Ratan Tata criticizes Indian inability to set higher standards
Kolkota: Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons, reflecting on the Indian manufacturing industry, has said, "We do not set ourselves higher standards, we do not think big enough and we do not seem to plan to be global leaders."

He said that it was only in the last few years that this mentality was changing. He was addressing a plenary session on 'Competitiveness: Leveraging India's skill advantage' at the 11th Partnership Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry in Kolkata.

He suggested five steps which would help Indian industry take a global leadership in manufacturing:

• Set high targets;
  
• Develop new products;
  
• Take necessary risks;
  
• Stand by one another; and
  
• Set the task of leading and not following.

The CII has pointed out that for the Indian economy to grow at eight per cent, the manufacturing sector would have to clock double-digit growth in the coming years.

CII says that in order to achieve the desired growth, it would be critical to raise the investment levels — both from domestic and foreign sources. The industry body said that to raise investment rates, it is essential to convert government's revenue deficit into a surplus, as this would add to the domestic savings and keep the cost of capital at internationally competitive levels.

CII has also emphasised on doubling of the direct tax net by March 2007, by including agricultural incomes and greater coverage of professionals and self-employed. Meanwhile, the CII has said that it is imperative to rationalise the indirect tax structure and greater reliance must be placed on growth rather than rates, to improve tax revenues.

CII has also suggested the announcement of a roadmap for achieving duty rates of 5 per cent, 8 per cent and 10 per cent as recommended by FRBM task force. For improving the investment climate, CII has said that the focus should be on removing infrastructure bottlenecks and facilitating the entry and exit conditions. On direct taxes, CII has said that corporate tax should be reduced to 30 per cent from the existing rate of 35 per cent in line with the recommendations of the Kelkar Task Force and the surcharge of 2.5 per cent be removed.

CII has further stated that all existing exemptions granted under the Income Tax Act 1961, be reviewed by a task force comprising of government and industry representation. Until the report of the task force is received, existing exemptions be grandfathered and new ones should not be added.
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Tata Steel seeks long-term dollar loan from IFC
Kolkata: Tata Steel has approached the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for funding a major portion of its expansion plan through a long-term dollar loan.

The company has informed the IFC that Tata Steel's strategy is to drive growth and globalisation by maximising the potential of its existing operations; and enhancing value creation by making semi-finished products (slabs/billets) - primarily in India, where raw materials are available and factors of production are competitive - and then finishing them at locations, including outside India, where customers and markets currently exist or will grow in future.

In order to achieve its strategy, Tisco proposes to implement a major investment program and has approached IFC for providing funding in the form of long term dollar loans.

The proposed program involves a capacity expansion at existing operations in Jamshedpur by replacing older production units, and the acquisition of NatSteel - a Singapore headquartered steel company with operations in Singapore, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Australia.

The company has approached Tata Steel for funding a major portion of its expansion plans lined up for the next few years. It also aims to grow into a 10 million tonne company by end of the decade mostly through acquisitions. Tata Steel board recently approved a proposal to raise long-term resources to the tune of Rs5,000 crore for funding the company's growth projects.

Tata Steel was also looking at the possibility of acquiring mining lease in Australia. This would allow the company to import coking coal at reasonable cost into the country against a scenario where international prices of coke were sky-rocketing.
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Man Industries bags Rs.542 crore order
Mumbai: Man Industries (India) Ltd has bagged a Rs542 crore order from the Middle East for manufacturing of line pipes for high pressure oil and gas applications. The order is the single largest order for longitudinal pipes in the country.

The company would manufacture around 130-140 kms of coated line pipes for a government institute in the Middle East.
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Show cause notices to Hutch and BPL on audited accounts
New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday issued show-cause notices to Hutchison, BPL and Shyam Telelink for not submitting separate audited accounts.

The telecom regulator had asked all telecom service providers to submit accounts for each stream of their company's business by December 31, 2004.

While most operators have stuck to the deadline, the telecom regulator have asked the three companies and few other value-added service providers who have not done so to explain by January 28 as to why action should not be taken against them.

