Mumbai, September 28
Industrialist Anil Ambani today unveiled grand plans for group companies at separate meetings of share holders. In a slew of announcements, Ambani outlined investments of nearly Rs 1,25,000 crore and fund-raising to the tune of over Rs 65,000 crore for expanding businesses and entering new areas.

The companies in the spotlight were Reliance Power, Reliance Communications and Reliance Capital.

Reliance Power has set itself a target of generating 25,000 Mw of power by 2015.

Making this announcement, Anil Ambani said the company will generate 5,000 Mw of power over two years, before scaling output five-fold. The company generates 600 Mw.

Ambani added Reliance Power has raised $11.1 billion to finance 10,000 Mw of power generation. Two power plants from Sasan and Krishnapattam will generate 4,000 Mw each, while the rest will be accounted for by the Samalkot plant.

Ambani added the company will invest Rs 1,20,000 crore in the power sector. Around Rs 80,000 crore would be spend on 20,000 Mw of thermal generation capacity by 2015, Rs 30,000 crore is budgeted for hydro power and Rs 10,000 crore for gas-based projects.

Speaking to investors of the troubled Reliance Communications, Ambani said the group was looking to induct a strategic investor with 26 per cent stake. Reliance Infratel, the tower arm of the group, which was hived off, will also come out with a public issue. “There is substantial interest in the market for such an offering given that we are now the only telecom operator in the country without a foreign partner,” Ambani said.

Ambani added that Reliance Communications aimed to become a debt-free company in three years. Ambani added RCom has grown at a rapid pace.

From less than 10 million customers five years ago, the company had more than 115 million customers. The next phase will see RCom concentrate on 3G telephony and high-speed data access.

On Reliance Capital, Ambani said the group aimed to increase the company’s asset base to Rs 50,000 crore in 3-5 years. He confirmed that the company was keen on entering the banking sector by acquiring a banking licence.

Reliance Capital will see some value unlocking as soon as clarity emerges on listing insurance companies. “Once this is done, we will explore the possibility of creating value for our investors by listing our life insurance business,” Ambani said.

The market reacted positively to the announcements made by Ambani, although gains were modest for the shares of three group companies.

Reliance Capital rose 0.3 per cent to close at Rs 814, RCOM gained 0.4 per cent to Rs 170.3; R-Power rose the maximum by 1.7 per cent to close at Rs 163.25 at the BSE.

Chandigarh, September 28
Banks will no longer be able to close their doors on their customers in disputes on payment disbursals by banks. With the apex regulatory bank, RBI and banking ombudsman offices being flooded with complaints against banks for failing to settle disputes on payment disbursals, RBI has directed banks settle these disputes in a time-bound manner.

In its directions to various banks, RBI has said that all banks must have a proper dispute resolution mechanism in place. All disputes relating to clearing house related activities, electronic payment products, National Electronic Clearing Service, through ATMs etc, will now have to be settled in 15 working days.

The mechanism will also look into disputes arising during payments made using National Electronic Funds Transfer and Real Time Gross Settlement, besides cross-border money transfers and transfers affected using credit/ debit cards.

RBI has directed that in case the complainants are not satisfied with the decision, they can approach the Appellate Authority at RBI.

Even this Appellate Authority has been asked to dispose off the appeal within 15 working days. This will give a major relief to the customers, who are often left high and dry after disputes arise.

A case in point is the 10-odd complainants in the recent ATM cloning fraud that took place in Chandigarh recently, in which banks failed to adequately compensate the affected customers.

RBI has had a Payment and Settlement Systems Act in place since 2007 and a dispute redressal mechanism has now been drawn up for system providers and participants of all payment systems authorised to operate in the country.

Chandigarh, September 28
With big poultry companies out-marketing small and marginal poultry farmers, four poultry farmers from Barwala poultry belt near Chandigarh have decided to join hands to better market the wares of small poultry farm owners.

The farmers — Nitin Garg, Atul Mahajan, Rajiv Goyal and Vikas Bansal — have launched an online portal for poultry farmers (www.papaak.com <http://www.papaak.com>)

The website caters to the needs of the poultry farmers and provides services like live rates of egg and broiler, egg export data, poultry health and disease updates to small farmers across India.

“The poultry business is run in an unorganised manner, where the farmer is not aware of the input cost and his sale price. While the input cost is continuously increasing, that of the sale of produce fluctuates. This results in avoidable heavy losses to the producers and sometimes to the traders. It is very essential for the producer and the trader to be continuously updated on the trends in cost variation of inputs and sale rates, so that the overall business especially to the producer does not run in darkness and result in heavy losses to them,” said Atul Mahajan.

