Enron seeks credit and purchase guarantee
Mumbai : The Dabhol Power Company (DPC) has said that it would complete the second phase of the project only if the Central government offers assurance on buying the power, which the Maharashtra State electricity Board is not in a position to do, and giving credit support. These conditions were set before the government by a team headed by DPC treasurer, Ben Gleeson.

About five per cent of the project is yet to be completed, after which it can run on liquefied natural gas. As it stands, it can generate power on naphtha.

The government of India has also asked Indian financial institutions to explore a revival plan for the project. Already, IDBI, ICICI, SBI and Canara Bank have reached their limits of exposure in the project totalling around Rs 5,255 crore -- hence any fresh lending support would have to come from new institutions.

It has been estimated that an additional Rs 2,500 crore will be needed to complete the project. The Industrial Development Finance Corporation, Power Finance Corporation, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank may be brought in to pump in fresh loans.

The proposed revival plan may also include a substantial cut in interest rates on loans given to DPC, raising the moratorium on repayment and buying out the loans of overseas lenders at a later stage.

Another report suggests that banks and financial institutions who are putting together a deal before Enron to acquire its share at a negotiated price also want a guarantee from the Centre before they extend the funds for the second phase of the project.
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Railways to slice 30,000 jobs every year
New Delhi : Indian Railways, which currently employs 15.7 lakh employees, proposes to cut this down by 30,000 every year, to bring it down to around 12.5 lakh in ten years. This reduction is expected to bring in savings of Rs 300 crores, annually, based on an average per employee cost of over Rs 100,000 per year.

This would include abolishing of 32 positions at the level of the Railway Board, bringing down its strength by over 100, and limiting fresh recruitment to less than one per cent of the work force every year. Since over three per cent of the staff would be retiring every year, the two per cent gap would be about 30,000 per year.

All nine zones and five production units of the Railways have been asked to identify and surrender positions which can be done away with, while people manning these positions would be declared super-numerary (surplus) and are re-trained for other roles where shortages exist.

The Railways are said to be downsizing because of the economic slowdown which has brought down the earnings from freight. As the Railways cannot downsize like other private sector corporates, it is downsizing by not filling up vacancies.
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Another committee to settle interconnection dispute
New Delhi : A committee made up of senior officials of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the Department of Telecom and the Telecom Engineering Council (TEC) has been set up to sort out the interconnection dispute between private basic operators and BSNL.

The committee will visit the six circles of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat, where the private companies are offering basic services, to take stock of the situation.

The dispute is also being looked into by a high powered committee set up by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) as well as by the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal..

The dispute between private basic operators and BSNL is on two counts. Firstly, BSNL says it is unable to provide fresh interconnection points to basic operators due to the lack of infrastructure. Secondly, BSNL want to raise the tariff charged to private basic operators for providing interconnection, since existing tariffs are resulting in high revenue losses.

Private basic operators on the other hand say that this goes against the agreement reached at between themselves and BSNL, and that BSNLs dilly dallying is affecting their roll-out plans.
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