Manmohan Singh meets Bush: 'Best yet to come'
New York: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a joint statement with the US has said that the best in Indo-US ties was yet to come.

India's new Prime Minister kicked off his week in New York with a breakfast meeting with US President George W Bush in his suite at the posh Waldorf Astoria in midtown Manhattan.

After the first meeting between the two leaders since a change of government in India, there was a joint statement, congratulating each other for the conclusion of the first phase of the NSSP or next step in strategic partnership agreement. Later the Prime minister also met with the other members of the G-4 countries like Germany, Brazil and Argentina who are aspiring for permanent membership at the UN Security Council. He also met Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Attention now shifts to the Prime Minister's speech at the UN where he intends to make a strong bid for the expansion of the Security Council and the meeting between him and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Friday afternoon. As has been the practice over the last few years, the Indian side has timed the speech to follow that of President Musharraf who speaks on Wednesday.

Dr Singh and Bush met this morning over breakfast at the Presidential suite of the Waldorf Astoria and spent nearly an hour talking about a "broad canvass" of issues on bilateral relations.

Briefing media persons after the summit meeting, the Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, said that Dr Singh remarked that the "best days were yet to come" in the bilateral relationship as the potential has not been fully explored.
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Planning panel members protest presence of foreign consultants
New Delhi: Five members of Planning Commission have refused to accept foreign representation in Plan Committees. These five members of the Planning Commission Consultative Committees have written a letter to Montek Singh Ahulwalia in this regard.

The members are: Jayati Ghosh, TM Thomas Issac, Utsha Patnaik, Prabhat Patnaik and CP Chandrashekhar.
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ONGC lines up biggest ever seismic survey
Kolkata: ONGC has lined up the 'biggest-ever,' seismic survey exercise for the exploration of oil and hydrocarbons in the country in this fiscal. A prerequisite for carrying out the drilling operations, the survey in all probability will cross the budgeted Rs3,500 crore and will be participated in by 36 field parties and 13 survey vessels.

The Chairman and Managing Director of ONGC, Subir Raha, described the exercise as the "biggest ever data acquisition programme worldwide."

Having one offshore survey vessel with an on-board data processing facility, ONGC has decided to charter 12 more vessels. The offshore survey alone would cost the company over $200 million. The survey will be conducted using the latest 4D technology.

The exercise is being carried out as part of the company's initiative to find six billion tonnes of oil and gas reserves by 2020, in addition to its previous finds. ONGC is maintaining an annual positive reserves over-production since 2001. It had earlier identified two billion tonnes of recoverable reserves of which one billion tonnes of oil are already evacuated.

On the proposed drilling in the Sunderban offshore blocks, he said that the project was delayed owing to non-availability of a suitable rig. If current negotiations were successful, ONGC will start drilling the first well in early 2005.

The drilling operations in seven blocks in the Mahanadi basin would begin in late 2005, after completion of the ongoing seismic data acquisition programme.

ONGC is also negotiating for a $1-billion turnkey contract for the modernisation and revamping of a refinery in Sudan. The present capacity of the refinery is three million tonnes. It has proposed to carry out the order alone. ONGC has already won a project for construction of a gas pipeline in Sudan.
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ICICI Info consortium bags deal for tax information exchange system
New Delhi: With the States agreeing to share with each other basic information on sales tax that is available at their end, the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers on Value Added Tax (VAT) has awarded the contract for roll out of a National Tax Information Exchange System (TINXSYS) to a consortium led by ICICI Infotech Ltd.

The TINXSYS project would primarily facilitate information exchange between sales tax departments across the country and establish a database for all inter-State transactions. It would also provide a platform for dealers to verify the validity of registration numbers of counter-party dealers.

The project would be implemented on a build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) basis over a period of 5 years. It will cover all States and Union Territories and would be completed in two phases.

The first phase involves pilot implementations in seven States (West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Assam) over the next seven months.

The remaining States and Union Territories would be covered in the next nine months. The entire project is expected to go live in the next 16 months.

The contract to ICICI Infotech was awarded after a tendering process in which a TCS-led consortium and a Wipro-led consortium also participated. ICICI Infotech, have said that the value of the project would be between $5-7 million. Bharti, as a consortium partner, would provide networking component for the project.

The proposed system is to be built on an open architecture and therefore can be adjusted to factor in future decisions relating to implementation of VAT and phasing out of central sales tax.
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