New Delhi: India on Friday pledged support to African nations at the World Trade Organisation negotiations on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights and public health revolving around availability of cheap medicines for poorer countries.

For India it is not a commercial issue but a humanitarian one said Mr S.N. Menon. He said India's interest in the issue was that of a responsible government to ensure the poor nations of Africa have access to cheap medicines. Noting that the issue was yet to be resolved, he said whatever movement was to happen would happen at the Cancun Ministerial Meeting of WTO.

Mr Menon mentioned that during his recent stay at Geneva, a number of countries including Brazil, Argentina and some members of the Cairns group and other developing countries joined India in submitting a proposal which is now the G-20 paper. He also stated that the support to this paper was increasing continuously. Mr Menon said the WTO draft text for the Cancun Ministerial will carry a covering note which would mention differences between developed and developing countries as also details of the proposal submitted by G-20 led by India and China. He said if developed countries expect developing nations to bring down tariffs without the reciprocal reduction in subsidies, it would not be accepted by countries largely dependent on agriculture like India.

Courtesy: The Asian Age, August 30, 2003

Mumbai: India, with its strong presence in the chain of assembly operations, is seen emerging as the most preferred destination for international sourcing hubs of textiles, gems, jewellery and diamonds and various other commodities after the quota removal from December 2004.

"The importance of Asia as a leading supplier base in general, and India in particular, is rising fast, more so, when the multi-fibre agreement is scrapped by the end of 2004.

"The Indian textile, gem, jewellery and diamond industries have huge potential for growth and there is enough room for all the segments of the industry to play their legitimate roles in their own areas of competence. HEL, joint managing director, Manish Haria said, "There is no threat from China to Indian apparel exporters, as India has vast experience for better quality delivery with value added products. Our upgradation on all fronts has helped us garner higher export orders that would lead to a turnover of Rs 90 crores during the current year with commensurate rise in profits. This success can be attributed to the fact that India has a strong raw materials base and excellent entrepreneurial skill.

Courtesy: The Asian Age, August 30, 2003

Poor countries facing public health emergencies can override patents and order generic drugs that they themselves are unable to manufacture from other countries like India. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is set to endorse an accord reached among five key countries like, U.S' India, Brazil, South Africa and Kenya on poor countries right to cheaper Medicines. Though there are some key safe-guards yet the deal would benefit the poor countries where are millions die every year from curable infectious diseases for the lack of medicines. The WTO deal also opens a window of opportunity for the vibrant Indian generic drugs industry which stands to gain by supplying substitutes of patented medicines to many poor countries.

Courtesy: The Times of India, August 29, 2003

The center, then state and the World Bank have signed an agreement to facilitate implementation of Rs. 2,118 cr Tamil Nadu Road Sector Project. The project has four components quality enhancement of about 750kms of roads rehabilitation and major maintenance of nearly 2,000 km of roads, improvements to managements of the state road network through institutional strengthening and public private partnerships and enhanced funding and improved allocation procedures for the road sectors. It is to be executed in six years and this project covers the east coast along Cuddalore-Tuticorin. As many as 13 bypasses have been proposed.

Courtesy: The Hindu, August 29, 2003

India has become the cheapest manufacturing base for colour televisions and refrigerators in the world, beating even rival China.

Part of this cost advantage is because of the strengthening of the rupee against the dollar, which has resulted in the drop in prices of imports.

"We were losing out to the Chinese because of the high cost of imports. But after the strengthening of the rupee, that disadvantage has evened out, making us the cheapest manufacturer in the world," says Gulu Mirchandani, chairman and managing director of Mirc Electronics, the maker of Onida brand of televisions.

Adds VN Dhoot, chairman and managing director of Videocon, "This year, the export price of a 21-inch television for us is $68 as against the export price of $76 in the case of Chinese companies."

The integrated circuits, which constitute 20 per cent of the cost of the TV, are imported. So are a lot of the inputs that go into the manufacture of the picture tubes, which constitute 60 per cent of the cost. This is where the strengthening rupee has helped the Indian producers.

However, BPL chairman Ajit Nambiar says India still has some distance to go before it can match China in prices. "China produces over 20 million TVs a year as compared with 6 million produced by India," he adds.

The cost advantage is there for refrigerators as well. A 170-litre direct cool refrigerator costs under $100, a few dollars less than it costs in China.

"In case of low-end refrigerators, where India wins over China or is at par, the import component of cost will be only around 5 per cent and hence the strengthening of the rupee has had little effect. Yet, our prices match those of China," says Raj Jain, managing director of Whirlpool of India.

