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3G auction in next fiscal
Rs 2,400 cr allocated for promotion of trade
Buyer for Satyam likely by month-end
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India set to miss export target
Buddha lays stone of Rs 3,500-cr steel plant
Textile industry in crisis
Settlement of Claims
RIL to restart crude oil production
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3G auction in next fiscal
New Delhi, February 17 It, however, said here today that the Group of Ministers (GoM), to sort out the issues such as the number of slots and reserve price for the 3G services, will be constituted this week. "GoM is likely to be constituted this week. We are still hopeful that the 3G spectrum option has a possibility of happening before the end of the current fiscal. There is still some time," Telecom Minister A Raja said. In the Interim Budget presented yesterday by Pranab Mukherjee, the government had talked of 3G auction only in 2009-10. Also, the government has brought down its expectation of the revenue it would generate from the auction of the spectrum. It has estimated that it will get around Rs 20,000 crore from the auction, a downturn from the Rs 44,000 crore target set initially. While the two state-run telecom companies, BSNL and MTNL, have launched 3G services in limited circles, the decision of the government to take up the auction in the next fiscal would hurt the private telecom players. BSNL is all set to launch 3G services in Chennai on February 23. The third generation (3G) spectrum is essential to launch high-speed value-added mobile telephony services. Reports suggested that defence forces would shortly release 15 MHz of spectrum for the mobile services, soon after a memorandum of understanding between the Department of Telecom and the Ministry of Defence gets signed in a week. The estimates on revenue seem to have been cut due to the economic slowdown. According to the Budget documents, the government expects to earn Rs 33,335.33 crore from various licence fees and spectrum charges (primarily from 3G auction) in 2009-10, which is more than twice of what it expects to earn in 2008-09 at Rs 13,174.29 crore. Incidentally, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has prepared a draft note for the Cabinet on 3G auction, which recommends hiking the base price for each block of a pan-India licence from Rs 2,020 crore to Rs 4,040 crore as per the demand of the Finance Ministry. However, the Cabinet has still not taken a final decision to clear the auction, which was, earlier expected to be completed by January 30. The Cabinet note had set a new deadline of end-March. |
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Rs 2,400 cr allocated for promotion of trade
New Delhi, February 17 However, the exporting community is not happy with the Budget and says that “looking at global slowdown and stimulus announced by other countries, we were expecting exemption of fringe benefit tax/service tax, re-introduction of income tax exemption on exports, increase in investment allowance and higher allocation for marketing development schemes. However, only the interest subvention schemes has been extended for a limited period of 6 months,” said Federation of Indian Exports Organisation (FIEO) president A Sakhtivel. The Finance Ministry has provided the Commerce Department an allocation of Rs 3,660.56 cr for 2009-10 which is definitely more than Rs 3,535.24 made in 2008-09, but falls short of the revised estimates made for the current fiscal at Rs 4,949.02 crore, according to demands for grants for 2009-10 presented in the Lok Sabha. But, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has been allocated Rs 1,183.03 crore in 2009-10, as against Rs 723.45 crore in 2008-09. The current |
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Buyer for Satyam likely by month-end
New Delhi, February 17 The board, which has been constituted by the government, has been looking for a buyer for the company which has been facing a financial crunch. Senior member of the Satyam board, Deepak Parekh said here that a buyer was likely to emerge by the end of February when asked specifically whether he saw any buyer coming forward for the company. "Yes. By the end of this month," he said. Satyam has already accelerated its plans to find a suitable buyer after India's market regulator amended takeover rules. As part of the efforts to present the interested party with a suitable company, the software exporter has also got plans to downsize its work force, especially at the senior level. Already two officials at senior level have quit and more resignations are expected to follow. Satyam, India's fourth-largest outsourcer, has been in news and facing the financial crunch since January 7 last when its founder Ramalinga Raju quit as chairman, revealing profits have been falsified for years and almost Rs 7,800 crore had been embezzled. Later, the government dissolved Satyam's board and appointed six directors to save the company and its over 50,000 employees. The new board has appointed Goldman Sachs and Avendus, an Indian investment bank, to help find potential investors. |
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India set to miss export target
New Delhi, February 17 He listed gems, jewellery, textiles, garments, handicrafts, automobiles, leather, leather products, marine products, plastic and linoleum as the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost considerable number of jobs as well. “We are trying to mitigate the troubles of these sectors,” he said. He said the government and the RBI were closely monitoring both domestic and international economic developments. “The RBI has already taken several steps to reduce the cost of credit and improve liquidity for trade and industry,” the Minister said, earlier mentioning that the government had fixed the $200 billion trade target when it announced the annual supplement to the foreign trade policy on April 11 last. The Minister then listed RBI measures to improve the credit and liquidity situation and arrest the decline in export growth rate. These include the reduction in repo rate, reverse repo rate, statutory liquidity ratio and CRR. |
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Buddha lays stone of Rs 3,500-cr steel plant
