The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

	Rs 14,000 cr for fuel retailers New Delhi, May 5 The government today agreed to give an additional Rs 14,000 crore to oil retailers Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and HPCL to make up for most of the losses they incurred on selling cooking fuel below cost. The three retailers lost Rs 31,621 crore on selling domestic LPG and kerosene below cost in 2009-10 fiscal. Of this, the finance ministry had previously released Rs 12,000 crore in cash and today they agreed to give an additional Rs 14,000 crore. "We had sought Rs 19,620 crore in compensation but they (finance ministry) have agreed to give Rs 14,000 crore," Oil Minister Murli Deora said today. Oil Secretary S Sundareshan met Expenditure Secretary Sushma Nath today seeking Rs 19,620.95 crore to fully compensate oil marketing companies' revenue loss on PDS kerosene and domestic LPG in 2009-10. The three firms lost Rs 46,051 crore on selling petrol, diesel, domestic LPG and PDS kerosene below imported cost in 2009-10. He told Nath that upstream firms Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd were meeting the entire Rs 14,430 crore loss on petrol and diesel. Sources said upstream firms, which are meeting 32 per cent of the total revenue loss, cannot contribute anything beyond this. The ministry reminded of the finance ministry's commitment to meet the entire deficit on LPG and kerosene. Deora said the finance ministry giving Rs 14,000 crore would help retailers but did not say how the balance Rs 5,621 crore may be met. "Upstream firms have done all they could and we cannot ask them to foot an additional Rs 5,621 crore," a ministry official said. "Perhaps this may have to be borne largely by the retailers with upstream firms chipping in some." Indian Oil Corp, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum currently lose Rs 272.5 crore per day on selling fuel below cost and may end the current fiscal with a Rs 90,150 crore revenue loss. They currently sell petrol at a loss of Rs 6.63 a litre while the loss is Rs 6.25 per litre on diesel, Rs 19.74 per litre on PDS kerosene and Rs 254.37 per 14.2-kg LPG cylinder. An Empowered Group of Ministers headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to meet next week to look freeing auto fuel prices and ways of meeting the balance revenue loss. — PTI
	Govt eyes Rs 40,000 cr from divestment To sell stake in 10 more PSUs New Delhi, May 5 Aiming to raise Rs 40,000 crore from disinvestment, the government today said it would sell its stake in 10 more PSUs, including IndianOil, MMTC, Coal India Ltd, SAIL, RINL and Shipping Corporation, in the current financial year. "Engineers India is likely to be disinvested in June, Coal India in August, Hindustan Copper in August-September, SAIL in September and Power Grid in November this year," disinvestment joint secretary Sidhartha Pradhan told PTI. This would be followed by disinvestment in IOC and Manganese Ore India Ltd in December, RINL in January 2011, MMTC in February and Shipping Corporation in March next year, he added. The government is aiming to raise Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal through stake sale in public sector entities and has set a roadmap for the same with the first issue SJVNL sailing off smoothly. The Budget has upped the revenue target from sale of government equity in CPSUs to Rs 40,000 crore in 2010-11 from the Rs 25,000 crore targeted in the current fiscal. "The Rs 40,000-crore disinvestment target for the current fiscal is on track," Disinvestment Secretary Sumit Bose said. As per the Cabinet decision, all listed profitable PSUs should have a public holding of at least 10 per cent and all profitable unlisted CPSUs should be listed. As per criteria, 60 state-run companies are eligible for disinvestment. Last fiscal, the government had raised Rs 25,000 crore through stake sale in PSUs like Oil India, NMDC, REC and NTPC. The first stake sale of this fiscal, SJVNL, has got good response from investors, prompting the government to fix the issue price at the upper end of the band at Rs 26 a share. The stake sale would fetch the Centre over Rs 1,000 crore. — PTI
	Nod to gratuity limit of Rs 10 lakh New Delhi, May 5 Parliament today approved enhancing the gratuity limit for employees from Rs 3.5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh as also the exemption threshold from income tax on it. While the Lok Sabha had passed the Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill 2010 on Monday, the Rajya Sabha put its stamp of approval on it today. Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge, replying to a brief debate on the Bill said the legislative measure also provides that the income tax exemption limit has commensurately been increased to Rs 10 lakh from Rs 3.5 lakh earlier. On demands for giving a retrospective effect to the measure, Kharge said, "We want to give a lot, but there should be a capacity (of the employer) to pay and it should reach the beneficiaries." He gave the same reason for not accepting demands from the members to improve the formula for calculation of gratuity. The Bill was brought following demands from trade unions and others to remove the ceiling or increase the maximum payable amount, which was fixed in 1997. Earlier, participating in the debate, Congress member and veteran trade unionist G Sanjeeva Reddy said payment of gratuity should be done with retrospective effect. CPM member T K Rangarajan said seasonal workers were not getting benefit and therefore their interests should also be protected. — PTI
