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IOC, IPCL resume operations
Budget airlines give A-I, IA run for money
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India, Myanmar keen on gas pipeline project
No to Swiss formula for tariff cut
Iran keen on petro projects in Haryana
India, Israel to boost product development RBI relaxation for UCBs
Idea announces STD at 99 paise
RBI relaxation for UCBs
Singapore Airlines’ promotional fare
Essar buys stake in Hutch JV
TT net up by 49 per cent
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IOC, IPCL resume operations in Gujarat
New Delhi, July 4 Both IPCL and IOC’s Koyali refinery, also known as Gujarat Refinery, were recommissioned yesterday after being shut down as a safety measure. According to the IOC, the primary processing units of the 275,000 barrels-a-day Koyali refinery, were re-commissioned yesterday. “All units of the refinery are up and running. We had shut down the refinery on Thursday as a precaution. There was no damage,” the company said. Similarly, all units of IPCL, the second largest petrochemical company in India, were restarted last evening, IPCL said today. Most IPCL units, except Utility One, had been temporarily shut down on Saturday due to heavy rain. IOC said all its crude distillation units have been put on stream and the secondary processing units, namely the fluidised catalytic cracking unit and hydrocracker are under start-up. The linear alkyl benzene (LAB) plant at the refinery, IOC’s biggest, was also put back on stream yesterday, the IOC said. The Koyali-Ahmedabad product pipeline was also commissioned yesterday for pumping petroleum products to Ahmedabad. The Gujarat refinery had been shut down for three days, while IPCL remained closed for just one day. Unprecedented heavy rain has crippled Gujarat’s economy, causing an estimated loss of Rs 10,000 crore to the industry since Tuesday, besides causing an extensive damage to the infrastructure. IOC losses
Meanwhile, the IOC lost about Rs 4,900 crore in revenues during the first quarter of the current fiscal on selling fuel below the cost. “The one-time Rs 2.50 per litre increase in petrol and Rs 2 a litre hike in diesel price, announced last month, is grossly inadequate to cover for the spurt in international oil prices and increased incidence of taxation,” said a senior IOC official here. Despite the hike, petrol was being under-priced by Rs 2.25 per litre while diesel was being sold at a loss of Rs 4.69 per litre.Of the Rs 4,900 crore lost in April-June quarter, roughly Rs 2,700 crore was on sale of kerosene through the public distribution system (PDS) and domestic cooking gas (LPG). The IOC controls half of India’s retail fuel market and industry losses would be roughly double the IOC figures.
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Budget airlines give A-I, IA run for money
New Delhi, July 4 But government-owned Air-India (AI) and Indian Airlines (IA), which ruled the country’s skies for decades, are struggling to compete with these upstarts. Hampered by a mostly obsolete fleet, large work forces and managements whose decision-making is entangled with the inevitable, AI (the flagship overseas carrier) and its domestic counterpart, IA, are rapidly losing market share to new competitors. IA is losing about 5 per cent market share each year and has been overtaken as the market leader by Jet Airways. AI has gradually lost its dominance on various routes — to British Airways on flights to Britain, Cathay Pacific to East Asia and Lufthansa to Germany. Faced with these challenges, the state-owned carriers are making a desperate attempt to restructure and shore up profits. But wallet-friendly aviation players are cropping up, much to the delight of Indian budget air traveller. The non-frillers are characterised by few on-board services, elimination of catering and assistance services and little inflight glitz. Basically, a bare-bones mode of aerial transport from point A to point B, as Captain G.R. Gopinath, Managing Director of Air Deccan, claims: “We are the Udipi hotel in airline industry.” Air Deccan unleashed cut-throat competition in the aviation scene with fares mostly equalling similar train fares. And now, it offers some air tickets for as low as one rupee. In response, leading domestic airlines like IA, Jet Airways and Air Sahara slashed rates and unveiled advanced purchase schemes to take on the new challenger. Competition, as always, brought the best to customers. “Our mission is to keep our fares low and keep lowering them with time,” says Capt Gopinath. Air Deccan is initially planning to tap budget air travellers to and from metros to non-metros. But competition was not far behind. Barely a year after Air Deccan took to the skies came the news of Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines. And now, we have SpiceJet as well — up and flying. Meanwhile, the big daddies of domestic aviation are finding difficult to match up with cost-cutting and aggressive schemes. SpiceJet, Air Deccan, Air Sahara, Indigo, Paramount, Go Air, East West, Air One, Indus Air and Premier are buying or leasing planes to kick off new operations or expand existing ones. — UNI
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IA launches super saver scheme
New Delhi, July 4 From
tomorrow the special promotional scheme offers unrestricted travel on the domestic sector of Indian Airlines in both economy and executive class. The monsoon super saver ticket, consisting of 12 coupons would be available for an all inclusive price of Rs 48,500 in the economy class and for Rs 72,500 in the executive class. The scheme would be open for a month but the tickets will be valid till March 31, 2006. The scheme is valid for travel against a single coupon between two city pairs where there is no change of aircraft and the flight number with the exception of Delhi-Thiruvananthapuram, Delhi-Kochi, Delhi-Kozhikode and Delhi-Coimbatore for which two coupons will be uplifted.
