An exhibitor stands before a Honda sports bike at the Jakarta Motor Show 2006 in Jakarta on Monday. — AFP

Cut in import duty on palm oil sought
New Delhi, November 13
The vanaspati industry has sought lower import duty on crude palm oil on actual user basis.

Huge potential for sugar industry in Bihar: Report
Patna, November 13
Oxfam Internationals’, a UK-based NGO, has released a report, recognising the potential of Bihar in producing good quality sugar, during its trade fair campaign in the state recently.

An Airbus A380 takes off from Toulouse-Blagnac airport on Monday. Another A380 will take off from the southern French city of Toulouse for a round-the-world test mission, in the final hurdle before the superjumbo becomes the largest passenger plane in service. — AFP

Pharma sector poised to grow at 13.6 pc
New Delhi, November 13
The $5.7-billion Indian pharmaceutical industry, which consistently grew at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.5 per cent in the past five years, is now expected to grow at a whopping 13.6 per cent till 2010 to touch a size of $9.48 billion.

Zee buys 50 pc in Ten Sports for Rs 256.5 crore
Mumbai, November 13
Zee Telefilms, promoted by Subash Chandra, today informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that it has acquired a 50 per cent stake in Dubai-based Ten Sports. The deal is estimated at Rs 256.5 crore with the enterprise value of Ten Sports pegged at $114 million or Rs 513 crore.

New Delhi, November 13
Allaying aside fears of India moving in the US camp, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram today called upon the investors in the Gulf countries to invest in a growing economy.

With crude oil prices moving upward, the oil-exporting countries have earned over $400 billion additional last year.

Cut expenses to rein in fiscal deficit: FM India needs to take hard decisions to cut wasteful expenditure to rein in its fiscal deficit, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said while adding that economy would grow by more than 8 per cent in 2006-07. “We now have to focus on performance and outcomes so that we get maximum return from every rupee spent,” he said while speaking at defence funding conference. “We have to take hard decisions to restructure certain expenditure.” The government aims to cut the fiscal deficit to 3.8 per cent of GDP in the financial year to March 2007, from 4.1 per cent in 2005-06, despite spending billions of rupees on subsidies and social schemes.

“We should use attitudinal ties between people to enhance trade linkages between India and the Arab world. Oil-exporting countries of the Arab world, in particular, should increase investment in India,” Mr Chidambaram said in his inaugural address at an international conference here on promoting India-Arab economic relations.

Underlining India's centuries old multi-faceted ties with the Arab world, Mr Chidambaram spoke about geographical proximity, long-standing cultural and trading ties and 'unbroken relation of cordiality' between the two sides.

To further accelerate bilateral trade and investment, the minister said India would be signing bilateral investment protection agreement with more Arab countries and discussions were already going on for negotiating a free trade area (FTA) between the two sides.

Calling Indian workers in the Gulf countries “an investment of human capital in the Arab world,” he said remittances from Indians working in these countries worked out to a whopping $20 billion.

"Bilateral trade between India and the Arab world has been growing steadily and will scale new heights in the future", he said. FDI from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has exceeded $2 billion this year.

Besides the continuing cooperation in the energy sector, the Arab countries supply nearly 30 per cent of India's crude oil needs, IT, infrastructure, biotechnology, nanotechnolgy, and financial services are key future areas of bilateral cooperation between India and the Arab world.

Mr Anwar Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, lauded the rise of India on the global stage and praised the strong fundamentals of India's economy as exhibited in its high economic growth and its increasing attractiveness as a hub of investment for the world.

Mr Chidambaram said India’s robust manufacturing sector, its strength in steel, petroleum refining, petrochemicals, textile, IT, ITeS and pharmaceuticals provided a viable range of options for foreign investment.

The President of Indo-Arab Economic Forum, Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, stressed the need for India and the Arab world joining hands for the prosperity of the two regions.

