Hijacked plane in Afghanistan
New Delhi: Nearly 30 hours after it was hijacked midway through a flight from Nepal’s Kathmandu to New Delhi, the Indian Airlines’ Boeing 400 plane is at the Kandahar airport in Afghanistan, with the armed hijackers, five in number, holding 161 passengers on board hostages demanding release of some Kashmiri militants now in Indian jails.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has responded positively to the Indian government’s request to help save the hostages. The Taliban has also pressed the demand of the hijackers with the UN saying it should intervene and end the hostage drama.
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Petro strike off
Mumbai: Petrol dealers in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh have called off their proposed strike from 25 December midnight. The dealers had planned not to lift  products from oil refineries to protest against the arbitrary manner of testing samples from oil bunks by oil company officials. The call was withdrawn as the dealers’ representatives said their demands were partially settled by the oil companies.
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Govt crosses overdraft limit
Mumbai: The ways and means advances balance as on 10 December 1999 amounted to Rs 7,951 crore, an increase of Rs 2,016 crore over the previous week’s levels and an excess of Rs 951 crore over the prescribed limit of Rs 7,000 crore for the second half of 1999-2000.

The Reserve Bank of India released these details in its weekly statistical supplement. The government will be able to bring down the balance within the prescribed limit in a few weeks as over Rs 7,000 crore has come into the government’s kitty by way of advance tax collections.

Money supply grew Rs 4,039 crore to Rs 10,67,124 crore during the fortnight ended 3 December 1999, the supplement said. The total foreign exchange reserves, including gold and SDRs, rose $68 million during the week ended 17 December to $34,389 million.
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SBT plans e-transfer from Gulf
Thiruvananthapuram: The State Bank of Travancore is launching an electronic fund transfer facility for its Middle East customers. The facility will allow expatriates from Kerala located in Middle East countries to remit money quickly to their families. The infrastructure for the system is ready, and the facility will initially be available at three new exchange houses at Al Faradan in Abu Dhabi in the UAE, Trust Exchange at Doha in Qatar and Al-Mozzanni in Oman. The foreign exchange department of the bank at Kochi will serve as the hub for the operations.
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GIC plans new company
Mumbai: The General Insurance Corporation of India is setting up a management services company to oversee its savings-linked insurance products. The new company will market and process the tasks involved in introducing the new products. However, the premium income and the liabilities will be on the books of the four subsidiaries of GIC.

GIC has already received clearance from the government to set up a separate company for its managed healthcare products.
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