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Wednesday,
December 5, 2001,
Chandigarh, India  
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No move to
regulate interest rate: Sinha 34 FDI
proposals cleared Bharti to
offer ESOP at 50 pc discount
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Revenue
mop-up may fall short of target
Webdunia.com
launches quiz contest
Dr
Reddy’s loses, Andrx gains
Wipro
inks pact with Santera Systems
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Houston, December 4 The announcement came yesterday, hours after the troubled energy marketing company laid off 4,000 workers — or 20 per cent of its work force. Enron sent the rest of its staff at its Houston headquarters home for the rest of the day. Under terms of the agreement with lenders J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup, Enron will receive $ 250 million immediately. Another $ 250 million will be available when the company provides the lenders with a “satisfactory business plan,” Enron said in a statement. The remaining $ 1 billion will be used in part to pay debt on Enron’s Transwestern Pipeline. To get that funding, Enron must add the pipeline to a list of subsidiaries named in the company’s bankruptcy filing, Enron lawyer Martin Bienenstock said in court. The company currently has $ 500 million in cash, but normally operates with about $ 2.5 billion on hand, Bienenstock said. The loans are syndicated — meaning they will be shared among a large group of banks — and secured by Enron’s assets. “With this financing in place, Enron can continue to do business and move forward to implement the first steps of its reorganisation,” Enron Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth L. Lay said. Firm offers to buy Enron
Standard Power and Light, a privately held energy developer based in Illinois, is offering to acquire at least a majority stake of Enron, according to documents released today. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Standard Power and Light President and Chief Executive Richard Ryan said: “we intend on acquiring at least the majority of the shares of Enron, selling off all division of the business except for the energy related companies and putting this company back on its feet.” Ryan said once the company has been stripped to its core energy business, “the balance of the debt, both on balance sheet and off balance sheet, can be adequately managed and ultimately retired through a long term reorganisation.” The company did not say how it will raise the cash to purchase
Enron, but said the operations of the energy business alone are sufficient to repay debt obligation to creditors.
AP, AFP
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No move to regulate interest rate: Sinha New Delhi, December 4 Replying to questions during the question hour in the Rajya
Sabha, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said: “Interest rate has been de-regulated. There is no intention to bring regulation back as far as interest rate is concerned.” “It is left to the lending agencies to judge the worth of its clients and judge the interest rate accordingly,” he said. The Finance Minister, however, said sick industries and potentially viable but sick industries were provided loans at below the prime lending rate
(PLR) levels. Mr Sinha said the government had taken several remedial measures to ward off the effects of global slowdown which had also helped in insulating the economy. He said good agriculture this year had improved the prospects of growth. In reply to another question, Mr Sinha said India was insulated from the effects of global economic slowdown because of the measures taken in advance and better performance of agriculture this year would provide the necessary fillip to the economy. “We have taken remedial measures as the government was aware of the slowdown. We softened interest rates and reduced taxes across the board,” he said. Attributing the slowdown in the country's economy to external environment like the East Asian crisis, collapse of technology stocks in the USA and sharp rise in international oil prices, he said slowdown in the agriculture during the past two years also contributed to the decline in the GDP
considerably. Govt to revive sick SFCs: In an effort to strengthen the small-scale sector, the government would provide recapitalisation to revive the sick state finance corporations
(SFCs), the Finance Minister indicated. Replying to supplementaries during the question hour, Mr Sinha said: “Suggestions have been made for recapitalisation to revive the
SFCs. We are discussing this with the state governments. We hope to be able to resolve this problem very soon.” The Finance Minister denied that the NDA government had only taken cosmetic measures for development of the small-scale sector.
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34 FDI proposals cleared
New Delhi, December 4 Sterling’s proposal for floating 45.60 per cent of its equity in the overseas markets to raise up to Rs 2350 crore ($ 500 million) for setting up a eight-fibre pair fully protected undersea cable system has now been forwarded to the to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for consideration and approval, an official release said. A Rs 350 crore proposal of the Indian arm of Japanese company Yamaha Motors for issue of 14 per cent of the redeemable preference shares was among the other 33 FDI proposals cleared. The proposals were approved by the Murasoli Maran on the basis of recommendations made by the FIPB, it said. The Ministry cleared a proposal of Mphasis Europe and Middle East to increase foreign equity holding to 100 per cent from 95 per cent. The other proposals approved included the Caparo group of London and Skoda Auto’s proposal with no fresh inflow of funds involved. Caterpillar Power Ventures International Mauritius got the nod for increasing foreign equity up to 56.9 per cent from 35.41 per cent. California-based LPG and VNG kits manufacturer Impco Technologies has been allowed to increase its stake to 40 per cent in manufacturing activities and 60 per cent for trading activities in two different entities.
