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Adhere to Clause 49 by Dec 31,
Govt not to appoint ONGC Directors
High fuel prices to impact inflation moderately: PC
Birlas, Ambuja keen on CCI plants
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Indian majors submit airport revamp bids
Bandwidth price cut order kept in abeyance
Indian American to be Deputy
US Trade Representative
OVL quits Canadian oil firm bid
Huge reserves certified in Reliance gasfield
Sick PSUs to be revived on NTC pattern
Pact on crude trade in
rupee terms
3 rural banks amalgamated
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Adhere to Clause 49 by Dec 31, says SEBI chief
Mumbai, September 14 “I am confident that the corporate sector would find more independent directors than what it requires,” Mr Damodaran said after inaugurating a CII-initiated website, primedirectors.com, with which SEBI is also involved. “With the launch of this website, I don’t think we need to ask this question whether we will find enough people,” Mr Damodaran said dismissing apprehensions that it is difficult to find enough independent directors. The website, of which SEBI is the chief patron and whose two main sponsors are BSE and NSE, aims to give a list of eligible independent directors for India Inc by providing a database of eligible persons. He was not in favour of giving full authority to the board of directors or the management of companies in nominating independent directors on the board. As per the estimates, as many as 30,000 independent directors are required by the industry to comply with Clause 49 stipulations. The SEBI chief, however, said that to maintain the integrity of the independent directors, it should be ensured that they are not over-compensated. “If you give a little, you won’t attract the right persons. If you give too much, they won’t remain independent,” he said though adding, the companies should refrain from over-compensating them. Taking note of timing and veracity of stock-sensitive announcements made by some companies, including from the oil sector, market regulator SEBI today said “standards are required” to determine what needs to be shared in the public domain and at what time. “Clearly, it is good to have systems in place which let us know what is the right time to make an announcement, when is something pre-mature and when mature,” Mr Damodaran said. The SEBI chief, however, asserted that action would be taken in case it received a formal complaint about manipulation in any company. “If we get a complaint, we will act on it,” he said.
— PTI
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Govt not to appoint ONGC Directors
New Delhi, September 14 Talking to the reporters here
today, Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Santosh Mohan Dev said: “the present rules permit a maximum of two government Directors on the board of a PSU and the ONGC already has two government Directors.” After the controversy with ONGC Chairman Subir Raha over the appointment of Directors, the Petroleum Ministry had sought the opinion of the DPE and the Law
Ministry. Mr Raha had threatened to resign if the ministry persisted with its proposal to appoint Director-General (Hydrocarbons) V.K Sibal and Special Secretary MS Srinavasan on the company Board. Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has maintained that the ministry would not persist with the appointment of government Directors if the opinion was to the contrary. The opinion of the DPE is now likely to put an end to the controversy. “We stand by them (ONGC management),” said Mr Dev. Sources said the Law Ministry had also supported Mr Raha’s
contention, saying that any regulator, even if it did not enjoy statutory powers, could not sit on the board of any company. A formal opinion of the Law Ministry is expected anytime this week.
Disinvestment in BHEL
Regarding the government’s plan to disinvest a 10 per cent stake in Bharat Heavy Electricals
Ltd. (BHEL) amid opposition of the Left, Mr Dev said the plan was still on hold but options were open for a residual stake sale in Maruti Udyog Ltd. The minister said the government had kept open its option open to sell its remaining 10 per cent equity in the country’s largest carmaker, Maruti, because it needed funds to fulfil its pledge of social reforms. “It has to be done and in due course we will sell all the remaining stake in Maruti and get out of it.” The government had sold 25 per cent of its stake in the firm in an initial public offering in June ,2003. The minister said the government would make efforts to revive loss-making public sector firms but shut down chronically loss-making ones.