The production head at LG India, Sanjay Arora, says that in the past few months, the exchange rates have benefitted Indian manufacturers of televisions, though rising prices of steel and copper may have been a damper for the refrigerator makers.

Indian manufacturers have sought duty rationalisation for both CTVs and refrigerators, which will help bring down price and increase penetration.

It has been found that for the lower income classes in India (monthly income less than Rs 3,000 and between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000), the refrigerator costs almost 2.3-6.2 times the monthly income -- which results in low penetration (1 per cent for the lowest income class and 26 per cent for the lower income class).

In China the income multiple is 1.2-2 for the lower income classes resulting in higher penetration -- 72 per cent for the lowest income class and 84 per cent for the next income class.

"Ideally, an income multiple of 1-2 for the lowest income classes in India will result in much greater penetration," said an executive of the Refrigerator and Airconditioner Manufacturers Association.

The price factor

Courtesy: www.rediff.com, August 13, 2003

Infosys is the second most profitable software firm in the world after Microsoft, Infosys chairman NR Narayan Murthy said on Thursday.

Asserting that Infosys was close to becoming a $1 billion company, he said it had 'given a guidance of $965-982 million and profits of $235-$245 million this fiscal.

"In that sense, we are the second most profitable company in the entire world in software after Microsoft," Murthy said at the global technology conference on "Leading the World: Building a Technology Tiger" organised by the Stanford Asia Technology Initiative (ATI) as part of the first Standard alumni meet in India.

Charting out the progress of the Nasdaq-listed major, he said Infosys grew from being a $3.9 million, 200 people firm in 1991-92 to $753 million with profits of $195 million in 2002-03.

Murthy said the real value for the company was its people, who were best in class. "At the end of the day all that valuation becomes zero and the real value is in the people."

Courtesy: The Times of India, August 08, 2003

Tata group chairman Ratan Tata has bagged the Telecom Man of the Year award by Voice and Data magazine, for helping change the face of Indian telecom with his "vision, grit and charisma".

"Long before telecom became fashionable amongst Indian corporates, Ratan Tata initiated his group into the telecom business by taking personal interest in setting up a telecom venture. Under the leadership of this visionary, the group underwent successful transition from an old economy giant to a new economy warhorse, and is now at the forefront of changing the face of Indian telecom," Voice and Data said.

Courtesy: The Times of India, August 08, 2003

LONDON: One-hundred-and-fifty-four years ago, Paul Julius Reuter, a German-born immigrant to Britain, used pigeons to fly stock prices between the cities of Aachen and Brussels. Two years later, he had founded Reuters in London.

Today, his successors at the 3.6-billion-pound Reuters Group, one of the world's leading news and financial information providers, are relying on speed-thinking, speed-typing and cost-effective Indians in Hyderabad and Bangalore to tell the world what to buy and sell.

The move, quaintly described by some as the original pigeon-flyer's pet plan, is thought to be a key part of Reuters' so-called "business transformation" strategy.

The decision to migrate East and create an allegedly "new content production facility in India to process and analyse raw financial data" is likely to save it millions of pounds.

As also stave off pressure from rivals Bloomberg and Thomson.

Though there are no firm figures, the India operations will help with Reuters' plans to slash costs by 440 million pounds by 2005, Reuters' Yasmeen Khan told TNN.

With classic understatement, she said the move was "bound to be good for local (Indian) jobs as well".

But some experts go much further. They say Reuters' flight to the tropics may mark a whole new phase in India's role as back-office to the world. By moving its huge content operation to India, Reuters may almost be demonstrating that India makes profound business sense for reasons other than low labour costs.

"Our senior management is obviously 200 per cent sure about India's infrastructure and all that. And since the new jobs deal with financial information, there is a level of skill required," admits Khan.

According to current estimates, the content operation provides data on more than 960,000 shares, bonds and other financial instruments. It maintains and updates more than 200 million data records. It dockets information on 40,000 companies. It processes financial information from 244 exchanges and updates financial data at 8,000 times per second rising to 23,000 times per second at peak times.

The content operation supplies the data which appears on Reuters screens used by fund managers and asset managers, explains Khan.

And financial analysts believe that considering this is the backbone of the group, rather than Reuters' news services to media organisations, there has to be a lot riding on the move.

Reuters' final cost-cutting and retrenchment plans will be made public in six weeks time.

And for the moment, its local British trades union, the GPMU, appears quiet about the Indian move. But that may not last, amid spiralling concern about Reuters' partial abandonment of its legendary pigeon-hole.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.com, August 07, 2003

India's beleaguered tea industry has launched an aggressive marketing drive for boosting domestic consumption and promoting exports, officials said on Wednesday.

