, should now pursue avenues of co-production and joint ventures with private partners and foreign companies. The minister asked the PSUs to raise their own resources and grow “without the crutches of government support”. He said that the defence PSUs should look towards the wider global market in order to take full advantage of the economies of scale. Observing that it was imperative for the armed forces to be equipped with the best of equipment, the Defence Minister said this should be backed by self-reliance so that the problems of sanctions or restrictions could be tackled. Earlier, Defence Production Secretary Shekhar Dutt asked the public sector units to create a diversified production base in the order to meet the new technological challenges. Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) bagged the Institutional Award, while Ordnance Factory Ambajhari and HAL, Nasik, got the Division/Factory awards. Employees’ groups from HAL, Bangalore, Bharat Dynamics Limited, BEL and Mishra Dhatu Nigam bagged the award in the Group/Individual category.
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No impact of ADC order on current tariffs, says TRAI
New Delhi, April 15 “It is clarified that recent TRAI’s decision will impose a 30 paise ADC only on Intra Circle (often referred as local) calls originated by a national roaming subscriber (while roaming outside his home network) and terminating in a mobile phone in visited service area. In all other categories of calls like call originated from roaming subscriber and terminating in the fixed line, either in visited service area or in different service area, call originated from roaming subscriber and terminating in the mobile other than the visited service area, there will be no effect since these calls are already having 30 paise per minute ADC,” TRAI said in a statement. “In any case, TRAI has not increased the ceiling on national roaming tariffs,” it said. It appears from the recent media reports that TRAI imposed a fresh surcharge of 30 paise per minute for all national roaming subscribers and Rs. 3.25 per minute for all international roaming subscribers, TRAI said. It said that cellular operators are also treating the calls originated by roamers differently than calls originated by normal subscriber and there is adequate margin available with cellular operators to absorb this marginal impact as they are already charging about Rs 3 to Rs 5 per minute from national roaming subscribers. TRAI said the ADC of Rs. 3.25 per minute for international roaming subscribers will have no impact on domestic consumers. “This ADC is applicable only on those international subscribers whose home network is outside India. There is already a exorbitant margin available with cellular operators as they are already charging a high airtime charges from international roaming subscribers for calls made by them while in India,” it said. The minor change in case of calls originated from roaming mobile subscribers (while roaming outside their home network) and terminating in mobile subscribers in the visited service area is likely to have no impact on the domestic consumer roaming tariff, it said.
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India to triple gas imports from Qatar in 10 years
New Delhi, April 15 Talking to the mediapersons after meeting the visiting Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani here, Mr Aiyar said the country had already signed an agreement with Qatar for importing 7.5 MT of gas annually, but by 2015, this would be increased to 20 MT. “India has already been importing nearly 5 MT of gas but we are now looking at a gradual build-up of another 15 MT within the next 10 years, which will translate to about 70 million standard cubic metres. Assuming that the proposed pipeline through Myanmar will fructify, a third of India’s gas imports will be from Qatar by 2010,’’ he said. The minister said Qatar had promised preferential rates to India for gas supply. Qatar has already shipped about 5 million tonnes of LNG to Petronet LNG’s Dahej terminal in Gujarat since the beginning of LNG exports in January, 2004. Negotiations are under way between RasGas of Qatar and Petronet LNG of India for the second phase of exporting 2.5 million tonnes of LNG to Kochi and supply is likely to begin from June, 2008. Mr Aiyar said Qatar had the potential to emerge as the single most important, though not exclusive, source of gas for India, parallel to the status of Saudi Arabia in terms of crude imports.
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Corporate results
New Delhi, April 15 The Board of Directors have recommended a dividend of 30 per cent that is Rs 3 per share, it added. The company has posted a net profit of Rs 95.91 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005 as compared to Rs 90.16 crore last year. Total income for the financial year 2004-05 has increased to Rs 858.39 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005 from Rs 747.40 crore in previous fiscal, it said. Aztec profit zooms
IT services firm Aztec Software and Technology Services Ltd today reported net profits of Rs 17.89 crore for 2004-05 as against Rs 1.31 crore in 2003-04. Bangalore-based Aztec posted revenues of Rs 98.15 crore in 2004-05, up 137 per cent from Rs 41.40 crore in 2003-04, a company statement said here. Aztec’s total revenues include income of Rs 15.81 crore from its subsidiary Disha. The board also recommended a dividend of 10 per cent upon approval by the shareholders.
— PTI
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Govt to offload stake in A-I, IA
Mumbai, April 15 “The Centre is planning to offload its 20-25 per cent stake in IA and A-I and companies will be listed on the stock exchanges,” Union Aviation Minister Praful Patel said here today. Mr Patel, however, said the government had not decided on the exact number of shares to be offered to the public. “But I can assure employees of the two national carriers that the public sector unit character will be intact even after the disinvestment,” the Aviation Minister said while inaugurating ATM and computerisation of Air Corporation Employees’ Co-operative Bank Ltd at the domestic airport here. The government has also firmed up its resolve not to privatise these two national carriers, Mr Patel
said. — PTI
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Pak no to MFN status
Islamabad, April 15 Trade talks with India would continue only as long as the political dialogue continues, Khan, who has been asked by Musharraf himself to cut short his visit to the US and join the delegation, was quoted as saying by local daily, Dawn. In the past, Khan used to link the trade opening up with India to progress on resolution of Kashmir issue. However in his latest remarks, he did not make any reference to Kashmir. Khan also ruled out Pakistan granting the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India, saying that Islamabad could not do that right away as it would further tilt the balance in favour of India. He said already India’s trade with Pakistan has doubled even though Islamabad traded with New Delhi through a positive list of 780 items and the rest of the items fell in negative category.
— PTI
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Low cellphone growth in North lamented
Chandigarh, April 15 Mr Pankaj Mohindroo, President of the Indian Cellular Association (ICA) told this to TNS on the sidelines of Mobiletek -2005, a technology event showcasing emerging mobile technologies, organised at Chandigarh today. “Though cheaper services because of cheaper prices of handsets and infrastructure costs should conventionally boost teledensity, as this is one of the major barriers to entry for the margin consumer, yet the figures for North India belie this fact,” he said. Of the total population of 300 million in North, there are only 16 million mobile subscribers, including 9 million in Delhi and Punjab alone, he said while adding that less than 3 per cent penetration in the North is dismal indeed. In fact, across the country too, the urban penetration is 15 per cent and the rural below 1 per cent. According to him, Chandigarh, which has the required profile for a truly urbane market would see 100 per cent penetration in the next five years. The penetration figures for Delhi and Punjab at 35 and 15 per cent, respectively, also stand well against most other states in the country.
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Jute exports to touch Rs 5,000 cr
by 2010
New Delhi, April 15 While releasing the National Jute Policy ,2005, here today, Union Textiles Minister Shankersinh Vaghela said this policy was implemented with the government acting as a facilitator and not a regulator. The policy aimed at changing the fortunes of the jute industry and all its stake-holders, including the millions of jute workers and farmers, in two to three years. For that purpose, capital subsidy had been increased to 25 per cent for import of machinery and other promotional activities and the government also announced a hike in the minimum support price (MSP) of jute to Rs 910 from July 1, 2005, from Rs 890 per quintal. The policy would lay stress on creating the National Jute Board that would integrate all functions of various institutions in the jute sector.
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Many build castles in the air but Namita Singh made these castles firmly in the soil. One of the pioneering women in the field of architecture Namita built the most reputed enterprise of architects in the region along with her husband, Satnam Singh — Satnam Namita and Associates.