	Rupee falls by 32 paise Mumbai, May 5 The rupee today depreciated sharply by 32 paise to close at more than one-month low of 44.93/94 against the US currency on dollar buying by banks and corporates amid stronger greenback overseas. In line with the weakness in local equities, the domestic unit touched an intra-day low of 45 a dollar, level not seen since March 31, 2010. The BSE benchmark Sensex was down by nearly 279 points in morning deals following sluggish global trends. The rupee, however, recovered some losses later but still ended lower for the third straight session at 44.93/94 a dollar, a fall of 0.72 per cent. Dealers said sustained dollar demand from banks and corporates on the back of rise in the global market mainly affected the rupee value. Concerns over the Greek's debt problem continued to weigh on the Euro-zone stocks and currencies. The dollar was up against its other major rivals and was nearly one-year high against the Euro amid speculation that Portugal and Spain may join Greece in seeking an international rescue package. Global crude oil prices were trading below $82 a barrel in London today. The rupee premium for the forward dollar closed lower on fresh receivings by exporters. The RBI fixed the reference rate for the dollar at Rs 44.87 and for the euro at Rs 58.27. In cross currency trade, the domestic currency fell back against the pound and the Japanese yen while improved further against the euro. — PTI
	RCom eyes bigger pie of smartphone market Girja Shankar Kaura Tribune News Service New Delhi, May 5 Reliance Communications (RCom) is undertaking innovative measures to up its ante on its smartphone strategy and is expected to be the first telecom operator in India to offer Android-bundled handsets within the next three months. It is also working on an alliance with Nokia for its Network Management System (NMS) service. As part of its plans to strengthen its presence in the smartphone segment, RCom is entering into a tie-up with Nokia to launch Nokia’s proprietary NMS service on its network. This tie-up will enable RCom to create and own the mobile email opportunity across its entire bandwidth of over 100 million subscribers. It will also provide RCom an opportunity to offer innovative data plans for ring fencing the existing corporate users, broad base its overall data offerings to SMEs and consumer email market. In fact, the biggest gain to RCom from this alliance will be the direct revenue impact without any material investment in infrastructure. Nokia will invest in back-end servers for supporting its proprietary NMS service. Nokia will also pay the licence fee to all global ISPs as well as local ISPs as part of this NMS service. The service will enable RCom subscribers direct access to push-enabled email access of Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. The service will also support SME-hosted email solutions for corporate subscribers. The company is in advanced stages of finalising the pricing of the NMS service it plans to offer on its network. The service will be offered on over 25 Nokia smartphones. The company is looking at offering free data service bundled with top-selling smartphones in India. The handset manufacturers include Nokia, Samsung, LG as well as RIM for Blackberry devices. RCom is also looking at introducing an entire bouquet of Android handsets across both GSM and CDMA network. In line with this plan, the company is in talks with Samsung, LG and Motorola to procure nearly 3,00,000 Android handsets valued at Rs 500 crore.
	M&M to increase production of PTL Ruchika M. Khanna Tribune News Service Chandigarh, May 5 Auto major Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) is all set to improve the capacity utilisation of its subsidiary, PTL’s two plants at Mohali and Chappar Chiri. By the end of this year, the company is looking at using both plants to their maximum capacity by producing 60,000 tractors per annum. Production capacity will be added next year in the two plants of PTL, as the market for Swaraj tractors grows. In the last fiscal, Swaraj tractors saw a volume growth of 30 per cent over 2008-09, with a sale of 48,000 units. M&M is looking at a brownfield expansion of the Mohali plant in the next fiscal. Talking to TNS here today on the sidelines of an annual convention organised by SIAM on ensuring road safety, Dr Pawan Goenka, president, M&M, said the focus this year was on improving the production of PTL’s two plants in Punjab by reducing cost of inputs and by optimisation of production lines. “In the past three years, since we acquired Punjab Tractors, we have managed a complete turnaround of the company. The market share of Swaraj tractors has increased from 9 to 12 per cent. Besides, the company has also seen a drastic improvement in its financial performance,” he said. Making it clear that the company would not discontinue the Swaraj brand, Goenka said Swaraj was a strong brand in the region. “We have no intention of discontinuing the brand or amalgamation of Swaraj and Mahindra dealerships. The focus is on consolidating the brand and introducing new models. We had introduced one model last year and will be unveiling more models in future. Though we will continue with the export of Swaraj tractors to Bangladesh and Nepal, we will concentrate more on the domestic market,” he added. He said the company was looking at introducing new tractor models in over 50 HP category amd sub-30 HP category. “These segments are growing rapidly, and we are looking at introducing new models here,” said Goenka. Goenka also said they were also looking at setting up a new plant in south India this year. “We already have production facilities in Jaipur, Rudrapur, Nagpur and Mumbai. Since we need to increase our market share in South, we are looking at setting up a manufacturing base there. The place has not yet been finalised, though we are looking at an area of 200 acres to set up the factory,” he added.
	Airtel, Novatium in pact Chennai, May 5 Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel today entered into a partnership with cloud computing service provider Novatium to expand its broadband business in India. Under the tie-up, Novatium would offer cloud computing — Internet-based computing services — 'Airtel Net PC', for Airtel broadband customers in India, Bharti Airtel Telemedia Services CMO Vikas Singh told reporters here. Singh said they would launch the service in 11 cities (starting from Chennai) over the next six months. "It's like a plug and play service...We will specifically target the middle income category," he said. He said existing customers can avail the service from any of the Airtel outlets in the country. — PTI