Hyderabad, July 11
The Andhra Pradesh government is set to intensify its ongoing battle with Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) over pricing of gas.

The government has decided to raise the issue with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he visits the city on July 31.

RIL, which has struck huge gas reserves in the Krishna-Godavari basin off Andhra coast, has proposed a price of $4.79 per million British thermal unit (MBtu), while the government is insisting on central government’s intervention to ensure a substantially lower price.

The state is insisting on a price below $2.97 per mBtu for power generation, $6.52 per mBtu for domestic gas and $8.33 per mBtu for CNG within the state.

“A personal request will be made to the Prime Minister to consider setting up an independent regulatory body to fix the gas price,” officials said and pointed out that the state government’s stand had found support from Planning Commission and union ministries of fertilisers and power.

As the gas supply from KG basin is expected to commence in July 2008, the Rajasekhar Reddy government has started mounting pressure on the centre to put in place an administered price mechanism for gas in the interests of the state’s industrial development.

It has also made a common cause with Anil Ambani, who is already locked in a legal battle with his estranged elder brother over gas supplies from RIL’s KG basin gas block.

Acting on a complaint from Anil Ambani’s Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) over previous contractual obligations, the Bombay High Court had recently issued an interim order restricting RIL from selling KG gas to any company other than RNRL and NTPC.

Rejecting the demand for supply of gas at administered prices, the RIL said it was neither economically feasible nor could it be permitted by the centre as it was not a condition in the new exploration and licensing policy.

In the absence of an agreement on pricing, the RIL’s ambitious plans to set up a 1,950 km-long pipelines for supply of gas could be in jeopardy.

Chandigarh, July 11
Amrit Banaspati Company Ltd has been restructured and the paper business has been demerged into a separate company, ABC Paper Ltd, while edible oils and FMCG commodities business has been transferred and consolidated with Amrit Enterprises Ltd.

Disclosing this, Pavan Khaitan, managing director, ABC Paper Ltd, informed that the holding company i.e. Amrit Corp. Ltd will comprise of real estate, dairy and services businesses besides retaining the flagship ‘Gagan’ brand. It is also a majority shareholder in both paper and edible oil companies.

“All three companies emanating from the restructuring scheme are in the process of allotment of shares to the shareholders in the swap ratio provided in the scheme and the shares will separately be listed by the three companies in the stock exchanges,” he stated.

Meanwhile, ABC paper Ltd had its first-ever board meeting yesterday. The company plans to undertake expansion plans at their existing plant at Saila Khurd (Hoshiarpur) and raise the production capacity from the existing 48,000 tonnes per annum to 1lakh tonnes per annum.

The company will also be installing a chemical recovery plant and a 10 MW captive co-generation power plant and other capital expenditure initiatives at an outlay of Rs 160 crore.

ABC Paper has also started preliminary work on a greenfield paper unit to produce 1 lakh tonne of specialty paper involving an investment of about Rs 600 crore in Madhya Pradesh or Mahrashtra. After setting up the project, the company will roll out 2 lakh tonnes of paper.

New Delhi, July 11
If you are planning to travel by air, you have the option to decide the airfare. It might sound strange, at a time when low-cost airlines are facing trouble to stay afloat, but that’s what is claimed by a portal.

“Managing travel plans within limited budgets is a big problem with Indian people especially among displaced students and professionals. With this new tool, Zoomtra.com users can now define the prices they would like to pay and never miss an opportunity to avail of such a deal when it comes. Various airlines are offering amazing deals that everyone is aware of, but more often than not, people tend to miss them,” CP Singh, CTO and co-founder of the portal said in a release.

Zoomtra.com has introduced a feature for travellers, who are not rigid about their travel dates, to decide the prices they want to pay for their trips. This is done through a personalised ‘fare alert’ feature where in users can specify their departure and destination city, travel dates and the maximum price they are willing to pay. As soon as the defined fare is available in the market, an automatic notification is sent to the user so that an instant booking can be made.

New Delhi, July 11
Even as a Parliamentary Standing Committee has sought freeze on approvals to fresh SEZ proposals, the Board of Approval (BoA) will meet here tomorrow to consider 41cases.

Interestingly, one of the 41 proposals to be taken up by BoA include a multi-product SEZ in Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh, home constituency of commerce minister Kamal Nath.