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A-I flights to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore
New Delhi, July 4 Having leased three more A-310s, Air-India will have three non-stop services each from Mumbai and New Delhi to Kuala Lumpur and four services between Mumbai and Singapore. Air-India’s Commercial Director V K Verma addressing a press conference here said one Mumbai-Kuala Lumpur service would operate via Delhi and Hong Kong four times a week while three other services would operate up to Hong Kong. “We have consolidated our position in the US and European markets in the past two years. Now we plan to look East seriously,” Mr Verma added.
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India, Myanmar keen on gas pipeline project
New Delhi, July 4 The meeting is also likely to take up the report of the committee set up in January to study the techno-financial options for the project. Both ministers are also expected to discuss Bangladesh objections. In January this year, Mr Aiyar had claimed to open a new chapter in regional energy cooperation when the Energy Ministers of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar had agreed in a joint meeting in Yangoon to consider the “ proposal of evacuating Myanmar offshore gas to India via a pipeline traversing Bangladesh territory.” Officials sources said in case Bangladesh did not agree, India might opt for the pipeline bypassing its neighbour or decide to import LNG from Myanmar. India had offered Bangladesh to provide “transit rights through India to Nepal and Bhutan for goods and electricity in exchange for the gas pipeline along with transit fee.” Officials say that though Bangladesh Minister of State for Energy A K M Mosharraf Hossain had agreed to provide transit route, Bangladesh is lately reported to be dragging its feet. The demand for natural gas in India is projected to reach 400 million standard cubic meters a day. India has been pushing for an early agreement on the Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipeline proposal as there is almost no chance for it getting gas from Bangladesh due to strong domestic opposition within that country.
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No to Swiss formula for tariff cut
New Delhi, July 4 In agriculture, there was no question of accepting any kind of Swiss formula for tariff reduction in whatever garb while in non-agricultural market access (NAMA), India would resist proposals for reduction of the applied rates. Tariff reduction commitments by developing countries should provide for adequate policy space and reflect their development needs, Mr Nath said while presiding over a Parliamentary Consultative Committee meeting of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry here. “Developed countries subsidise their agriculture to the extent of one billion dollars a day and about 25 to 50 per cent is the subsidy component in the agricultural exports of many developed countries. We cannot allow this... Safeguarding our interests, especially in sensitive sectors such as agriculture and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), will be our main concern”, he said. In services, he said, India would calibrate its offers with the quality of offers from its major trading partners in sectors and modes of interest to India. India would also strongly resist attempts to divide developing countries by differentiating the so-called advanced or large developing countries from others, he said. The major areas of negotiations in the current Doha round were: Doha work programme, market access (agriculture, industrial tariffs or non-agricultural market access (NAMA), services); development Issues (implementation, special & differential treatment); rules (anti-dumping, subsidies, RTAs); and other issues.
