The Hindu Business Line : Weekly round-up

The Cabinet Committee on Prices met late evening on Monday to review the sharp increase in prices of food items and other manufactured goods, with a view to contain runaway inflation, which had clocked a 14-month high.

Earlier in the day, the Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, had said the Government was looking to cut duties on food items to rein in prices.

Turnover at the countrys premier stock exchanges dropped sharply on Tuesday in the back drop of day-traders staying away from the market in protest against the new tax regime that was coming into force from April 1.

The NSE and BSE registered a 24 per cent drop in turnover.

Consumer durables major Videocon has sent an expression of interest to Motorola for buying out the US-based companys troubled handset business.

The move comes after Motorola had decided, on March 26, that it will hive off the troubled mobile device business into a separate company. **

The Government has allowed operators to share all parts of the infrastructure except spectrum.

This is expected to enable operators to save nearly 30 per cent of their costs, which in turn will result in cheaper tariffs for consumers.

Until now, operators were allowed to share only the passive part of the infrastructure which include towers, power equipment and air-conditioning at various cell sites.

UAEs telecom giant Emirates Telecommunications Corp (Etisalat), is in talks with Telekom Malaysia-backed Spice Communications and other new licence holders, for a possible foray into the Indian mobile space.

Etisalat is the largest telecom operator in the UAE, and provides telecommunications services in 14 countries including Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd has approached the Government with plans to set up a semiconductor wafer fabrication plant and solar PV module unit, at a total outlay of over Rs 30,000 crore.

The proposal would involve an investment of Rs 18,521 crore spread over a period of 10 years.

In a bid to fuel the growth of electronics hardware manufacturing in the country, the Government on Thursday approved a policy to create information technology investment regions.

These regions are specifically-notified zones that would include IT/BPOs, electronics hardware manufacturing units, public utilities, residential area, social infrastructure and administrative units.

Institutional investors now can have direct market access without brokers manual intervention if suitable infrastructure is created by brokers, a SEBI circular addressed to the BSE and the NSE said here on Thursday.

SEBI said direct market access offered clients direct control over orders, faster execution, reduced risk of errors associated with manual orders and better audit trails.

Inflation galloped to an over three-year high of 7 per cent, buttressing fears that the RBI could hike rates in April instead of leaving them unchanged, denting economic growth prospects further.

With iron and steel, edible oils, vegetables, milk and dairy products showing no signs of a let up in prices, annual inflation flared up by over 30 basis points for the week ended March 22, driven by an across-the-board rise in prices, according to the latest Wholesale Price Index-based inflation data released by the Government.