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High fuel prices to impact inflation moderately: PC
New Delhi, September 14 Speaking at a workshop on accounting systems, Mr Chidambaram said the focus of the government was on maintaining the high economic growth rates by continued emphasis on agriculture, industrial production and the services sector. He said the rise in global crude prices will have a moderate impact on the domestic rate of
inflation, adding that there was no pressure on the banking system to increase the lending rates. Besides, the government was in no need to go for additional borrowing. “We don’t need to borrow more. In the first half, we have stuck to the budget target.” He expressed confidence that the government would be able to stick to the road map set out by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act( FRBM) by wiping out the revenue deficit by 2008-09. He said the UPA Government’s two flagship programmes - Bharat Nirman and the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme - would be implemented over the next four to five years. The government, he said, had already initiated a process to make the public expenditure system more stringent and tighten it further. The recently unveiled Outcome Budget, the first of its kind, was a step in this direction, he said adding that in subsequent years there would be more improvements in the process. In an attempt to bring in more expenditure control in the government system, the Expenditure Department
had been directed not to grant any approval if the proposal did not spell out the timeline of the results. Moreover, based on the recommendations of the 12th Finance Commission, the government would adopt the accrual- based accounting system
rather than a “cash-based” system similar to the one followed by the corporate sector.
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Birlas, Ambuja keen on CCI plants
New Delhi, September 14 “Birlas and Ambujas are interested in buying the plants of the CCI,” Heavy Industry Minister Santosh Mohan Dev told newspersons here on the sidelines of a seminar for the Chief Executives of PSUs under his ministry. Of the 10 CCI plants, seven are non-functional. As part of the proposal for the revival of the company it was
suggested that the seven plants be sold and money raised should be used for modernisation of the remaining three plants and retire the liabilities of CCI. The proposal got the
clearance from the Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises (BRPSE) on September 2. The recommendations of the board would now go to the Cabinet for approval. The sale of seven plants would fetch Rs 617.76 crore. The minister said the government was talking to the ONGC for selling its stake in Tide Water Oil. Mr Dev said the ONGC was looking at taking over Tide Water Oil, a subsidiary of the Andrew Yule and Company. Apart from Tide Water Oil, the government was also planning to sell the electrical equipment business of Andrewe Yule. The sale of 228,390 shares that the government holds in Tide Water Oil would fetch it a little more than Rs 400 crore based on the current price of Tide Water Oil on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
— PTI
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Indian majors submit airport revamp bids
New Delhi, September 14 The Indian majors, apparently unruffled by the withdrawal of Singapore’s Changi Airport and Germany’s Hochtief Airport Gmbh from their respective consortia for the purpose, had a last minute meeting with Civil Aviation Ministry officials before filing their bids. A total of six consortia have bid for modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports for which the government had floated the tender document last month. Reliance Airport Developers Pvt Ltd-Reliance Energy Ltd — Aeropuertos Servicios Auxiliiare (ASA) and GMR Infrastructure Ltd — GMR Energy-Fraport AG India Development Fund-Malaysia Airport Sdn Bhd consortia have submitted their bids for both Mumbai and Delhi airport. The spokespersons of these groups confirmed submitting bids to the Civil Aviation Ministry. Bharti group had, on September 12, announced it would withdraw from the bidding process after its collaborator — Changi Airport of Singapore — had expressed its unwillingness to commit to key terms of the tender. Another major player L&T had to opt out of the process after its German partner Hochtief Airport GmbH also decided to opt out of the bidding process.
