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IGL Derecognisation
Rupee at 13-month low
Inflation: Govt preaches patience
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Oil above $132
‘No plan to hike coal prices’
Highest-ever insurance claim
Oswal to invest Rs 40 cr for capacity expansion
Now, Hyundai to hike prices
Airtel ties up with Firstsource Solutions
Corporate Results
RBI approves CBoP, HDFC merger
Motorola bags $90m BSNL order
Alstom’s offer to Indian Rlys
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IGL Derecognisation
New Delhi, May 21 The ministry in a letter dated May 15 overruled P&NGRB’s derecognisation of Indraprastha Gas Ltd (IGL) saying the Centre had 10 year ago authorised IGL to carry out city-gas projects in Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad. P&NGRB had asked IGL, which was formed by state-run GAIL and BPCL and the Delhi government, to retail CNG to automobiles and piped natural gas to households in national capital region, to stop all incremental activities as it felt IGL did not have "proper authorisation”. "The (P&NGRB) Act (of 2006) does not prescribe any particular manner in which the government should have granted authorisation to any entity before the appointed day (when P&NGRB came into existence)," the letter to P&NGRB said. Interestingly, the P&NGRB Act provides that the board can issue authorisation to companies to begin city-gas projects under Section 16. But the government has not yet notified the section resulting in the board not having legal powers to authorise any company for such projects. The ministry said IGL had government authorisation and does not need to apply to P&NGRB for fresh authorisation. "IGL is free to undertake new or incremental activities to spread the CNG/PNG network to greater number of customers in Delhi and its mentioned suburbs, without need of a fresh authorisation from the board in this regard," it said. After the P&NGRB order last month, IGL was forced to halt its expansion plans to meet needs of the Commonwealth Games. The regulator had not found numerous letters from the government and the Supreme Court order for replacing diesel in public transport vehicles with environment-friendly CNG as strong enough ground for beginning of operations by IGL and had asked the company to "immediately stop" all its expansion plans in the national capital and Noida. IGL has planned an extensive expansion of its CNG dispensing network and had planned to supply piped natural gas to the Commonwealth Games village for meeting its fuel needs. All this had been halted after the P&NGRB order. IGL had planned to double spending on adding and upgrading CNG outlets in 2008-09. It had planned to invest Rs 200 crore on new and existing outlets. The company had also planned to expand CNG dispensing stations to 200 by 2010 from the current 166 and was expecting to supply gas to 3,00,000 vehicles and a similar number of homes.
— PTI |
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Rupee at 13-month low
Mumbai, May 21 In fairly active trade at the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market, the domestic currency opened sharply lower at 42.72/74 a dollar from overnight close of 42.60/61 and later dropped further at the fag end to settle the day at 42.83/84 a dollar, 23 paise down. It moved in a wide range of 42.62 and 42.90 a dollar. Month-end dollar demand from oil refiners and importers also partly weighed on the rupee sentiment. Meanwhile, the benchmark Sensex survived to close in the green on the back of smart rally in oil counters, mainly that of top heavyweight and petrochemical giant Reliance Industries Ltd.
— PTI |
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Inflation: Govt preaches patience
New Delhi, May 21 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had on Tuesday said taking too many administrative measures were not necessary and the government should not be seen as over-reacting to the situation. Finance minister, too, has been singing the same tune in wake of the surging prices. He had earlier said inflation curbing measures are yet to take shape and that soon the situation will be under control. The latest government data showed annual wholesale inflation at 7.83 per cent on May 3, a 42-month high, continuing a sharp rise that has been fuelled largely by food and metal prices. Terming the current high level of inflation as “totally unacceptable”, Reserve Bank of India Governor
Y.V. Reddy today indicated further measures to rein in inflation. |
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Oil above $132
London, May 21 US crude was trading $2.82 a barrel higher at $131.80, just off a new high of $132.08. Weekly data from the U.S. government showed stocks of crude had fallen by 5.4 million barrels. "The market is in a very bullish mood and these statistics will do nothing to change that," said Tom Bentz, analyst at BNP Paribas Commodity Futures Inc. The fall in weekly inventories is matched by concerns supply problems will continue for years, which have driven records on oil to be delivered far into the future as well as in the near term. Investors have also been drawn into the market by a weak US currency, which has made dollar-denominated commodities 12 relatively cheap for holders of other currencies.
