The Hindu Business Line : Wednesday, November 19, 2008

INDUSTRY & ECONOMY

ECONOMY: ‘Cut prices, not production, to tackle demand slowdown’
Govt levies import duty on steel products, crude soyabean oil. New Delhi, Nov. 18 Imports of pig iron and certain specified iron and steel items such as semi-finished products, flat and long products would now become dearer. The Government on ...

ECONOMY: Difficult to cut prices: India Inc
New Delhi, Nov. 18 The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram’s call to India Inc to slash prices of products in order to spur demand was met with lukewarm response from industry captains. Automobiles, real estate, airlines and hotels ...

INFRASTRUCTURE: Plan panel to identify projects to raise public expenditure
Hopes to come out with additional expenditure package soon. The Planning Commission is working on identifying existing public work programmes that could be stepped up during the course of the current fiscal, as part of the fiscal measure to ...

EXPORTS & IMPORTS: No fresh credit risk cover for vendors of US auto giants
Credit rating of US auto industry deteriorating. The Export Credit Guarantee Corporation (ECGC) has frozen issue of fresh credit risk insurance (CRI) cover to Indian component vendors of US auto giants General Motors, Ford Motors ...

EXPORTS & IMPORTS: Textile exporters to US face payment defaults
ECGC gets claims of Rs 100 cr. Mumbai, Nov. 18 Nearly a dozen Indian exporters, mainly of textiles, are facing payment defaults to the tune of Rs 100 crore by US importers who have ...

HUMAN RESOURCES: Textile cos focus on rightsizing
Face reduction in demand as overseas orders shrink. Ahmedabad, Nov. 18 ‘Rightsizing’ is the buzz word in the textile industry, beginning at the top of the ladder where CEOs and CFOs are changing their office ...

EXPORTS & IMPORTS: Export sops: Marginal relief for cement cos
Limited to shipments to Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe. Mumbai, Nov. 18 The export incentives offered by the Government will have little impact on the prospects of the beleaguered cement companies as the benefits are restricted to ...

PETROLEUM: Panel asks Ministry to cut air fares as fuel prices fall
With the prices of aviation turbine fuel coming down, a committee headed by the Cabinet Secretary, Mr K.M. Chandrasekhar, has asked the Civil Aviation Ministry to examine possibility of cutting air ...

REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION: Weak demand leading to project deferments: DLF
High home loan rates blamed for slowdown in realty. New Delhi, Nov. 18 The Chairman of DLF Ltd, Mr K.P. Singh, on Tuesday said that weak demand for real estate due to high interest rates is leading to deferment of projects, including its own, ...

EXPORTS & IMPORTS: Financial turmoil pushes down cashew exports
15 units shut as gap between kernel and raw material slips. Kochi, Nov. 18 The cashew industry has started feeling the pinch of the credit squeeze overseas with the closing down of around 15 units rendering thousands of ...

ECONOMY: Mixed performance by Kerala’s top five sectors
CII call to address lack of skilled manpower. Kochi, Nov. 18 The findings of the Industry Monitor Survey conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industry Southern Region for April-September revealed that the top five industry sectors of Kerala ...

POWER: TNEB seeks regulator nod to raise charges 4-fold for HT units
Also plans to levy three times the normal rates for excess energy consumed. Chennai, Nov. 18 The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board plans to charge four times the normal rates for high tension industrial and commercial consumers exceeding their quota ...

AUTOMOBILES: Auto sector rules out price cuts
Mumbai, Nov. 18 Will car and two-wheeler companies go by what the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, said on Tuesday and reduce prices of their vehicles? On the face of it, this seems an impossible task going by what some CEOs had ...

EDUCATION: IIM, Calcutta plans financial lab
The Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, will soon set up a Financial Trading and Research Laboratory to provide students analytic and model-building experience through access to real time national and international financial data. The ...

FOREIGN TRADE: ‘IITF turning focus on B2B’
New Delhi, Nov 18 India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) is making a serious bid to convert its flagship global trade fair from a consumer-oriented thrust to a business-to-business (B2B) fair largely because Indian industry is maturing, ...

HOTELS: Hotel industry seeks exemption from power cut
Following the directives from the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) to hotels in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchi, and Salem on imposing power cut, the South India Hotels and Restaurants Association has appealed to the State Power ...

EDUCATION: Indians continue to flock to US colleges
China, South Korea second and third on list. Coimbatore, Nov. 18 India maintained its numero uno position on the list of nations sending the largest number of students to study in the ...