The website attempts to share this information on daily/hourly basis to fellow farmers and traders to help bringing in transparency in poultry business, he added.

“We will soon be adding new features like the rate of drugs to be administered to birds in case of disease outbreak, quantity of these drugs and their points of sale. The website is acting as a forum for poultry farmers to disseminate and publish ideas and new techniques like developing branded eggs and making environmentally controlled sheds for poultry birds,” said Vikas Bansal. 

Hyderabad, September 28
Passengers flying out of Hyderabad International Airport will have to pay a higher User Development Fee (UDF) from November 1. The UDF has been raised to Rs 420 for domestic passengers and Rs 1,656 for international travelers, excluding taxes.

GMR Hyderabad International Airport (GHIAL) which operates the airport charges Rs 350 for domestic passengers and Rs 1,000 for international passengers.

The Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) has allowed the operator to revise the UDF charges, according a consultation paper issued on UDF hike by AERA. The existing UDF charged by GHIAL is the highest across all airports in the country.

While allowing the airport operator to hike the UDF, the regulatory authority has also sought comments and submissions from stakeholders before October 7.

“The hike is purely on an ad-hoc basis based on traffic figures from 2008-09 to 2013-14. This ad-hoc determination would be reviewed at the stage of tariff determination for the first cycle and thereafter at such intervals as the Authority may decide,” said AERA Secretary Sandeep Prakash.

Mumbai, September 28
India’s retail revolution will soon have a new player from the old world industrial houses of the country: the first mall constructed by the House of Tatas is taking shape in the holy city of Amritsar. The Trilium Mall being constructed in the posh circular road area will be the biggest such facility when it is complete, says Jaskaran Singh, Assistant General Manager, Mall Operations, Tata Realty and Infrastructure Ltd.

The mall coming up on a 5.54 acre plot will boast of 7 lakh square feet of retail space. The facility will have a hypermarket, food court, a diagnostic centre, banquet facilities managed by the Taj Group of hotels, multiplex and a retail facility catering exclusively to the marriage market, according to TRIL.

The Tatas are already into retail with its Westside format (textiles), tar Bazaar (multi-brand), Croma (electronics) and with Trilium would be venturing into constructing malls as well. “The Trilium in Amritsar is our first venture building malls,” says Singh.

According to him, Trilium will boast of the biggest multiplex in Amritsar with six screens seating up to 1,200 people. The food court will also be gigantic with a seating capacity of 1,200 persons.

The mall, which is being designed by RTKL from the US will confirm to the environment-friendly LEED design.

The mall which will be managed by a professional mall management agency will also have state-of-the-art security system and will have round-the-clock assistance for senior citizens and physically challenged persons.

TRIL entered the mall construction sector after it won the plot of land in an auction held by Punjab Urban Development Authority (PUDA) two years ago.

TRIL, which is wholly owned by Tata Sons, is already building roads and a Special Economic Zone in different parts of the country. 

Toronto/San Francisco, September 28
Canadian wireless giant Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry, on Monday unveiled its tablet computer called PlayBook to take on Apple's iPad. Targeted mostly at business people (like its BlackBerry smart phone), the PlayBook is half the size of the iPad. Weighing the same as the iPad, it is just 9.77 millimetre thick.

The tablet, which will fit neatly into a small corporate suitcase, is to hit the North American market early next year and will be available elsewhere later in 2011.

Unveiling the PlayBook at the company developers' annual meeting in San Francisco, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said, “RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry with cutting-edge hardware features and one of the world's most robust and flexible operating systems”.

"The BlackBerry PlayBook solidly hits the mark with industry leading power, true multitasking, uncompromised web browsing and high performance multimedia.''

The cheering news for BlackBerry users is that through a secure wireless link, the Playbook can also be used as a second and bigger screen for their smart phone. And when they disconnect the two, no secure BlackBerry data will be left on the PlayBook.

Whereas Apple didn't use Flash in its iPad on the grounds that Adobe's software is full of bugs and drains battery, RIM's PlayBook offers Flash for video and interactive material on the web. In a way, Flash will make the PlayBook less dependent on third-party applications.

"I don't need to download a YouTube app if I have got YouTube on the web. Much of the market has been defined in terms of how you fit the Web to mobility. What we're launching is really the first mobile product that is designed to give full web fidelity,'' said the RIM co-CEO.

As expected, the PlayBook will operate on a new software platform built by QNX Software Systems. The BlackBerry maker had acquired Ottawa-based QNX Software Systems for $200 million in April to have exclusive access to its software technology for its tablet.

Indicating how powerful this QNX operating system is, RIM says it can work on machines that run four, eight, 16 and 32 processors. — IANS