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Friday,
December 28, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Haryana sops for IT industry
RBI may amend secrecy law: Patil
GDP growth pegged at 4.8 pc
Economy runs out of steam |
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Expert: evolve recycle-oriented solutions Chandigarh, December 27 Environment management efforts in the 21st century will be directed towards evolving a “recycle-oriented society” for sustainable development , said Prof Saburo Matsui of Kyoto University in Japan, who is an internationally renowned expert on environment technology, while addressing an interactive session on environment management organised by the CII here today.
OPEC’s plan to cut output ups oil prices
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Haryana sops for IT industry Chandigarh, December 27 The land requirement for cyber city, cyber park and IT units will be a minimum of 50 acres, five to 15 acres and one to five acres, respectively. In case the project is not completed within the specified time period, conversion charges and licence fee will be levied on commercial rates uniformly for both cyber park and cyber city. This penalty will be imposed only on the IT area of the project. The time period for the completion of the project in case of cyber park will now be three years. The facility of non-charging of conversion charges has also been extended to cyber parks in case 30 per cent of the IT area is completed within three years. In the case of misuse of space, penalty would be imposed on the licencee for the misused area only, instead of the entire area sold or leased out by the
promoter to the defaulting entrepreneur. The height limit for both cyber city and cyber park will be 60 meters. The IT industry can have a three-tier basement to meet the requirement of parking, subject to clearance from the public health point of view. No manufacturing units would be allowed in the cyber city. IT enabled services would also be allowed in cyber parks and IT units as in the case of cyber city. The Director, Town and Country Planning, will issue licence for additional area upto 100 acres in case of cyber city at his own level but with the prior concurrence of the government. It will be subjection to the condition that the additional area should be contiguous to the existing licenced area and is in a compact block and the land has been procured within one year of the date of licence. The Cabinet also decided to set up a well-planned and ultra-modern mega medicity at Gurgaon to provide state-of-the-art medical facilities at one place. The HUDA will develop the medicity in a systematic and phased manner in Sector 38, Gurgaon. The floor area ration for the medicity will be increased from one to 1.50. HUDA will develop 53 acres in the first phase and it will also earmark a large area for commercial use in the medicity. In the second phase, focus will be laid on setting up medical infrastructure required to support the medicity, in the form of pharmaceutical, biotechnology and bio-informatics research laboratories, followed by research and testing facilities in all areas of diagnostics, teaching and training facilities in medicine, surgery, medical services, nursing and hospital management. The Cabinet also decided to transfer 18.113 acres, adjoining the Jind railway line from Plot no. E-55 to Pucca Kabari Phatak, to Municipal Committee, Panipat, which would develop it and allot to the encroachers. The land would be allotted for residential purposes at the rate of Rs 300 per sq. yd. and for commercial purposes at the rate of Rs 600 per sq. yard.
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RBI may amend secrecy law: Patil
Bhubaneswar, December 27 The non-performing assets (NPA) of public sector banks had gone up to Rs 54,000 crore and the government would not spare any wilful defaulter, Patil said after inaugurating the regional office building of the Allahabad Bank here yesterday. A survey conducted by a government agency had revealed that there were over 250 wilful defaulters against whom legal action was being initiated, he said. The minister explained that as per the existing secrecy law, names of defaulters not referred to the debt recovery tribunal (DRT) could not be published. Referring to criticism that small defaulters were being hauled up while the big ones were allowed to go scot free, Patil said the government would not spare any one of them. The banks, he said, had been instructed not to ask for any postponement while negotiating recovery. “If they do so, they will have to explain it.” Proceedings of the DRT would not be delayed because of the banks, the minister said adding that all loopholes in the debt recovery process would be plugged with the active support of the government. The Indian Banks Association (IBA) was being consulted on this, he said. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said the credit-deposit rates of banks in Orissa were quite low at 44.2 per cent which must improve. Banks should invest more in the state to ensure increased deposit mobilisation, he said. PTI
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GDP growth pegged at 4.8 pc