New Delhi, November 13
The Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) of the United States today signed a memorandum of agreement (MoA) paving the way for technical assistance from the US on a host of aviation related matters.

The Union Cabinet had approved the signing of this agreement in May this year. It provides for assistance by the FAA to the civil aviation sector in India in developing and modernising the aviation infrastructure in the managerial, operational and technical areas.

The FAA will also provide training for Indian civil aviation personnel, besides providing assistance in inspection and calibration of civil aviation equipment and air navigation facility in the country.

The MoA is an umbrella agreement and would have many agreements as and when signed with different agencies such as the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

“The agreement is in the nature of a framework agreement, which would create enabling provisions for seeking specific assistance from the FAA. All assistance under this agreement will be on the basis of reimbursement of costs,” said a ministry statement.

After the signing of the agreement Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said India would receive guidance and expertise of the FAA which would be helpful in managing the volume of aviation traffic in the coming years.

The FAA would also provide assistance in logistical support and equipment for air navigation facilities, in airport certification in Indian and in the field of helicopter operational safety initiatives. 

New Delhi, November 13
Expressing concern over the growing shortage of skilled manpower in the 11th Plan, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today it could prove a major bottleneck to achieving higher growth targets in coming years.

“We have done exceptionally badly in the area of developing skills in the past, and this will prove to be a constraint towards achieving growth rate of 9 per cent,” Mr Ahluwalia said at the Employment Summit 2006 organised here by CII.

He said, “Current skills development is inadequate and we need employment-linked degrees. We will scale up the programme to upgrade and modernise the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) to improve both their quality and quantity in terms of training and equipment.”

The government is considering expanding the programme to 500 ITIs across India from 100 currently, Dr Ahluwalia said. However, even this is inadequate as there are 7,000 ITIs in India. The private sector has a major role to play in delivering job-related training because private colleges are more flexible in curriculum development than government institutions.

He said the lack of employment growth in the organised sector is the single greatest failing at a time when both GDP and profits were rising.

To promote the unorganised sector’s growth, the government will create an enabling environment to encourage employment, he said.

Dr Ahluwalia called upon industry to come up with a reasonable employment growth rate, given that it was predicted to grow by 10 per cent for the next few years. “We need qualitative indicators from industry that show what the correlation will be in the next few years.”

CII President R Seshasayee reiterated that competitive growth could only come through increasing labour productivity.

He said a CII study of employment potential for 36 identified sectors, done for the Planning Commission, shows that 80 million jobs can be created in these identified sectors where growth can lead to significant additional employment during the 11th Plan.

Chandigarh, November 13
Godrej Agrovet, agribusiness subsidiary of Godrej Industries Limited, is all set to launch its “farm-to-fork” project in Punjab. The firm will be signing an MoU with the Punjab Government in this regard within a fortnight.

The company also plans to expand its services and retail outlets in different parts of Punjab and Haryana. From a present strength of 12 outlets in Punjab and two in Haryana, the company wants to expand these to 200 outlets in the next five years.

Talking to TNS here today, Mr C.K. Vaidya, Managing Director, Godrej Agrovet, said the company planned to establish parent breeding farms and hatcheries in Punjab and launch its processed fresh chicken.

“Fresh chicken will be procured from farms and dressed up in a processing plant and then sold off to markets in Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana and Delhi. We hope to supply anything between 2,000 and 4,000 chickens a day. The processing plant too will be established in Punjab and we are on the lookout for land to it,” he said, adding that the company already had two other processing plants, one each at Bangalore and Mumbai.

Talking about company’s retail outlets, Godrej Aadhar stores, Mr Vaidya said they had recently opened an outlet at Barnala over an area of 15,000 sq ft. These stores offer crop advisory services, soil and water testing services, buyback of output, crop finance, supply of agricultural inputs and animal feeds, transfer of information on weather, price, besides consumer durables, FMCG, apparels etc. “We are now planning to provide amenities like pharmaceuticals, insurance facility and fuel pumps etc in these stores. We also hope to start the concept of shop-in-shops in these stores,” he said.

