New Delhi, May 22
The issue of raising fuel price rise is being revisited again with petroleum minister Murli Deora indicating that the price rise cannot be ruled out. When the oil minister was asked about the likely decision, he indicated that the Cabinet might meet and decide the same on Friday. The petroleum minister is likely to tell Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tomorrow that fuel shortages are worse than price hikes. However, the oil minister did not confirm if the Cabinet was meeting. The raising of fuel prices is important because oil companies are bleeding due to mounting losses as international crude prices continue to rise every single day and the retail prices are kept artificially low. Asian crude oil in today’s trade has risen to a new high of $135 per barrel.

Diesel Rs 120 per litre in Sri Lanka Colombo: The Lankan Indian Oil Corp (LIOC), a subsidiary of India's state-run oil company, has raised diesel prices by Rs 20 (Sri Lankan currency) to Rs 100 a litre in view of the rising international crude oil prices. "We are losing Rs 43 (Sri Lankan currency) a litre on diesel and despite the increase of Rs 20 we will still have a loss," managing director, LIOC, K Ramakrishnan told PTI, adding LIOC was also incurring a loss of Rs 3 a litre on sale of petrol. With the International crude oil prices surging, the LIOC yesterday decided to raise diesel prices by Rs 20 (Sri Lankan currency) to Rs 100 a litre. Since LIOC is listed as a private company in Sri Lanka. Its auto diesel fuel will cost Rs 100 per litre (up from Rs 80) and the price of petrol will remain unchanged at Rs 127 per litre. — PTI

Going by the crude price rise and artificially low retail selling prices, calculations show that the three oil firms are currently losing Rs 450 crore in revenues on fuel sales every day. Petrol is being sold at a loss of Rs 16.34 a litre, diesel at Rs 23.49 per litre, LPG at Rs 305.90 per cylinder and kerosene at a loss of Rs 28.72 per litre.

“The situation is assuming critical proportions and we are left with barely two days of money to buy crude oil in international market,” say IndianOil sources. Economists say in wake of the rising inflation, it will not be prudent to raise oil prices domestically; high oil prices have a bearing on all aspects of economy right from prices of vegetables to transport among others.

However, what is to be understood is that the government has to allow companies to raise prices . This new tirade of the finance minister against oil companies of giving them only 45 per cent of oil bonds to meet their under recoveries is not the right thing to do. There is no logic in the recalculation of under-recoveries of oil companies and giving them less bonds.

Political observers say this is a political hot potato and the government will not really touch the issue in wake of such a volatile inflationary situation in the country. There can be other methods to compensate the oil companies but raising prices is the last option and this may not be the government’s stand at this crucial juncture. RBI Governor Y. V. Reddy has also supported the move to allow raising the oil prices domestically.

On his part negating the issue of rationing supplies, oil minister has clarified that despite the financial strain, the oil PSUs - IndianOil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum - are not rationing fuel and they are instead cutting costs.

The three oil firms are faced with a huge liquidity crunch and are borrowing Rs 3,500 crore a month to meet day-to-day expenditure raising the borrowings to Rs 65,000 crore. It is estimated that the three oil firms end the current year with a revenue loss of Rs 2,00,000 crore as compared to last year, when the loss was Rs 77,304 crore.

New Delhi, May 22
BSNL, which has been facing stiff competition from the private run telecom companies, especially, in the rural sector, was pulled up today by communications and IT minister A Raja, who while expressing concern on the drop in its market share, urged telecom operator to capture 30 per cent of the market by the end of next year.

The response from the minister came as the mobile market in the country is growing at a rapid speed with more than nine million connections being added every month, BSNL’s share has dropped from the second position to the fourth position in this sector.

BSNL, of late, has been losing out mainly in the rural sector after facing repeated delays in equipment supply due to controversies in tenders. As a result the private run companies have been gaining and have also been passing on the benefits being accrued from the government policies to the consumers.

BSNL at present has a market-share of 18.44 per cent. The minister said India has become the second largest customer base after China with more than 300 million telephone connections and has the fastest growth rate in mobile segment, growing at the rate of around 8-10 million connections per month.

Mumbai, May 22
ICICI managing director K. V. Kamath, who took over as president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) says India’s growth path is still strong and the country’s economy will continue to grow at around 8.6 per cent annually for the foreseeable future. "Personally, I think India would continue to grow at 10 per cent. But going by CII figures, India’s growth rate would be 8.3 per cent to 8.6 per cent in the next five years,” Kamath said.