New Delhi, December 27 “We forecast a growth of 0.6 per cent in exports in dollar terms, down from 20 per cent growth witnessed last year. Even this is an optimistic scenario,” the NCAER said in its latest Macro Track. Amidst this, the NCAER revised the fiscal deficit upward at 6.5 per cent of GDP, up from 5.8 per cent in the August forecast and up from the Budget estimate of 4.7 per cent. The impact of the global recession on the Indian economy will be mainly through trade, Delhi-based economic think tank said, adding that both merchandise and services such as IT, tourism and aviation sectors will suffer in the months to come. Even on the agricultural front, the council said the last monsoon turned out to be less than “satisfactory” in terms of its distribution across regions and over the months during June-September, 2001, and estimated the growth of real GDP from agriculture at a moderate level of 3.8 per cent during 2001-02. The industrial output comprising mining and manufacturing growth in value of output is estimated at 4.8 per cent down from 5.7 per cent estimated in August by the NCAER. Expecting global economy recovery after second half of 2002, the NCAER said it was unrealistic to expect strong export growth, either in goods trade or in invisible receipts, in the second half of the current fiscal. Software exports that brought in about $ 6 billion in revenue last year were expected to grow by less than $ 1.8 billion or a growth of less than 30 per cent. Tourism earnings that stood at about $ 3 billion in 2000-01, were unlikely to witness any growth, the council said, adding that private transfers, accounting for over $ 12 billion, might decline with rising unemployment in North America. The investment scenario in the Indian economy also looked gloomy in the coming months with no indications of stepping up public investment, the NCAER said and pointed out that “private sector investment climate has worsened despite fiscal and monetary policies aimed at providing a conducive macro-economic environment.” “Neither the tax relief in the Central Budget nor the easy liquidity and lower interest rates have led to the desired response,” it added. Except construction activity, which is strongly influenced by household spending, investment continues to be low. On the exchange rate front, however, the council was optimistic of a comfortable position saying “in the coming quarter if oil prices remain low as current expectations suggest and if there is no perceptible pick up in the economy pushing up India’s non-oil imports, the import bill might not rise.”
PTI
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Economy runs out of steam New Delhi, December 27 A few facts are in order: As of May 2001, growth of manufacturing index was down to 1.6 per cent. All categories within manufacturing — basic, intermediate, capital and consumer goods — have been hammered like never before in recent history. The capital goods growth is in the negative zone. Basic goods growth is down from a peak of 9.7 per cent to 2.4 per cent. The most worrisome, however, is consumer goods. An industry that clocked healthy growth since the early 1990s, has been struggling to achieve 3 per cent growth. Add to that the post-September 11 developments and its impact on India’s external economy, the picture is dismal to say the least. “Is the downturn in growth a temporary aberration, or could we be looking at lower long term growth rates? If it is the latter, that would say a great deal about the lack of sufficient growth of rural income in the last few years. As yet, we do not have data to test this hypothesis — but it surely needs testing”, an economist said. The euphoria of a “near perfect” budget and the resultant kudos from the industry proved to be pretty short-lived with the stock-market scam and the UTI fiasco diverting the attention from the core issues and in the process decelerating the implementation of the blue-print laid down in the Budget. “Little has happened in terms of reforms. Even if there is a flurry of reforms in the last quarter of the current fiscal, it is unlikely that their effects will be evident until the first half of 2002-03. That has been the usual lag, and there should be no reason why it should be different this time”, a Delhi-based economist said. For the Finance Minister though, it appears that achieving a GDP growth rate of 7 per cent will serve as the panacea for the ills currently plagueing the economy. The line of argument is that if a GDP growth rate of 7 per cent is achieved 10 times over, then poverty in India would be a history. “If we are able to achieve this, it has a historic significance, we would be the last generation in India to have experienced mass poverty around us. We would be able to tell our grandchildren stories about a fourth of India experienced deprivation, but they would not see deprivation around them”, Mr Sinha told a gathering of top business delegates from India and abroad recently. Unfortunately, however, the facts seem to be otherwise as for the first time in many years the growth rate might drop below the 5 per cent mark. As an industry captain noted: “the recipe to a poverty-free society is much beyond a 7 per cent rate of GDP growth. It is also about consistency in implementation of macro-economic policies”. The developments in the fiscal sector are also a cause for great concern. Net tax revenue of the Central Government in the first half of the fiscal year is down by one tenth — i.e. 10 per cent. On the other hand, the overall expenditure of the Central Government has gone up by 11.5 per cent during the first half of the year, the highest increase over the last three years. The most worrisome aspect of the fiscal deficit is that states are becoming more profligate than before and as an economist said “this has much to do with the political economy of running fragile coalition governments — where the state level allies can get away with their pound of fiscal flesh”. Therefore, given the current economic outlook — domestic as well as global — and the state of economic governance in the Centre and the states, prima facie it does not appear that a major upturn might occur in the near future.
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Expert: evolve recycle-oriented solutions Chandigarh, December 27 While global warming, ozone depletion, etc. are related to the industry, others are related to ecology, he said, calling for recycle-oriented solutions as appropriate. Captain Alok Sharma, Vice-President of the sub committee, CII (North), described the various services provided by the environment management division of the CII. With the thrust on building inhouse capabilities in the Indian industry to address environmental issues proactively, the services provided by it include advice on environmental policy, technical services, in company.
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