The company is also mulling to expand its “Nature’s Basket” stores (fresh fruit and vegetable stores). “Presently, five of these stores are located in Mumbai. We are now looking at other cities, including Chandigarh, for establishing such stores,” he added. 

New Delhi, November 13
The manufacturing sector has registered a balanced growth across different industries over the past six months with 65 per cent of the sector recording high growth path, according to the CII-ASCON survey, carried out by the Associations Council of the CII.

The survey states that 65 per cent of the companies in 125 sectors tracked have been registering high growth during the past six months.

“The manufacturing sector recorded a growth of 9.1 per cent in 2005-06, compared to 9.2 per cent previous year. The sector is all set to enhance its share in the GDP to the targeted 30 per cent,” said Ms Sarita Nagpal, Head of CII’s Manufacturing Services Division.

During the current fiscal, the manufacturing sector has already received FDI investments worth $524 million till July, compared to $1,451 million previous year.

Patna, November 13
Oxfam Internationals’, a UK-based NGO, has released a report, recognising the potential of Bihar in producing good quality sugar, during its trade fair campaign in the state recently.

According to the report, the sugar industry as a whole is the second largest agro-processing industry in India after cotton textiles. Following WTO rulings in 2004 leading to increase in the prices of sugar all over the world, all nine sugar mills of the state responded positively by recording a massive increase of 63 per cent in its crushing capacity against 45 per cent two years back.

The report revealed that following the WTO rulings, the EU was forced to reduce its subsidy by 36 per cent over the years. “This helped the Indian farmers to stake for a better price for their products in international market.”
Earlier, President Abdul Kalam had advised the Nitish government to take full advantage of the prevailing agro-climatically favourable condition in north Bihar.

Meanwhile, state minister Nitish Mishra has said in its bid to boost the ailing sugar industry, the government has waived the pending dues of Rs 9 crore towards the sugarcane farmers across the state.

Referring to the new incentive-based policy of the government, Mr Mishra said till date the government received proposals for 15 new sugar mills. “Besides, 8 out of 9 existing units have submitted plans for expansion.”
In the backdrop of the international recognition of the potential of sugar industry in Bihar, official statistics revealed that the industry had already attracted private investments to the tune of Rs 4,600 crore in the past one year.

New Delhi, November 13
The $5.7-billion Indian pharmaceutical industry, which consistently grew at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.5 per cent in the past five years, is now expected to grow at a whopping 13.6 per cent till 2010 to touch a size of $9.48 billion.

“The growth rate is likely to reach its peak by 2008-09, after which it may stagnate with a few new product launches,” the paper brought out by the Assocham and Cygnus said.

According to the paper on Indian pharma industry - Quest for Global Leadership projects - it will hover around 13.6 per cent between 2006-10 to take up domestic pharma market size at $9.48 billion by 2010.

On clinical trials, the paper comments that in 2005, the industry for clinical trials in India was $100 million. This market is growing at an accelerated pace. India offers a lot of advantages in the clinical trials domain such as cost advantage compared to Western countries.

The US pharma industry employs roughly 50,000 chemists. Indian discovery research outfits charge global pharma companies around $ 60,000 per chemist which is roughly one-fifty of what the pharma companies pay abroad.

While it is difficult to pin down an average pay for chemists in India for doing a similar work, conservative estimates suggest it to be around Rs 1 million per annum. So it is a win-win situation, the overseas pharma saves about 50 per cent cost and the Indian company makes it about 50 per cent margin.

On the future trends, Assocham chief Anil K Agarwal said some of the major trends that were expected in future include mergers and acquisitions in the industry; new product launches by MNCs and Indian companies; in-licensing of patented products by Indian companies to launch them in the Indian market and increase in the number of contract research organisations.