"The rate of tea consumption growth in India has slowed down and this has compounded the oversupply situation, which appears to be depressing tea prices," said secretary of the Assam chapter of the Indian Tea Association (ITA), Dhiraj Kakati.

"We have already put in place a well-concerted generic promotion drive by trying to sell tea as a potential health drink, besides other measures to bring back the industry on track," Kakati told IANS.

India's tea production dropped from 870 million kg in 1998 to 823 million kg last year.

Export figures also showed a sharp decline. In 2001, India exported 220 million kg of tea. In 2002, this dropped to 190 million kg.

Assam, with over 800 tea estates, accounts for more than half the tea produced in India.

The $1.5 billion-a-year tea industry is currently struggling for survival following a crash in prices in weekly auctions and the slump in exports.

In the weekly auctions, one kg of top quality Assam tea was selling Rs 15 to Rs 20 lower than the amount it fetched three years ago.

The slump in prices was largely attributed to inferior quality tea being produced by various India gardens. The decline in exports is attributed to cheap quality beverage being offered by countries like Sri Lanka, Kenya and Bangladesh.

"This is the worst recession for the Indian tea industry. The decline in prices is continuing for the fourth year in succession," Kakati said.

Earlier this week, the Assam government held tea managements responsible for precipitating the crisis, forcing scores of small tea planters, unable to bear the economic burden, to close down their gardens.

"The tea industry is not paying any attention towards producing quality beverage. It is falsely painting a gloomy picture of a so-called crisis," Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said.

The industry, however, denied the charges.

"Our primary emphasis is now to produce quality tea and that is our motto if we have to be in the business," the ITA official said.

"It is important that some government monitoring is done to ensure the quality image of Indian tea," he added.

The ITA has appealed to both centre and the Assam government to grant the industry financial concessions. It has also asked for new legislation to disallow expansion of new tea plantations.

Courtesy: www.hindustantimes.com, August 07, 2003

The Life Insurance Corporation of India is shopping for strategic stakes in commercial banks to put bancassurance to better use.

Buoyed by the success of its investment in Corporation Bank -- the bank has mopped up over Rs 3,500 crore (Rs 35 billion) in first-insurance premium for the insurer in April-June 2003 -- LIC is likely to take strategic stakes in other banks as well.

LIC would make an additional investment of between 15 per cent and 20 per cent in select banks, including private ones, LIC chairman S B Mathur told Business Standard.

LIC currently has an average 5 per cent stake in various banks, but these are portfolio holdings.

Despite these holdings, several banks have tied up with private insurance companies to hawk their products. LIC now wants exclusive tie-ups to push its policies.

Bancassurance is a major distribution channel for private insurers, which do not have anything close to LIC's 1 million sales agents.

Mathur said LIC had targeted 5 per cent of its first-premium income through bancassurance. "If a substantial portion of this comes from Corporation Bank, we will take strategic stakes in more banks," Mathur said.

LIC has a 27.02 per cent stake in Corporation Bank, for which it had to take permission from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. Insurance companies are allowed a maximum of 20 per cent holding in any entity.

LIC is also capitalising on Corporation Bank's cash management services to improve its cash flow, treasury operations and distribution.

Incidentally, LIC has of late been a net seller in the capital market, capitalising on the rising price of bank stocks.

According to industry sources, it has gained Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in the current stock market rally.

Courtesy: www.rediff.com, August 06, 2003

New York: Travel agents, media, and staff of Air India attended a reception hosted by Indian Airlines in New York on July 28, and another in Chicago on July 29 at Mysore Woodlands Restaurant, on the occasion of launching offices in four major US cities. Although late in the game, domestic airline giant Indian Airlines has opened offices in four US cities to tap the extensive market of traveling to and within India.

"Keeping in focus the growing Indian population in the US and their extensive travel to and within India; the resurgence of India as a tourist destination, we feel the US offices will provide better service to our clientele," said Kirti Surendran, marketing manager - USA.

Surendran, accompanied by Anil Goyal, commercial director of India's largest domestic airline, addressed the a press conference here on July 28, and said the airlines has appointed Sita Travels as its official representative in the United States.

Indian Airlines (www.Indian-airlines.com) will now have offices in New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago. It can be reached with toll free number 1-866-I-FLY-IAC.

On this occasion, the airlines officials announced special dollar fares that go under the names of "Wonder Fare," "Discover India," and "Youth Fare." Especially carved for the Non-Resident Indians, these fares are 25 percent more expensive than the domestic rupee rates.