ECONOMY: Beyond bailouts
Various industries are lining up before the Government asking for support to tide over the slowdown. It is a measure of the enfeebled nature of the State that some promoters are able to brandish the threat of labour retrenchment despite laws ...

AUTOMOBILES: Adani group signs pact to develop auto hub at Mundra port
Ahmedabad, Nov 18 The Adani Group’s Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone Ltd (MPSEZ) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Mumbai for setting up a dedicated automobile terminal with Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) of Japan ...

FOREIGN TRADE: Hitex sees more trade expos despite slowdown
Hyderabad, Nov. 18 Hyderabad International Trade Expositions Ltd (Hitex) is quite upbeat on attracting global expos to Hyderabad, despite the ...

ACCOUNTANCY: Nuance in talks with carmakers to provide speech tech
Mumbai, Nov. 18 Nuance, the US-based speech and image solutions provider, is initiating talks with automobile manufacturers Toyota, General Motors, Volkswagen, Ford, Hyundai and Renault to provide speech-enabled navigations systems in their ...

SSI: IBM unveils ‘Smart Business’ for SMEs
Pune, Nov.18 IBM has announced the availability of ‘IBM Smart Business’, applications for small and medium ...

INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS: CII targets to cover 50 firms under HR audit
Hyderabad, Nov. 18 The Confederation of Indian Industry, Southern Region (CII-SR), is planning to rope in at least 50 companies for assessment under its human resource excellence model in the current ...

REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION: Kerala builders seek VAT exemption
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov. 18 The Kerala Builders Association (KBA) has urged the State Government to fully exempt the construction sector from the purview of value-added ...

NRIS: Banks hike NRI deposit rates
Kochi, Nov. 18 More banks are raising the rates on foreign ...

TOURISM: Panel to go into effect of slowdown on tourism
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov. 18 Kerala Tourism will set up a committee to study the impact of the global economic slowdown on the State’s ...

EDUCATION: Fall in offers made in financial sector at IIM-A
The turmoil in the financial markets may have been responsible for the drop in the number of summer placements in that sector at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, hinted Professor Samir ...

SSI: Small, medium units want moratorium
Visakhapatnam, Nov. 18 Small and medium enterprises, badly hit by the global economic recession, are in no position to pay back bank loans and, therefore, the banks should declare moratorium for a year, the Federation of Andhra Pradesh ...

EVENTS: IIM-A workshop on e-governance projects from today
Ahmedabad, Nov. 18 The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad will conduct a two-day workshop on the impact of e-governance projects in collaboration with Department of Information Technology on November 19 ...

ECONOMY: Free markets: Integrity a necessary condition
The desirability of free markets and their outcomes are based on a number of assumptions, involving perfect competition, rational human beings, no marked inequalities in income, wealth and opportunity and externalities, e.g., ...

EDUCATION: Abhirama Krishna, Global Business Director, Satyam School of Leadership, Satyam Computer Services Ltd; Guru Nanak Engineering College, Department of Management Studies, Ibrahimpatnam
Hyderabad, Nov. 18 There is no unemployment problem in India. It is more of a problem of un-employability, feels Mr Abhirama Krishna, Global Business Director, Satyam School of Leadership, Satyam Computer ...

EDUCATION: Ajoy Shah, Chief Product Manager, JK Tyre; Galgotias Business School, Greater Noida
Companies should monitor their brand constantly and evolve itself according to the consumers needs. The essence of a good brand lies in managing customer expectation even while keeping an eye on ...

EXCISE AND CUSTOMS: Customs seizes contraband rice
Kochi Customs on Tuesday seized 54 tonnes of rice of a city-based company from the port here for declaring the consignment as coconut. Sources in the port said the company has violated the DGFT’s notification banning export of all ...

SOCIAL SECURITY: IFFCO-TOKIO insurance scheme
IFFCO-TOKIO General Insurance Co Ltd has launched its Janata Bima Yojana micro-insurance policy in Kerala. The policy offers two types of coverage, property insurance cover and critical illness cover, with a sum of Rs 10,000 assured in both ...

HUMAN RESOURCES: Thought process workshop
Mind Parlour, a Kochi-based human resource development company, is organising a 2-day workshop on a new concept, Thought Process Re-engineering, targeted at students, entrepreneurs and executives. Mr Sajeev Nair of Mind Parlour said the workshop ...