Speaking to reporters here shortly after taking over as president of CII, Kamath said the performance of the corporate sector continued to be robust for the past four quarters. He noted that investments continue to pour into India. "To me it’s very clear then when an investment of $700 billion is happening, growth will not slacken. So that itself becomes an engine of growth," he said. Kamath further added that there is room for an upward surprise in growth numbers.

On being questioned about the IIP numbers which depicted a slow down in the economy, Kamath said he was unsure about the veracity of the index used to depicted IIP. "Our (IIP) index is not right... it has not been recalibrated," Kamath said.

He noted that some of the items in the index are not relevant to the economy at all while there were other more relevant items whose actual weightage in the index is very less. "So to reconstruct the index is primary and we need to do that first then to what date does one set the index and one look at it going forward," Kamath said.

He said India’s economic fundamentals were strong with a savings rate of 35 per cent and investment rate of 36 per cent. 

Ludhiana, May 22
After a long period of slackened operations, engineering and hosiery industries in the region have begun getting export orders from buyers who were shying away ever since the rupee strengthened.

Thanks to weakening rupee, the exporters are able to offer competitive rates and attract buyers from across the world, including West Asia and European nations.

The state suffered losses worth Rs 500-600 crore in the last six months in exports, according to rough estimates. The exporters in engineering and hosiery industries said fresh orders would enable them to offset the losses incurred during this period.

Industries like cycle parts manufacturers were doubly hit as not only had currency "fluctuation" weakened their competitiveness in global markets, they were forced to increase prices further due to steep hike in steel rates.

"After a long phase of reduced demand, we have begun getting orders form our buyers across the world, including West Asia, the US and Europe. We would soon begin production at increased capacities and within the next two-three months overall performance of industry is likely to improve. Buyers were seeking competitive rates that we were unable to afford due to increased costs that occurred on account of rise in steel prices. To top it, the dollar had weakened. Now, our buyers are coming back to us,” Charanjit Singh Vishwakarma, president, United Cycle and Parts Manufacturers Association told The Tribune.

Industrialists said quality of Indian products being better than various competitors particularly China, a large number of buyers were keen on continuing business with India.

“However, the price gap had increased by almost 30-35 per cent. Now, this gap has reduced to 8-10 per cent and we are in a better position. The scenario is good, more so , as steel rates have also stabilised," said S.C. Ralhan, regional chairman, Engineering Export Promotion Council.

Chandigarh, May 22
Making business out of knowledge networking, authorSTREAM, a user generated presentation site, is emerging as a better bet against the umpteen social networking sites. Just one year since it became operational, the site is all set to rake in big moolah by starting premium subscription where their users can upload unlimited presentations.

Talking to The Tribune here today, Harbir Khurana, co-founder, author STREAM, said as of now they were concentrating on expanding the user base and the number of hits. “We have managed to have eight lakh presentation views a month and 50,000 presentations are already uploaded on the site. Within the next quarter, we will be launching a premium subscription, which will allow the members to share unlimited presentation through our site,” he said.

“As of now, a maximum of 20 presentations can be shared by the users free of cost. In the premium membership, we will be charging an annual subscription of $25-$30. We will also be earning through the advertisement revenue. Considering the wide usage of the networking sites, a number of MNCs are now doing their brand promotion on these sites,” he added.

Umesh Sharma, product head, authorSTREAM, said there has been a paradigm shift from social networking to business networking. “Of the 1.4 billion internet users, an astounding 500 million are PowerPoint users. Comparatively just one per cent users are uploading videos on these networking sites, with very few people making these videos. With PowerPoint presentations being used by industry, consultants and in eradication, we decided to digitise content on the web and thus created authorSTREAM,” he added.

BRIEFLY

Spice slashes STD rates
Chandigarh: Spice Telecom on Thursday dropped its STD and roaming rates by 51 per cent for its customers With roaming rates dropped up to 43 per cent; customers can now enjoy incoming roaming and local outgoing at Re 1 and outgoing STD at the rate of Rs. 1.50/min. — TNS

Westside retail network
Mumbai: Tata Group’s retail venture Trent Limited on Thursday announced that it will expand its retail network in 37 tier-II and tier-III cities over a period of five year under the brand name of ‘Westside’ through franchise route. — UNI

Cafe Coffee Day plans
Chennai: Cafe Coffee Day, a unit of the Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Ltd., on Thursday announced expansion plans aiming at 900 cafe outlets all over India by the end of March. Coffee Day marketing president Bidisha Nagaraj said the company at present have 590 outlets spread over 103 cities in India. 
— UNI