The Wonder Fare at $300 offers an unlimited travel circuitous route in one of the west, east, north and south region. Each zone has a number of tourist and commercial cities and a passenger cannot visit any one place for more than once. Under the "Discover India" fares, there are two unlimited travel variations, a $500 fare for a 15-day round-trip route and a $750 fare for a 21-day package. Finally, under the "Youth Fare," the airlines offers a 25 percent discount for travelers aged 12-30 years.

The airlines also announced super saver fares that cost $399 for four coupons and $799 for eight coupons. Under the latter option, the eight coupons include six coach class and two business class tickets.

Announcing these fares and new locations, the Indian Airlines officials said Indian Airlines would continue to book domestic tickets leveraging the presence of Air India. Indian Airlines, together with its fully-owned subsidiary Alliance Air, is one of the largest regional airline systems in Asia. It has a combined fleet of 60 aircrafts, five wide-bodied Airbus A300s, 38 fly-by-wire Airbus A320s, 11 Boeing 737s, two Dornier D-228 aircraft, and four ATR-42.

Its chief competitors, Jet Airways and Sahara Airlines, were early to realize the potential of US market. They have offices in the US since long.

Indian Airlines has not been profitable for the last three years on account of expensive air turbine fuel and mounting tax costs, top officials said and contended that its new offices here aim to capture 50 percent of domestic bookings done outside India.

The Airline offers around 35,000 seats every day to virtually every part of India with an extensive network of 64 national and an equal number of international destinations. It has 300 daily departures and links 170 city pairs.

Courtesy: www.indiatribune.com, August 06, 2003

The United States has drafted India into the axis of virtue. The Bush administration believes India is a major energy market.

It wants India to build "strategic oil reserves", which can be drawn upon in case of another oil shock to the world economy.

Specifically, throwing the Enron-Dabhol controversy to the winds, the US government is lending its weight to American firms seeking to invest in India's energy sector.

A task force on the US Energy Policy, constituted by US President George Bush, sees "India as one of the major energy markets."

As part of a policy realignment, the US Department of Energy has offered to support "any industry expertise required by India to create its own strategic reserves."

The US wants India to replicate its model, wherein petroleum is stored in "natural, underground salt caverns."

The US has built capacities to store up to 700 million barrels at four sites. These give it a drawdown capacity of 4.4 million barrels a day, which "at full level (of drawdown) is equivalent to the production of the fourth largest supplier in the world."

Petroleum Minister Ram Naik has apprised Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the recent changes in the US energy policy.

As many as 66 US oil and gas majors have shown interest in the recent roadshows, in which the Indian government invited multinationals to explore 24 blocks under the New Exploration Licensing Policy-IV.

The campaign contained a promotional roadshow for the second round of bids for coal-bed methane blocks, in which 32 US firms, including CDX Gas and Burlington Resources, participated.

The Centre has offered nine such blocks, housing about 400 billion cubic metres of exploitable gas.

With support from the US government, India is likely to see a number of American energy firms descending on its shores in search of hydrocarbons and to set up energy units.

Despite the Enron debacle, the US firms are encouraged by the recent gas discoveries made by Reliance Industries in the Krishna-Godavari deep-water block and by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in Vasai (off Mumbai), the deregulation of the oil industry and the proposed government divestment in oil companies.

Courtesy: www.rediff.com, August 04, 2003

India has bagged a major contract to enhance oil production in one of Syria's desert reserves which at present produces 5.3 lakh barrels a day, India's Ambassador to Syria Arif S Khan said on Saturday.

The deal has been struck in principle between ONGC (Videsh) and Syrian Petroleum Company in the face of stiff international competition.

The issue came in for detailed discussion during the meetings visiting External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha had with Syria President Bashar Al Assad and Deputy Prime minister and Foreign Minister Farouk Al Shaara during the day.

"The contract will be signed in the next few week," Khan said.

Khan said after Sinha's meetings that ONGC (Videsh) would work with an American firm to enhance oil production in Syria's Dier e Zour oil reserves in the desert. The Indian company would also explore the possibility of finding new oil and gas deposits.

All discussions have been completed with Syrian Petroleum Company and the work would start soon, Khan added.

India has been involved in exploring oil field in Central Asia, Russia and several other countries and "this contract acts as a feather in the cap for ONGC (Videsh)".

Sinha, who arrived on a three-day visit to Syria, would be meeting Syrian Prime Minister Mustafa Mero on Sunday. He would go to Turkey on August 4.

Courtesy: www.hindustantimes.com, August 03, 2003