— Reuters |
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‘No plan to hike coal prices’
Mumbai, May 21 “We do not intend to increase prices of coal. The intention is to maintain the prices - there will be no increase this year,” minister of state for coal Santosh Bagrodia told reporters here. The Centre’s target is to increase coal production to 425 million tons this year, he said. According to him, there was no dearth of coal for power projects in the country. If some power plants were complaining of coal shortage, it was because of their “misdoings”. “We have enough stocks. We are willing to supply any quantity of coal. If someone is complaining of shortage, it is because of their misdoings. They don’t import good quality coal and also do not keep the mandatory 21-day stocks with them,” Bargodia said. There were 27 such units that were in a critical situation as they were not meeting the standard ‘21-days’ norm, he said. The government has already allocated about 182 blocks to private companies for mining. “Of these, 17 have already started production, and the remaining are likely to do so over the next two to three years,” he said. The new mining projects were on track and the process of securing mandatory clearances was on, Bagrodia
added. — PTI |
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Highest-ever insurance claim
Shimla, May 21 It was the highest onshore claim to be paid by an insurance company in the country to date in which material damages account for Rs 71.19 crore and the remaining Rs 236.68 crore loss was due disruption of power generation as the accident led to a 44-day shutdown. The project was shutdown on September 4,2005,l and generation was partially resumed on October 19, 2005, with the help of experts from all over the world. Interestingly, the Nathpa Jhakri project is the only project that has gone for operational insurance policy in which the loss of business had also been covered. It has been paying around Rs 15 crore as the annual premium. CMD of the company V. Ramaswamy, while formally handing over two cheques to the chairman-cum-managing director of the SJVN H. K. Sharma during the claim settlement experience sharing meet here today, said the full claim had been paid. The final report regarding the damage and loss was received in March and the claim was settled promptly. The company had released Rs 51 crore in March 2006 to ease cash flow of SJVN for early restoration of the plant. The country’s largest hydropower project was insured through the Industrial All India Risk Policy with National Insurance Company as leader and New India Assurance Company, United Insurance Company, Oriental Insurance Company, Reliance General India Insurance Company, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company and Chollamandalam General Insurance Company. |
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Oswal to invest Rs 40 cr for capacity expansion
Ludhiana, May 21 “We are expecting a 35 per cent growth in case of Monte Carlo with the entry into summer wear,” said Sandeep Jain, executive director of the company. Jain said the company was also planning to enter European markets though detailed plans regarding the same were yet to be chalked out. He stated that the brand would continue to cater to the upper income segment and would be available at the exclusive retail outlets. More than 80 per cent of the new outlets would be given to franchisees while the remaining would be company-owned or shop-in-shop. On selection of cities, Jain said: “The focus would be on tier-II and tier-III cities and 60 per cent of the outlets would be located in the northern region.” Talking about entry of multiple brands in Indian market, Jain said increased competition had helped domestic brands perform better and focus more on quality. "The entry of multiple brands has only improved our performance,” he said. |
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Now, Hyundai to hike prices
New Delhi, May 21 “There has been an increase in the input costs and we have been absorbing it for a while. The situation now is such that we have to pass some parts of it to the consumers,” Hyundai Motor India Ltd senior vice-president (marketing and sales) Arvind Saxena told PTI. He said the company would hike the prices of its various models by up to 2 per cent. The price increase will come into effect from the first week of June, he added. Hyundai currently sells hatchback models Santro, i10, Getz along with sedans Accent, Verna, Sonata Embera in the country. The company’s move to hike prices follows rival Maruti Suzuki India, which last week hiked prices across various models between Rs 1,000 and Rs 18,000.
