Ludhiana, September 20
Punjab's rubber-using industry is going through a miserable phase. The price of rubber has increased abnormally during the last one year, affecting the rubber-using industry hard.

The situation could be eased if imports at reasonable duty were allowed. The import duty on rubber is 20 per cent and that on finished tyres is only 10 per cent. This is an inverted duty structure against the policy perspective.

"Bulk of the rubber-using industry is run by SME sector, which is always vulnerable in the existing economic structure.

Therefore, some mechanism has to be devised to provide rubber to this sector at a protective rate possible," said PD Sharma, president, Apex Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

India has sufficient production of rubber of its own. However, in tune with the general trend to think of agriculture alone at the cost of others is making things difficult. In reality, rubber does not come under agriculture category. It is only a raw material for the industry.

Anti-dumping duty is on certain types of rubber and rubber chemicals remain in force indefinitely even after the cause is over.

"The import of natural rubber should be allowed unhindered. The rubber import should not be subjected to BIS standards. It is logical that the Rubber Board should have adequate number of representatives from user industry and should not be overwhelmingly dominated by producers alone," said another city industrialist dealing in rubber products.

The transportation cost for industry and general public is increasing due to various inefficiencies and policy deficits. The poor infrastructure, ever- increasing fuel prices and now the ever-increasing cost of tyres is adding to the cost of transportation. Punjab's industry in particular suffers the most because it has to carry out of proportion cost of transportation, Sharma added.

New Delhi, September 20
State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) today raised petrol price by Rs 0.27 a litre effective midnight tonight, while other public sector firms are likely to follow suit in the next couple of days.

As a result, petrol in Delhi would cost Rs 51.83 a litre from Rs 51.56 per litre previously, an IOC official said. "The price hike has been necessitated because of rise in crude oil prices," the official said.

Crude oil rose in Asian trade today, rebounding from last week's losses. New York's main contract, light, sweet crude for October delivery, gained 21 cents to USD 73.87 a barrel.

Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum are likely to raise petrol prices between Rs 0.27-0.28 a litre tomorrow or even day after tomorrow.

"The public sector oil firms have previously been accused for fixing prices as a cartel. So now, they are setting rates independently on different days," an industry official said.

This is the first time since the June decision of the government to free petrol price from its control, that the rates of petrol is being raised. Petrol in Mumbai will cost Rs 56.25 as against Rs 55.97 per litre. In Kolkata, petrol will cost Rs 55.69 and in Chennai it will be priced at Rs 56.31 per litre. — PTI

Hyderabad, September 20
The RBI Governor Dr D Subba Rao today said the focus of the central bank would be to manage the balance between growth and inflation.

In every policy review since October 2009, the RBI had tried to manage balance between growth and inflation but some numbers had been “worrisome”, he said while delivering the University of Hyderabad’s (UoH) Foundation Day lecture here on 'Dilemmas in Central Banking.' "It is going to be not so much on bringing policy rates to a neutral level. Inflation will determine the policy action,'' the RBI chief said.

He said the central bank could not be seen as an inflation targeter alone as it also had the mandate of maintaining financial stability and not just price stability.

On the new Wholesale Price Index (WPI), Dr Rao said: "The RBI has worked with the government in improving the WPI index. Certainly, it is not the best practice but we are hoping it to be better than the earlier index." Food inflation, as measured by the WPI, stood at 15.1 per cent for the week ended September 4, primarily due to a rise in prices of vegetables and milk. The latest figures are according to the new inflation data series with a revised base of 2004-05 and had seen some enhancement due to a change in the methodology of collecting data.

The figure was not comparable with the previous week when food inflation stood at 11.47 per cent, calculated on the older base year of 1994-95.

Food inflation had been fuelling the overall inflation rate for the last one year and was being closely monitored by the RBI. However, since this February, inflation in the manufacturing category had added on to food inflation, the Governor said. On the finance ministry's efforts to set up a Financial Stability Development Council (FSDC), which is widely seen as a move to undermine the central bank's autonomy as the banking regulator, Dr Rao said FSDC was mooted by the Finance Minister and, therefore, the government would deal with it.

"In the next April policy, the RBI would bring out a paper on whether it should be made mandatory for our foreign banks to operate as a subsidiary. We want to get public opinion on this from all stakeholders,'' he said.

New Delhi, September 20
The Bharti group has announced its foray into the mobile handset market with an idea of exploiting one of the world’s fastest-growing telecom markets. Bharti group’s firm, Beetel has launched eight handsets in the price range of Rs 1,750-7,000, which would give its sister concern and opportunity to attract more subscribers by offering them tariff plans bundled with its own handsets.

Bharti Airtel adds more than three million subscribers every month and presently has over 140 million subscribers. The company recently also acquired Zain Telecom in Africa to expand its footprint to 16 countries.

Making an announcement, Beetel Teletech Limited (a Bharti group firm) Executive Director and CEO Vinod Sawhny said, “The market is huge and there is a room for Indian players... Phones in the price range of Rs 2,000-6,000 are witnessing 30 per cent growth and we plan to offer a good combination of feature-rich phones at affordable prices.”

India is one of the fastest growing markets, with annual shipments of about 130 million mobile devices, he said, adding, “It was important for a group company, Beetel, to enter the market with a product for masses that is different from others.”

Incidentally, Sawhny said, the company would be talking to all the GSM players for bundling their handsets and it will not be restricted to only the group’s flagship company.