Several other prominent SEZ proposals, including that of Unitech, Parasvnath and Videocon would also be considered.

The Navi Mumbai SEZ, the clearance of which was deferred twice earlier, would also be before the Board.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee relating to the commerce ministry, headed by former union minister Murli Manohar Joshi, had in its report sought freezing of notification of fresh SEZs till the SEZ Act and rules are amended to address concerns relating to acquisition of lands.

The total number of cleared SEZs would be above 500, if the BoA clears the 41 SEZ proposals listed for tomorrow.

Chandigarh, July 11
Gurdaspur and Mansa districts of Punjab have witnessed 100 per cent financial inclusion. All rural households of these districts have been linked with a bank either through deposit account or by credit facility. 41,255 ‘no frill’ accounts have been opened and 711 beneficiaries have been issued credit facility under the General Credit Card (GCC) scheme.

“A 100 per cent financial inclusion has two aspects of ‘social inclusion’, which the banks can obtain by opening deposit accounts and providing credit facility to the under-served sections of the society,” stated KC Chakrabarty, chairman and managing director, Punjab National Bank at the 100th meeting of the state level bankers’committee.

In Bathinda, Faridkot, Ferozepur, Muktsar, Sangrur and Tarn Taran, process of 100 per cent financial inclusion is on and should be over by September 30.

Chakrabarty told the bankers to evince their personal interest to accelerate the pace of bringing more and more uncovered household to banks fold so as to complete the process of 100 per cent financial inclusion of these districts latest by September.

Meanwhile, in Punjab 1,63,577 ‘no frill’ accounts have been opened and 9,570 beneficiaries have been provided financial assistance under the GCC scheme in the last three months. Also, 144 new branches of commercial banks have been opened in the state, raising the network to 2,899.

Aggregate deposits of the banks registered a growth of 18.2 per cent. Meanwhile, deposits have increased by Rs 13, 276 crore from Rs 73,083 crore to Rs 86,359 crore during the previous quarter.

It was also disclosed that the banks in Punjab provided assistance to 81,721 small and medium enterprises (SME) units amounting to Rs 11,120 crore up to March, 2007. They have disbursed loans to the tune of Rs 28,824 crore against a target of Rs 26,367 crore, thus registering a 109 per cent achievement.

For the year 2006-07, as against the target of Rs 17,840 crore, banks have disbursed loans under agriculture to the tune of Rs 19,182 crore, thus surpassing the targets by 107 per cent.

Chakrabarty also informed that the priority sector advances in the state in March was Rs 30,858 crore, showing a growth of 25.6 per cent as against 18.7 per cent last year.

Chandigarh, July 11
The Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) has registered a whopping jump of 186 per cent in its net profit after tax and dividend during the financial year closing on March 31, 2007.

Stating this here today, principal secretary to Chief Minister M.L. Tayal, who is also the chairman of the corporation, said the HSIIDC had maintained its high growth trajectory by earning a gross profit of Rs 40.89 crore this year against the earlier record of Rs 29.43 crore during the previous year.

Tayal, who was talking to newsmen after presiding over a meeting of the board of directors, said the corporation had declared a dividend of Rs 5 crore to the state government, an all-time high dividend by the corporation so far.

In a significant decision, the board also approved the reintroduction of the compromise policy to settle chronic non-performing assets (NPAs) of the corporation. The cut-off date to recover the NPAs will be March 31, 2004, in place of March 31, 2002, in the old policy. The new scheme would be valid till December 31, 2007.

He said the corporation had an ambitious plan for setting up new industrial estates and infrastructure projects, for which a land bank of about 17,000 acres was being created. The investment outlay on providing infrastructure for these projects would come to Rs 12,000 crore. Prominent projects included the KMP Expressway, industrial model townships at Rohtak, Faridabad and Jagadhri and the expansion of IMT Manesar, Bawal, Barhi, Rai, Karnal and Saha industrial estates. Dedicated theme parks were also being developed, including the food parks at Rai and Saha, apparel park at Barhi, footwear park at Bahadurgarh, textile cluster at Panipat, auto parts cluster at Gurgaon, light engineering goods cluster at Faridabad, agricultural implements at Karnal and technology parks under campus development norms at Rai & Manesar. The corporation would also explore the possibilities of setting up an industrial estate each at Sohna and Daruhera, besides setting up industry-cum-service centres in the backward districts.

