The Hindu Business Line : Weekly News Round-up

Bowing to the demands of the domestic spinning industry, the Centre has scrapped basic customs duty as well as special additional duty of customs on raw cotton imports to boost supplies and soften domestic prices.

Till now, raw cotton imports attracted basic customs duty of 10 per cent and SAD of 4 per cent.

The Finance Ministry has also now withdrawn drawback benefit of 1 per cent of free on board value of raw cotton exports.

Tanti group of companies, the promoters of Suzlon Energy Ltd, jointly with Bahrain-based Arcapita Bank, has acquired Honiton Energy Holdings, a Chinese wind energy firm. The company has not disclosed the value of the deal.

The joint venture partners will invest $2 billion by 2012 to develop a 1,650-MW portfolio of wind farms in the Inner Mongolia region of China.

Larsen & Toubro will split its Engineering Construction and Contract division into four separate companies soon, according to Mr J. Ganguly, Executive Vice-President, L&T Ltd.

The four functional areas within ECC - Buildings & Factories, Infrastructure, Power Transmission & Distribution and Mineral Metal & Water - have already started operating as independent divisions with effect from July 1, and that the formal split would take a couple of years to be completed, he said.

The Central Board of Trustees of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation on Saturday decided that employees working in small establishments having 10 or more workers will also get the benefits of the Employees' Provident Fund & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952.

It deferred the decision with regard to the interest rate payable to provident fund subscribers for fiscal 2008-09.

Infosys Technologies reported a 20.7 per cent increase in first quarter net profit, partly helped by a depreciating rupee.

For the quarter ended June this year, net profit was Rs 1,302 crore, compared with Rs 1,079 crore in the year-ago quarter. Income increased 28.7 per cent to Rs 4,854 crore from Rs 3,773 crore

Industrial output slumped to its lowest level in over six years during May 2008, growing by 3.8 per cent on an annual basis as against a healthy 10.6 per cent growth clocked during the corresponding month a year-ago.

Industrial growth during May is sharply lower than April's revised growth estimate of 6.2 per cent.

The Index of Industrial Production growth was hit as both manufacturing and electricity generation witnessed a slackening in output.

Manufacturing output grew 3.9 per cent in May, against 11.3 per cent a year-ago.

The annual inflation surged further to 11.89 per cent during the week ended June 28.

The rise was the highest since annual numbers in the current series became available in April 1995, outstripping the previous week's annual rise of 11.63 per cent, with manufactured products mainly to blame.

The Left parties on Tuesday announced withdrawal of support to the ruling United Progressive Alliance Government over the latter's move to push ahead with the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The Second Administrative Review of the anti-dumping duty on shrimp exports from India to the US has in its Final Report slashed the duty to 1.69 per cent. The First Administrative Review had imposed an anti-dumping duty of 7.22 per cent, sources in the Seafood Exporters Association of India said. The review was conducted by the US Department of Commerce.

Compiled & Podcast by M J Madhavan