PTI
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Bharti to offer ESOP at 50 pc discount
New Delhi, December 4 “We have decided to give our about 4000 employees, who have brought Bharti where it is today, the shares at 50 per cent discount while the employees joining the company now will be offered such shares later,” Sunil Bharti Mittal said here today. A number of shares to be offered to each employees would be worked out later depending upon the years of services they have put in. Asked what kind of premium the company was expecting, Mittal said the market was extremely good as there was no telecom IPO in the pipeline. He, however, refused to give any indication on the price front. Bharti has various projects worth Rs 5,200 crore in progress, Mittal said, adding that at the peak the company would require this much fund. With a comfortable debt-equity ratio of just 0.36:1, Mittal said raising the fund would not be a problem for the company. The company has also secured some debt, he added. Bharti is diluting 10 per cent of the equity in the primary market constituting 18.5 crore shares. The investment of Rs 5,200 crore to be pumped into various projects in progress would be spread over a period of more than two years. Bharti would start delivering services in all circles by the end of current financial year except in the case of Mumbai. On the issue of removing FDI in the telecom sector, Mittal said looking at the amount of funds required by India, the government must remove the 49 per cent cap on FDI limit. To buy stake in Telia
Bharti Televentures is gearing up to acquire 26 per cent stake held by Telia, Sweden’s telecom giant, in Bharti Mobile. Sunil Mittal said the group would also acquire a 5 per cent stake held by India’s DSS Enterprises in another group firm, Bharti Mobinet, which offers mobile services in Chennai, before the end of March next. The two deals under discussion if completed would give Bharti Televentures total ownership of its various operating companies.
PTI
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Revenue mop-up may fall short of target New Delhi, December 4 “So far as direct tax collections concerned we are almost equal to last year’s levels. However, Customs collections are down by 14 per cent during April to November period as compared to the corresponding period last year”, Mr Narayan told newspersons in the sidelines of special session during the ongoing India Economic Summit organised by the World Economic Forum and CII) here. Although excise collections are better than last year’s rate of 1.93 per cent, “ even doubling of that figure may not be sufficient”. On the whole, he said net tax collections was less by Rs 400 crore during the period as compared to the last year, the Revenue Secretary said. The government, however, was hopeful that direct tax collections will pick up - especially corporate tax collections. “Corporate tax collections have increased from a negative 52 per cent in July to negative 26 per cent in August”, he said. Regarding customs he said “ we cannot do anything about it, especially in the context of the of international price situation in crude oil”. On increasing the number of direct tax assessees, he said the government was looking at increasing the number of assessees to anywhere between 5.5 to 6 crore by 2005. “On a proportionate basis we are looking at an average annual addition of one crore assessees by 2005”, Mr Narayan said.
Power reforms
Power Minister Suresh Prabhu said a holistic approach will be adopted for reviving the power sector. The new approach will focus on transmission and distribution in addition to generation to make the power sector commercially viable, the Minister said while speaking at a special plenary session of the India Economic Summit. Mr Prabhu said the new generation plants would not need a licence to produce power and the private producers can sell the
power directly to bulk consumers, which will take care of any bank ability
issues.
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Webdunia.com launches quiz contest New Delhi, December 4 The Webdunia.com Multilingual Online Quiz will enable users from different parts of the country to participate in a quiz in their own mother tongue, website CEO Vinay Chhajlani told reporters. Initially, the competition will be in six languages - Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam and English. Within three months, five other languages - Bengali, Telugu, Assamese, Punjabi and Oriya - will be added. The quiz sites are www.webdunia.com (Hindi), www.webulagam.com (Tamil), www.weblokam.com (Malayalam) and www.webprapancham.com (Telugu). The daily one-minute quiz and the weekly and special half-hour quizzes will allow users to earn points for participating and winning, which can be redeemed for attractive prizes. The online initiative will announce a national winner daily and over 20 winners weekly.
UNI
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