Mumbai, December 20
French cement maker Lafarge SA is in talks with private equity and financial firms to sell a 20-25% stake in its India unit for about $300 million, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The world's largest cement maker has contacted a slew of firms, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co and Temasek Holdings Pvt Ltd, said the two sources, with a potential deal valuing Lafarge's Indian operations at around $1.2 billion.

Lafarge may also exit India entirely if it gets a strategic investor to buy its operations in the country, said the sources, who declined to be named as the negotiations were private.

Officials at KKR and Temasek declined to comment. Lafarge officials were not available for comment.

Lafarge is in a drive to shed non-core assets to cut its debt to below 10 billion euros from 12.2 billion euros after its purchase of Middle Eastern cement maker Orascom in 2007 led to the loss of its investment-grade credit rating last year.

Lafarge is looking to sell its South Korean unit and has mandated bankers, according to a local media report.

A stake sale in its Indian unit would come at a time when analysts expect demand for cement to start recovering, driven by a government push to expedite infrastructure projects, especially ahead of general elections due by 2014.

Cement sales growth has been slow this year in India as a result of sluggish homebuilding and construction in Asia's third-largest economy and margins of cement makers have been pressured due to an increase in the cost of fuel and transport.

Lafarge started its India operations after buying out Tata Steel's cement business in 1999 and has expanded by buying Indian engineering conglomerate Larsen and Toubro's ready-mix concrete business in 2008.

The French firm currently has four cement plants in India, according to the company's website. — Reuters

Hyderabad, December 20
Exhorting the need to have a robust cyber security system in place, Defence Research & Development Organization chief V.K. Saraswat said Thursday the DRDO along with other premier institutes is developing India's own operating system, which is likely to be ready in next three years.

"One of the major elements of cyber security is having our own operating system because today we are dependent on all OS systems which are imported whether it is based on Windows, Linux which is likely to be having malicious worms/things and hence it is essential that we have our own OS," the DRDO director-general said here.

Speaking to newsmen on the sidelines of the 2-day Navcom-2012 international conference on navigation and communication that began here, Saraswat, who is also scientific adviser to the defence minister, said: "We’ve already started a major programme and are one-and-half-years into that programme. It (Indian OS) is a major effort requiring large number of software engineers working together."

He said 150 engineers were working across the country on creating Indian OS, and added it will take at least three more years for getting the Indian OS ready. "It’s our Indian effort...we are not having any foreign involvement in this," Saraswat pointed out. Defence researchers and scientists should start working together with industry and the DRDO and other scientific departments and bring India’s own OS soon," he stressed.

Earlier, speaking at the event, Saraswat said cyber security networking was very important today in view of everything being network centric and on information technology. "We’re having high speed communication across the nodes and are passing information that’s very very critical for our security, safety and economic security," he said.

"Cyber security requires two elements of having our own hardware and our own software. The country needs to go in a big way in this regard. We’ve started a major programme on cyber security ensuring that all the basic elements of the network particularly, the switches and all servers that are presently imported and are vulnerable because of the malware likely to be present are done in our country and lot of work has been done on this front”, he added. — PTI

New Delhi, December 20
Finance Minister P Chidambaram said Thursday restricting fiscal deficit to 5.3% of GDP in the current fiscal was possible while economic consolidation could be achieved in the next 5 years. “...In my considered view this is doable,” he said during the question hour in the Rajya Sabha.

“This year the budget papers presented the fiscal deficit at 5.1% . But after I assumed office and did the reworking of numbers, we felt that 5.1% was perhaps not doable, but 5.3% was doable. So, we have laid out a new fiscal consolidation path beginning this year at 5.3% and ending by the end of the Plan period at 3%. In my considered view, this is doable,” Chidambaram said

The fiscal deficit was 5.9% in 2011-12.

According to the minister the lowest fiscal deficit achieved in the past 13 years was in the year 2007-08 at 2.7%.

He said despite the temporary deviation from stringent fiscal consolidation targets necessitated by global financial crisis, the fiscal policy was being steered rapidly back to the path of prudence. Referring to recently unveiled fiscal roadmap, Chidambaram added he was optimistic India could achieve it. As per the recent fiscal consolidation roadmap, the government plans to bring down the fiscal deficit to 4.8% in the next fiscal, 4.2% in 2014-15, 3.6% in 2015-16 and to 3% in 2016-17.

He said the government had taken various steps towards expenditure reforms with a view to improving macroeconomic environment. While it was making an effort to restrict central subsidies bill in FY13, however some subsidy needed to be given towards food, fuel and fertilizers, he added “…. in a developing country some subsidies have to be given. In our view, some fuels, some fertilizers and some part of food must be subsidized. In fact, we give subsidies for food, fertilizers and fuels. The level of subsidy is decided by the state of the economy at any given time”.

The outgo on food, fuel and fertilizers subsidies in fiscal 2012-13 is pegged at over Rs 1.79 lakh crore. 

New Delhi, December 20
Retirement fund body EPFO's apex decision making body Central Board of Trustees (CBT) is likely to decide rate of interest on PF deposits for 2012-13 in its meeting scheduled on January 15.

"The Employees' Provident Fund Organization's (EPFO) trustees may consider the proposal for deciding the interest rate on PF deposits at its meeting on Jan 15," a source said.

The EPFO has also issued a notice that the 201st meeting of the Central Board of Trustees has been scheduled to be held on January 15, 2013 in Mumbai.

According to practice, after the CBT, headed by the labour minister, decides the interest rate for a fiscal, it is sent to the finance ministry for concurrence.

According to sources,preliminary EPFO estimates indicate the body would neither have surplus nor have deficit if it pays 8.6% interest rate to its over 50 million subscribers.

However, the unionists are demanding to keep the interest rate at par or above 8.8% provided to subscribers of Public Provident Fund, which is voluntary scheme. They have also been demanding raising the interest rate to 9.5% provided by the body in 2010-11. — PTI