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Iran keen on petro projects in Haryana
Chandigarh, July 4 Iran Ambassador Siyavash Zargar Yaghoubi, who called on Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda here, said an Iranian delegation would visit Haryana to see for themselves the development made by the state and explore the possibilities in the setting up of petro-chemical projects. Mr Yaghoubi also evinced interest in tractors and equipment of irrigation like pumps being manufactured in Haryana. He said he was also impressed with the development taking place in Gurgaon making it a unique area in the region. While apprising Mr Yaghoubi about ambitious programmes of the state government, the Chief Minister said Haryana had formulated a comprehensive plan for rapid development, including construction of an express way and setting up of special economic zone and a dry port. Financial Commissioner and Principal Secretary (Industries) P K Chaudhary said the state was expecting an investment of Rs 50,000 crore in petro hub in the next 10 years. Haryana is ranked third in the country in the area of software and was exporting software worth Rs 7,000 crore per year. — UNI
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India, Israel to boost product development New Delhi, July 4 Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, who returned from a four-nation tour recently disclosed this. Mr Sibal said initial contribution to the corpus by each of the two countries was $ 1 million. The ministry was keen to increasing the corpus contribution to $ 25 million, which would be done after approval from the Cabinet. He said a similar corpus fund between Israel and the US, with contributions of $ 100 million from each country, had developed technologies worth $ 7 billion. Mr Sibal said Weizman Institute of Science in Israel, which had expertise in solar energy, had shown interest in producing India’s Reva car which runs on battery. Mr Sibal, who also visited Brazil, Columbia and the USA, said there was a lot of excitement about India with the country being recognised as a Science and Technology Power. An umbrella science and technology agreement was likely to be signed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coming visit to the USA. |
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RBI relaxation for UCBs Mumbai, July 4 The RBI, taking into consideration the problems of the UCBs, decided to allow them to apply 180-day delinquency norm till March 31, 2006 for the identification of non-performing assets (NPAs) in gold loans and small loans up to Rs 1 lakh. To enable the UCBs to improve their performance, the RBI also decided to permit unit banks (single branch banks) and multi-branch banks operating within a single district having deposits up to Rs 100 crore to classify non-performing assets based on 180-day delinquency norm instead of the extant norm of 90 days. The above relaxation will be in force for three financial years ending March 31, 2005, 2006 and 2007. This will give relief to the smaller banks in provisioning requirement with retrospective effect, from financial year ended March 2005 and enable them to transit to the 90-day norm in a calibrated manner by the end of three years, the RBI notification said. Banks other than those falling in the above category would continue to classify accounts as NPAs based on 90-day delinquency norms as hitherto. For these banks, the current relaxation with regard to classification of gold loans and small loans up to Rs 1 lakh would continue till March 31, 2006.— UNI
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Idea announces STD at 99 paise
New Delhi, July 4 The offer, which will come into effect from July 6, is also applicable to all Idea post-paid subscribers on the new Idea India plans, a company statement said. Idea-to-Idea local calls will be charged at 75 paise per minute. Local SMS will cost Re 1from the earlier Rs 1.50 and no daily deductions or additional rentals will be charged. Local call from Idea to any landline, FWP, WLL, BSNL or MTNL phone will attract a tariff of Rs 1.75 per minute while STD calls will be charged at Rs 2.75 per minute, it said. — UNI
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Mumbai, July 4 The RBI, taking into consideration the problems of the UCBs, decided to allow them to apply 180-day delinquency norm till March 31, 2006 for the identification of non-performing assets (NPAs) in gold loans and small loans up to Rs 1 lakh. To enable the UCBs to improve their performance, the RBI also decided to permit unit banks (single branch banks) and multi-branch banks operating within a single district having deposits up to Rs 100 crore to classify non-performing assets based on 180-day delinquency norm instead of the extant norm of 90 days. The above relaxation will be in force for three financial years ending March 31, 2005, 2006 and 2007. This will give relief to the smaller banks in provisioning requirement with retrospective effect, from financial year ended March 2005 and enable them to transit to the 90-day norm in a calibrated manner by the end of three years, the RBI notification said. Banks other than those falling in the above category would continue to classify accounts as NPAs based on 90-day delinquency norms as hitherto. For these banks, the current relaxation with regard to classification of gold loans and small loans up to Rs 1 lakh would continue till March 31, 2006. — UNI
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Singapore Airlines’ promotional fare
Kolkata, July 4 Eighty seats in each four-weekly Boeing-777 flights operating from the metropolis would now be sold at a promotional fare of Rs 4,000 from Kolkata to Singapore and back, and at Rs 6,000 for Kolkata-Singapore-Kuala Lumpur or Penang or Bangkok and back, airlines Manager, (Eastern India) Bharath Mahadevan said. However, taxes and other terms would apply. The sale of tickets for the promotional offer would remain open from July 5 to July 15 and would remain valid for travel between July 22 and August 19 in the Economy class only.