Tayal said the term loan activity of the corporation also grew significantly duing the year. It sanctioned term loans to the tune of Rs 100.52 crore this year. The disbursement and recovery stood at Rs 45.71 crore and Rs 84.33 crore, respectively during the period.

Managing director of the corporation Rajeev Arora said the corporation had spent Rs 940.42 crore on the development of industrial infrastructure in the state, which is significantly higher than Rs 841.63 crore spent during the previous year. Recovery from allottees during the current year was also much higher at Rs 752.86 crore as against Rs 252.98 crore during the previous year.

New Delhi, July 11
Country’s leading hospitality chain, the Oberoi Group, today said that it would invest about Rs 600 crore within the next four years to build three more luxury hotels in India.

“We have several projects in the pipeline that would come up both in India and abroad. In India, we would be building hotels in Mumbai, Goa and Rajgarh for which we would be investing about Rs 500-600 crore,” PRS Oberoi, chairman, Oberoi Group told a press conference here.

“These hotels should be up and running by mid 2008-2011, which together would make available about 1,200-1,500 rooms,” he added.

The group is also developing luxury hotels near airports that are scheduled to come up at Bangalore and Hyderabad.

As part of its overseas plans, it is building two hotels in Abu Dhabi, one each in Dubai, Cambodia and Maldives, which would be mostly built through management contracts.

The group currently runs 32 hotels and luxury cruisers in five countries under the brand names of ‘Oberoi Hotels and Resorts’ and ‘Trident Hilton’ for the mid-market segment.

Mumbai, July 11
Ceat Tyres, an RPG Group company, will set up two new plants at an investment of Rs 700 crore. One of them will be for manufacturing all types of radial tyres.

“We plan to set up two plants, one of them in Maharashtra, while we have yet to decide on the location of the second,” RPG Enterprises chairman Harsh Goenka said here today.

“Once we zero in on the location, work will proceed rapidly. I expect work to begin on both plants by this year-end,” Goenka said.

Investment in the radial plant will be about Rs 500 crore and in the other around Rs 200 crore, he said. — PTI

New Delhi, July 11
Describing Bharat Ram as one of the doyens of Indian industry, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the institutions he helped establish and develop have set standards of excellence, which are benchmarks for the future.

Bharat Ram (93), chairman emeritus of DCM Ltd and SRF, died here last night after a brief illness.

General S S Mehta, director-general of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said: “It is an irreparable loss. We have lost a doyen of Indian Industry, noted for his business acumen and simplicity of lifestyle. He was the voice and conscience-keeper of Indian business and was respected by compatriots. He had brought prestige not only to himself but to India’s business community as a whole.”

Ficci president Habil Khorakiwala described him as “an entrepreneur with rare foresight and vision and one who constantly raised his voice against the fetters that throttled Indian industry during the licence-quota raj.”

Recalling Bharat Ram’s stewardship of being president of Ficci and International Chamber of Commerce (India), Khorakiwala said: “Bharat Ram, an ardent votary of free enterprise, maintained that regulation, when necessary, should be minimal and essentially elastic.”

Bharat Ram was a visionary and far ahead of his times. At a time when labour and management were poles apart, he encouraged labour participation in management and had an elected worker on the DCM board, the Ficci president added.

Expressing shock and anguish over the demise of Bharat Ram, Assocham president Venugopal N Dhoot said the DCM chariman emeritus was known for his straight forwardness, crisp and clear understanding of business and economic issues and fought with courage and dignity the evils of closed economy.

Bharat Ram joined the family business-DCM-founded by his father Sir Sri Ram at a young age of 21 after his graduation and rose to become its chairman and managing director in 1958. Under his stewardship, DCM grew rapidly and was seen as one of the most forward looking companies during that period. Ranked among the top 10 conglomerates in India in 1980, DCM diversified beyond its traditional areas like textiles and sugar into emerging sectors like chemicals, fertilisers, tyre chord and electronics.

Bharat Ram was very active in the social, cultural, educational and sporting life of Delhi. He was very closely involved with prestigious organisations like Ganga Ram Hospital, Shriram College of Commerce, Lady Shriram College, Delhi Golf Club and Sri Ram Centre.