IBSA Trilateralism: Rounding the Cape of New Hope
New Delhi: Addressing an interactive meeting with the Foreign Ministers from Brazil, South Africa and India, organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Minister for External Affairs, Mr Yashwant Sinha, said that the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) trilateral cooperation mechanism will give a fresh impetus to what is being termed as `South-South' cooperation. He added that 'the Cape of Good Hope is now the Cape of New Hope'. The Minister said that all the three countries were in favour of a free market economy, and that the governments were committed towards promoting business in the global arena.
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Shourie: Strategic sale route to be revived after verdict
New Delhi: The minister for disinvestment Arun Shourie has said that the government will revive the stalled strategic sale process to privatise a slew of PSUs after the Supreme Court gives its final verdict on the matter. Commenting on the ONGC offer he said that bids for over $4.85 billion (over Rs 20,000 crore) had already come in.

Shourie said the government would realise a minimum of Rs 13,100 crore from the six offers if the floor price, or the lower end of the price band, was taken as the final offer price. Shourie claimed that the success of the public showed that the perception about India had changed across the world.
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TRAI: Service quality below norms
New Delhi: According to a survey carried out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) the quality of service (QoS) provided by cellular and fixed line service providers has not shown much improvement during the quarter ended December 2003. Out of the 10 QoS parameters for mobile operators only two, that is accumulated down time of community isolation and period of all refunds, showed improvement in performance compared to the previous quarter.

Under the parameter "Faults cleared within 24 hrs" the performance of BSNL in seven circles, Haxacom and BPL in Maharashtra is way below the stipulated benchmark of 100 per cent. Further, the "Call Success Rate" for BSNL in four circles is below the benchmark of 99 per cent.Further the report notes that for all the service providers the parameter "Percentage of billing complaints resolved within 4 weeks" has shown deterioration in the performance.
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India cellular subscriber base at 31.40 m
New Delhi: The cellular subscriber base has crossed 31.40 million across the country. As per the latest statistics released by the Cellular Operators Association of India and the Association of Basic Telecom Operators, while the aggregate GSM cellular subscriber base has been placed at 24.65 million, the CDMA subscriber figure (excluding BSNL and MTNL) is lower at 6.75 million.

At the individual operator level across the technology platforms, Reliance Infocomm had a 68.22-lakh subscriber base (60.65 lakh in CDMA and 7.57 lakh in GSM) followed by Bharti with 61.99 lakh (GSM), BSNL 49.54 lakh (GSM), Hutch 48.26 lakh (GSM) and Idea Cellular 25.84 lakh (GSM).
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50,000 trucks keep off roads for the second day
Mumbai: About 50,000 trucks stayed off the roads in Mumbai for the second day on Friday in protest against the Bombay High Court directive, which banned these trucks from plying till they convert to the eco-friendly Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). It is felt that the impact of the strike on supplies of fruits and vegetables would be felt from Saturday, as stocks had been built up.
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Inflation: Up at 5.94 per cent
New Delhi: A sharp rise in prices of fruits, vegetables and other primary items and costlier manufactured products pushed up inflation to 5.94 per cent for the week ended February 21. The point-to-point price change, as measured by Wholesale Price Index (WPI), rose from the previous week's level of 5.84 per cent even as prices fell for textiles and condiments and spices. The present movement of commodity prices is contrary to the expectations of government and RBI, which hopes to rein in inflation at 4-4.5 per cent by the end of the current fiscal.
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