— PTI
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New Delhi, July 4 "The purchase follows an agreement between Hutchison, Essar and Usha Martin Telematic Ltd, wherein Essar had the option to purchase 3.43 per cent of Hutchison-Essar at the original acquisition price for the Kolkata licence plus a carry cost. "Essar had an option to acquire this stake until June 30, which it has exercised. Usha Martin is owned jointly by Kotak and Hutchison," Essar Teleholdings said in a statement. — PTI
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TT net up by 49 per cent
New Delhi/Mumbai, July 4 The company's revenues during the year were up 17 per cent to Rs 165 crore. The Board of Directors of the company met here today and approved Rs 120 crore investment over the next two years for adding 43,000 spindles at its existing units in two locations and setting up a 2.5 MW power project in Gajroula and wind power project in Tamil Nadu. Aurobindo Pharma
Aurobindo Pharma has reported a 72.39 per cent dip in net profit at Rs 35.07 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005, as compared to Rs 127.02 crore last year. Total income has decreased 13.74 per cent to Rs 1,175.73 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005, from Rs 1,363.13 crore in 2003-04, the pharma company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange. The Board of Directors has recommended 10 per cent (Re 0.50 per share of Rs 5 each) of full dividend on its equity share capital for 2004-2005 subject to shareholders’ approval, it said.
Welspun-Guj Stahl Rohren
Welspun-Gujarat Stahl Rohren, manufacturers of metal pipes, today reported a net profit of Rs 33.8 crore for March 31, 2005, as compared to Rs 71.9 crore last year. Total income (net of excise) has increased to Rs 1,064.7 crore for March 31, 2005, from Rs 847.4 crore in 2003-04. The company has posted a net profit of Rs 1.8 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2005.
Jaiprakash Associates
Jaiprakash Associates today reported 21.76 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 207 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005, as compared to Rs 170 crore last year. Total income has increased 14.57 per cent to Rs 2,955 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005, from Rs 2,559 crore in 2003-04, the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange. The Board of Directors has recommended final dividend of Re 0.60 per share (6 per cent) amounting to Rs 10.58 crore in addition to an interim dividend of Rs 1.80 per share (18 per cent) amounting to Rs 31.72 crore paid in May 2005, for the financial year 2004-05.
Amara Raja Batteries
Amara Raja Batteries has posted a net profit of Rs 8.69 crore for the fiscal ended March 31, 2005, as compared to Rs 1.39 crore the previous fiscal. Net sales during the reporting fiscal increased to Rs 218.68 crore as compared to Rs 163.51 crore in FY-04, the company said in a press note here today. In the fourth quarter ended March 31, the company posted a net profit of Rs 48 lakh as compared to Rs 1.50 crore in the corresponding quarter the previous fiscal while net sales increased to Rs 64.25 crore (Rs 46.93 crore in Q4 of FY-04), it added. — PTI
Mirc Electronics
Mirc Electronics Ltd — The maker of Onida colour televisions — has posted a net profit of Rs 12.34 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2005, as compared to Rs 85 lakh for the corresponding quarter of the previous year, even as it recorded a net loss in profit for FY-05. It has posted a net profit of Rs 36.23 crore for the year ended March 31, 2005, as compared to Rs 43.77 crore for the year ended March 31, 2004.
Cadila Healthcare
Pharmaceutical company Cadila Healthcare today declared a dividend of 120 per cent for the financial year 2004-05. The Board of Directors have recommended a 120 per cent dividend, that is, Rs 6 per share on 6,28,06,854 equity shares of the face value of Rs 5 each.
IndusInd Bank net down
IndusInd Bank has posted a decline in its net profit for the fiscal ended March 31, 2005, at Rs 210.15 crore as against Rs 262.07 crore for the year ended March 31, 2004. The Board of Directors has recommended 18 per cent dividend for the financial year ended March 31. The total income grew to Rs 1,385.15 crore for the reporting year against Rs 1,331.08 crore in FY-04, it said. The bank has posted a net profit at Rs 62.91 crore for the quarter ended March 31.
— Agencies
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RIL buys 13.62 m REL shares IPCA plants Essar Steel M.D. Mallya SBoP to finance Escorts tractors Union Bank |
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