— PTI
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Bandwidth price cut order kept in abeyance
New Delhi, September 14 TRAI made a statement in TDSAT to keep the tariff order of September 8, 2005, on hold till October 3, its counsel said. The order was to be implemented from September 16. VSNL had appealed for the stay of the order. TRAI’s original bandwidth reduction order of March, 2005, is applicable to all other players like Reliance Infocomm, Bharti and others. Earlier, VSNL in its petition said: “TRAI has fixed tariffs on the basis of costs, which after having being demonstrated by VSNL to be erroneous, TRAI has changed its established methodology by adopting a higher denominator to arrive at a much lower figure of costs, thereby fixing tariffs at a low level. This gravely prejudices the VSNL as the implementation of the impugned order will force it to sell capacities at below costs running into severe losses,” it said. TRAI in its September 8 order had stated tariff regulation in International Private Leased Circuit market is a must and urgent while calling for up to 64 per cent cut in the
tariffs. VSNL Chairman Subodh Bhargava today said there was possibility of “risks of sickness of Indian enterprises and job losses” if the regulator specifies ceilings, which would force international bandwidth providers to sell international bandwidth at a loss. “We share the vision of lower tariffs for customers. In fact, VSNL has led several tariff reductions in all our business segments. However, any regulation or market competition driven initiatives that reduce tariffs to a level making services unviable, has to be avoided”, he
said. — PTI
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Indian American to be Deputy
Washington, September 14
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OVL quits Canadian oil firm bid
New Delhi, September 14 OVL, the international arm of state-owned ONGC, had bid $ 1.4-billion for EnCana’s 75,000 barrels per day of oil producing properties and a pipeline but with a condition that the Calgary-based firm would guarantee immunity against any troubles with the Ecuador Government, industry sources said. EnCana had acquired 40 per cent interest in Block 15, part of the assets the Canadian firm had put on sale, from Occidental of the USA but the deal had no prior approval of the Ecuador Government. Ecuador threatened to cancel the licence for Block 15 and OVL had insisted that EnCana covers such a
risk.“ EnCana could not guarantee such an immunity leading to OVL withdrawing from the race,” sources said. The assets last evening went to the Andes Petroleum Co, a joint venture of Chinese petroleum companies.
— PTI
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Huge reserves certified in Reliance gasfield
New Delhi, September 14 International reserve certifier Gaffney, Cline and Associates (GCA) have put the original gas in place for the six discoveries in Reliance Industries Ltd’s block NEC-25 off east coast at 2.3 trillion cubic feet. In its assessment, GCA had a low estimate of 0.8 tcf and a high estimate of 5.5 tcf, said block partner Niko Resources, which hired GCA to complete the review of the NEC-25 discoveries and potential resources associated with undrilled seismic leads. RIL’s prodigious block D6 in Krishna-Godavari basin, further down south to NEC-25 in Bay of Bengal, has been certified to contain 11.9 tcf of reserves from the initial dozen discoveries. The firm however claims 14 tcf reserves. Acquisition of 1,700 square kilometres new 3D seismic over the prospective area extending south from the original seismic area is now complete and the data is being processed and evaluated, said Niko, which owns 10 per cent in NEC-25 with operator Reliance holding 90 per cent.
— PTI
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Sick PSUs to be revived on NTC pattern
New Delhi, September 14 “We are looking at the possibility of selling excess real estate assets with the loss-making public sector companies to raise funds for their revival,” Heavy Industry Minister Santosh Mohan Dev said at a conference of CEOs of public enterprises under the ministry. He said the funds raised by selling excess land with PSUs would be ploughed back in to the same company. In July, a part of the land owned by Hindustan Machine Tools in Bangalore was sold for raising funds for the company.
— PTI
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Pact on crude trade in
rupee terms
Mumbai, Septmber 14 The two exchanges signed a “co-operative Venture’’ pact to allow Indian participants to trade rupee-denominated Brent crude futures contracts, priced and settled with reference to the benchmark IPE Brent Crude futures contract. A rupee-denominated Brent crude contract will enable the domestic oil companies to effectively hedge an important proportion of their crude oil price risk. — UNI
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3 rural banks amalgamated
Kapurthala, September 14 Punjab Gramin Bank which has come in to existence after the amalgamation of Kapurthala Ferozepore
Kshetria Gramin Bank, Kapurthala, Gurdaspur Amritsar Kshetria Gramin Vikas Bank, Gurdaspur and Shivalik Kshetria Gramin Bank, Hoshiarpur, with its head office at Kapurthala will cover eight districts of the state. Its newly appointed chairman Mr R.S. Kalaria said due to the amalgamation of three banks in addition to presence of the bank in the districts Kapurthala, Amritsar,
Ferozepore, Moga, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Ropar and Nawanshahr, the powers of the bank in
different fields like loan facility to people in rural areas have increased.
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