— PTI |
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Airtel ties up with Firstsource Solutions
New Delhi, May 21 Although the company did not disclose the size of the deal, but informed that the deal was for a three-year period. As per the agreement, Firstsource would provide BPO services covering both voice and back office in areas such as customer accounting, VAS provisioning, fraud and credit monitoring, customer service, collections, customer retention. These would be done from its centers in Chennai and Mumbai. According to company officials, Firstsource would set up centers in Vashi, New Bombay and Chennai for Airtel and expects to have over 1,000 employees in the first year focused on providing services in English and eight other regional languages to its customers, it added. Bharti also has strategic BPO partners in Aegis, Firstsource, Hinduja TMT, IBM Daksh, Mphasis and Teleperformance. “The partnership will support our extraordinary growth and allow us to focus on our core business of creating innovative products and services for our customers and partners,” Bharti Airtel’s director (customer service and information technology), Jai Menon said. Firstsource’s joint managing director and COO Raju Venkatraman said: “We look forward to leveraging our process expertise to help Airtel get better operational flexibility, productivity and increased customer satisfaction.” Earlier, Bharti had outsourced its telecom managed services with Nokia in a $400 million deal and had also outsourced IT services with IBM in an estimated $700-$750 million deal. |
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Corporate Results
Mumbai, May 21 The group’s total revenue rose to Rs 2,433.29 crore in 2007-08 compared with Rs 1,224.79 crore in the previous fiscal. The company had a net profit of Rs 1,410.50 crore for the year ended March 31, about two-fold rise as compared to the same period a year ago. HDIL’s board has approved the bonus issue in the proportion of two new equity shares for every seven equity shares held. It has also recommended a final dividend of Rs 3 per share. GMR Infrastructure
GMR Infrastructure Ltd, dealing in airports, energy, roads and urban infrastructure, has posted Rs 41.28 crore as profit after tax for the quarter ended March 31, 2008, up by 4.48 per cent, against Rs 39.51 crore in the previous fiscal. The net revenues of the company were up by 42.89 per cent from Rs 619.56 crore to Rs 885.29 crore. For FY'08, the PAT was up 8.64 per cent to Rs 262.65 crore and gross revenues were up by 37.04 per cent to Rs 2,697.91 crore. Meanwhile, the company plans to invest Rs 2,400 crore this fiscal in various road projects and expects to commission four important road projects — two in Andhra Pradesh, one in Tamil Nadu and one in Ambala — by the end of the year, Subbarao said. Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard has announced a net profit of $2.06 billion for the second quarter ended April 30, 2008, a 16 per cent growth over the corresponding period last year. The company had a net profit of $1.78 billion in the year-ago period. For the latest quarter, HP’s net revenue shot up by 11 per cent to $28.26 billion. The company had reported a net revenue of $25.53 billion in the corresponding period a year ago.
— Agencies |
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RBI approves CBoP, HDFC merger
Mumbai, May 21 “The RBI hereby sanctions the appended scheme of amalgamation of CBoP (transferor bank) with HDFC Bank (transferee bank). The scheme shall come into effect from May 23,” HDFC Bank said. The boards of HDFC Bank and CBoP had given in-principle approval for the merger of both banks in February. Following the in-principle nod, HDFC Bank had approved the share swap ratio of 1:29. As per the ratio, CBoP shareholder would get one share of HDFC bank for every 29 shares held. With the merger, the combined entity will have a nationwide network of 1,148 branches and the deposits would climb up to Rs 1,20,000 crore. HDFC has to pump in Rs 4,000 crore to retain its holding in the bank. According to the rules, 10 per cent of this amount should be paid within 15 days after receiving the RBI approval for the merger. HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri will head the merged bank, while Jagdish Capoor will continue as non- executive chairman.
— PTI |
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Motorola bags $90m BSNL order
New Delhi, May 21 Under the terms of the contract, Motorola will ship GSM network equipment and provide a network services programme, including both software and hardware support, the statement added. Supply of equipment had already begun in April and would significantly help BSNL in the required capacity enhancement, the statement said. Subhendu Mohanty, country head (home and networks mobility), Motorola India, said: “We will endeavour to grow our market engagements and deliver maximum value to our customers, be it serving their current needs or planning for future growth.” The telecom major’s existing network in the southern region already includes 2G equipment supplied by Motorola. Last year, Motorola was disqualified in the mega 23.5 million GSM contract on technical grounds in which Ericsson had emerged as the top bidder.
— PTI |
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Alstom’s offer to Indian Rlys
Belfort (France), May 21 “We are targeting India. We will participate in the tender to be floated soon by the Indian Railways for 1,000 electric locomotives. We will offer 10 per cent cheaper price than other companies,” Alstom’s locomotive platform director Jean-Marc Tessier told PTI here. Alstom would submit its proposal for the locomotive tenders by September this year, Tessier said.
— PTI |
Educomp stake in US firm NPC in pact with L&T Anti-virus software launched ArcelorMittal’s India CEO Satyam-GE Healthcare pact Limca’s initiative |
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