Kolkata, February 17 The project, which will include a power plant, will be implemented jointly by Shyam Industries Ltd and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC). About 150 acres of land will be needed for the plant, of which 74 acres had been already identified. Incidentally, the work at two major steel plants at Jhalda in Purulia and Salboni in west Midnapore district, whose foundation stones were laid two years ago, were now temporarily stalled since the investors were facing problems in obtaining foreign loans in the wake of global financial crisis. The two investors, namely Balaji group and the Jindal industries, however, assured the state government that they would re-start their work at Jhalda and Salboni, respectively, as soon as they overcome funding crisis. While Jindal’s Salboni’s steel plant would cost Rs 30,000 crore, the Balaji group had planned Rs 1,700- crore investment Laying the foundation stone in Purulia’s Raghinathpur today, the Chief Minister said he had been assured by the Shyam Industries that there would be no problems in the procurement of funds for their plant. The plant would provide jobs to some 2,000 youths. |
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Textile industry in crisis
Ludhiana, February 17 The textile companies included Vardhman Textiles, Welspun India, Rajasthan Spinning, Nahar Industrial Enterprises, Nahar Spinning and Exports, Abhishek Industries, Rajapalayam, Gangotri Textiles, Winsome Yarns Ltd, Prime Textiles Ltd, Ambika Cotton, Patspin India, Raymond Limited, Gtn Textiles, Cheslind Textiles Ltd, Super Spinning Mills Ltd, JCT Ltd, Winsome Textiles Ltd, Maral Overseas Ltd, Malwa Cotton and Himatsingka Seide. Oswal told The Tribune that global recession in major textile-importing economies like the USA, European Union and Japan has adversely affected textile exports from India. For the first time in many years, US textile imports have declined by 3 per cent during January-November 2008. On the other hand, Bangladesh and Vietnam have recorded positive growth in clothing exports to the USA in January-November 2008. According to Oswal, India's textile exports are expected to decline by 10 per cent from $22 billion during 2007-08 to $20 billion in 2008-09. However, Chinese exports grew by 8 per cent to $185 billion in 2008 from $171 billion in 2007. He revealed that the competing countries have responded swiftly to save their textile industry as China has increased the export rebates from 9 per cent to 17 per cent in a span of three months. China also decreased the interest rate to 5.5 per cent to enable the industry to cope up with financial problems and to keep the mills running. Pakistan has extended research and development support to 6 per cent to garment exports and also allowed mark-up subsidy of 3 per cent on spinning sector on outstanding loans for financing import of machinery. Pakistan has also announced two-year moratorium period for repayment of all loans to help the industry. Oswal pointed out that the Government of India reduced the duty drawback rates in September 2008, which increased the difficulties of the textile exporters. The government has partially increased the rates but still same are quite lower than pre-September 2008 level. Further, increase in MSP of cotton by 40 per cent by the government has crippled the industry to withstand the global economic meltdown, which has started showing its negative impact in domestic market as well. Oswal has called upon the government to put up a general moratorium of two years for loans given to textile industry and overall repayment should be extended by two years. This will enable the mills to keep running till the recession is over… even if there are no profits. |
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Settlement of Claims
Chandigarh, February 17 Though these units have been pleading that the cases against them be withdrawn by the corporation, the state government officials say that law will take its own course. A senior functionary of the Industries Department informed TNS that the matter was being considered by the executive committee of PFC. It was, however, decided that the law be allowed to take its own course and the cases may not be withdrawn by PFC. “Though these 18 industrial unit owners have settled all their claims, but the dues were paid only after the due date for payment was over. Thus, it was decided that the cases filed against them under the Negotiable Instruments Act be pursued till their logical conclusion,” said Principal Secretary, Industries, Punjab, S S Channy. He added that a number of these persons had settled their loans under the OTS scheme launched by the state government. “Only because they had paid the dues after the last date for the OTS, we had filed cases against them,” he added. These units had availed term loans from the corporation in the early 1990s. Over a period of time, these units failed to honour the post- dated cheques issued to PFC at the time of availing the loan. The bankers returned these cheques as unpaid on account of non- availability of funds, and PFC filed cases against such defaulting units under the Negotiable Instruments Act. A Barnala-based unit owner, requesting anonymity, said they had also paid two per cent extra penal interest as the payment was delayed beyond the due date. “We have been issued NOC and the securities have been released by PFC. We are unnecessarily being harassed by the PFC as it refuses to withdraw the court cases against us,” he said. |
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RIL to restart crude oil production
New Delhi, February 17 The MA field in KG-D6 off the Andhra coast, began pumping oil in September 2008 and had produced 790,000 barrels of oil till December 9 when output ceased due to equipment failure. "Production is expected to recommence in March after completion of necessary repairs and modification," a source said. Gas from the block is also expected to start flowing from the first week of March. Reliance was producing about 10,000 barrels of oil per day from two wells before the shutdown and it would add another well to raise the output in March. The source said three more wells were likely to be brought into production when the field takes the planned shutdown in March-end or early April. "Output is expected to rise to 40,000 bpd before the end of April-June quarter." Reliance had sold the first cargo of over 430,000 barrels of oil to Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd's Vizag refinery and the second cargo is slated to go to Chennai refinery (CPCL). CPCL has contracted 450,000 barrels of oil from Reliance at a discount of $5.34 a barrel to the internationally traded price of Nigerian Bonny Light crude oil. The price is the same that was offered by HPCL. — PTI |
Oil falls below $37 Re crashes by 88 paise Banks' strike hits operations Gems, jewellery exports up Awarded LIC Jeevan Varsha
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