Oil marketing cos to have pricing freedom
New Delhi: The government has decided to give oil marketing companies the flexibility to revise their product prices without prior approval.

These companies will only be required to notify changes in tariffs to the regulator.

The regulator will be empowered to step in if it perceives attempts by companies at collusive or predatory pricing.

The mandate of the downstream regulator the Downstream Petroleum Sector Regulatory Board to be set up through an act of parliament, will be to regulate petro-product prices and pipelines in the post- administered pricing mechanism (APM) regime.
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Singapore firm to set up township
Hyderabad: The Singapore-based Cessma International Pte Ltd and the Andhra Pradesh Housing Board will jointly develop an integrated township project near Hyderabad.

The work is set to get under way by June this year following a decision to take up the project under a joint venture.

Cessma International, a subsidiary of the Housing Development Board, government of Singapore, has provided the master plan and extended architectural services for the housing project to come up about 18 km from here.

Under the project, it is planned to develop 1,600 flats in stage one. Located on the Hyderabad-Warangal highway, this project is based on similar townships developed in Singapore, which have modern facilities serving as an integrated township with all infrastructure.

The average cost of each flat would range between Rs 7 lakh and Rs 9 lakh.
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Apex financial intelligence agency soon
New Delhi: The finance ministry will set up an apex intelligence agency to monitor external and internal financial transactions in the country. The agency will be the central think-tank and gather information on its own and also from the existing agencies.

The unit, to be headed by a senior official, will report to the finance minister. It will have a full-fledged dossier on important areas of the economy.

The proposed agency will also take the help of the Reserve Bank of India and the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
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Rollback to cost Rs 8,000 crore
New Delhi: A rollback of key budget proposals on the withdrawal of Section 88 benefits, the service tax on life insurance premiums and the 50 basis point cut in administered interest rates can lead to a loss of Rs 8,000 crore to the exchequer.

The loss on account of the tax rebate of 10 per cent under Section 88 would be about Rs 5,000 crore.

The restoration of the 20 per cent rebate will benefit about 12.64 per cent of the 2.82 crore tax assessee base in the country.

Exempting life insurance premiums from the 5 per cent service tax will deprive the government of about Rs 1,000 crore.
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Concor to start train service from Kandla port
Ahmedabad: Container Corporation of India (Concor) is contemplating starting its own train services connecting Kandla Port with Inland Container Depots (ICDs) at Jodhpur, Delhi and Ludhiana by May 2002.

Many commodities, which were previously moving through Kandla, have shifted to JNPT due to non-availability of regular services from ICDs.
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Fresh bids for 4 telecom circles
New Delhi: The government has decided to invite fresh bids, with diluted entry conditions, for the four circles that did not receive bids from the private sector for the fourth cellular operator's berth.

The government will invite fresh bids for Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Andaman and Nicobar in a month's time. It is also likely to waive the bank guarantee and ease rollout obligations.
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EU asks India to sell its whisky as rum
New Delhi: The European Union has said India could sell its locally made whisky in the EU countries provided it was sold as rum and not as whisky.

"If India wants to sell its whisky in EU countries it would have to be called rum as consumers in Europe expect whisky to be grain-based and not molasses-based as it is in India. Hence, selling it as whisky will be misleading," European Commission director Robert Madelin said here.

"Under the WTO rules whisky has been defined as grain-based and even by Indias own definition whisky has to be grain-based and not from molasses as is largely the case," he said during his visit to India for the trade sub-committee meeting last week.
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Core fund picks 26% in Kolkata car project
Mumbai: U-Fund, the county's first urban infrastructure fund, has picked up 26 per cent in a Kolkata car park project for Rs 80 lakh.

The remaining stake in the project situated at Rawdon street is held by the Simplex group.

The key subscribers to the U-Fund are a clutch of financial institutions led by IDBI .

The car project in Kolkata has been conceived with the purpose of decongesting the city. It can accommodate 219 cars in one stretch and 73 cars per floor.
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Computerisation of registrar of companies soon
Panaji: The government plans to convert offices of registrar of companies into paperless offices.

"The aim is to ensure that corporate clients need not physically visit the registrar office for any job and they should be able to handle these jobs online," union law, justice and company affairs Minister Arun Jaitley said.

Jaitley said there are more than 5,32,000 companies in the country and the corporatising is on the rise. This will bring competitiveness and, obviously, professionalism in the field, he said.
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Five cell cos sign pact with VSNL for interconnect
New Delhi: Five cellular operators BPL, BTAL, Hutchison, Spice, and Escotel have signed an MoU with the VSNL for the new interconnect agreement.

The cellular operators are also planning to waive off the airtime charges for the customers. Currently, a subscriber has to pay air-time charge and the ISD charges for making an international call.

Under the new proposed arrangement, a subscriber will be required to pay only ISD charges for an international call.

Three companies, Bharti, Reliance and Data Access, have already acquired licences for ILD services. Five more companies including Spice, BPL and Aircel have applied for the ILD licences.

Bharti and Data Access are likely to launch their services by the end of this month.
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