The objective of accounting separation is to identify cross-subsidisation practices, investigate cases of predatory pricing and other anti-competitive practices. The private cellular operators, for instance, had alleged that Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) was using revenues from the long distance services to subsidise its mobile tariffs. Accounting separation will also provide data to the regulator to determine cost-based tariffs, which in turn will be used in determining controversial aspects such as the access deficit charges (ADC) and other usage charges based on cost of providing a service.

The TRAI said that large integrated players like such as Reliance Infocomm, BSNL and Bharti, for whom the accounting separation was more relevant, have submitted the reports.
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Reliance Info to 'revolutionise' rural telephony
Mumbai: Reliance Infocomm has said that it has embarked on an expansion programme that will reach out to four lakh villages across the country by year-end, and bring about "a new revolution in rural telephony."

Two out of three villages will be covered with voice and data access through the network in one of the fastest ever network rollout operations in the world, that would be accessible to 65 crore Indians, said a statement from the company.

The company's 80,000 km of terabit optical fibre cable network forms the backbone of its countrywide expansion, which will facilitate unlimited and uninterrupted voice, data and video applications.

This expansion involving 8,500 BTS (base transceiver station) towers will also cover 91 per cent of the country's national highways and 85 per cent of the rail routes. Eventually, the company's footprint will cover the entire inhabited area of the country. This initiative is expected to increase India's teledensity to 10 per cent by the end of the year, ahead of the national target, said the release.

As on December 31, 2004, Reliance Infocomm's subscriber base across its 20 circles stood at 10,298,208, according to the Association of Unified telecom Providers of India (AUSPI).
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ICRA into technical and training pact with Turkish rating agency
New Delhi: Credit rating agency ICRA Ltd has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Turkey-based First Turkish Credit Rating Agency (FTCRA). ICRA would provide training and technical assistance to FTCRA, a one-month-old company. ICRA would also assist FTCRA prepare its credit rating manual.

According to ICRA, "The entry into Turkey once again underscores ICRA's ability to think beyond borders. The MoU with FTCRA is important not only because it gives ICRA an offshore presence, but also because it highlights the growing international acceptance of the expertise that our country has built up in the area of credit rating within the relatively short span of 14 years or so."

Initially, the MoU is for a period of six months and depending on the progress made during the first six months, a full-fledged agreement would be signed after six months.
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Tsunami: Murugappa group offers technological uplift to fishermen
Chennai: The A.M.M. Foundation of the Murugappa group, which has spent more than Rs2.5 crore towards tsunami relief, is offering fishermen technology to build synthetic catamarans, and other technologies developed by the Sri A.M.M. Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre (MCRC).

M.V. Murugappan, MCRC's chairman and managing trustee of the foundation, has said that the catamaran built with HDPE pipes is cheaper and easier to build than the traditional wooden catamarans. It is a tried and tested technology, and a team from MCRC launched a HDPE catamaran on Sunday at Injambakkam, near Chennai. The MCRC will also teaching fishermen the technology to build these catamarans at various locations, he said.
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Premier Auto unveils two-tonner pick-up vehicle
Hyderabad: Premier Automobiles Ltd has announced the roll-out of the Roadstar, a two-tonner pick-up targeting the light commercial vehicle segment. In a statement the company has said that this two-litre diesel engine powered vehicle is fuel-efficient and is ideal for inter-city transport of goods.

This serves as an ideal alternative for LCV developed in partnership with China Motor Corporation and ROC-Taiwan, an affiliate of Mitsubishi Corporation.

These pick-ups would be rolled out of the company's Chinchwad, Pune facility, which has an assembly line of 10,000 units per annum. The company is in the process of expanding its dealer network phase-wise.

In the first phase, the company is establishing a network in the western and southern region to be followed by northern and eastern regions," according to Mr Akolkar.
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CommVault sets up R&D centre at Hyderabad
Hyderabad: Commvault Systems, a provider of Unified Data Management solutions, has announced setting up of its R&D centre in Hyderabad, its first outside the US. The company, with $100 million in revenues, plans to invest in human capital, Indian infrastructure and is targeting the business in the region.

The Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of CommVault, Alan G. Bunte, has said that the company budgets about $12-13 million a year for R&D and this centre is of strategic importance for the company.

The company plans to make one major release every year. Over next two years, CommVault plans to make Hyderabad its Asia-Pacific market hub, with the region emerging as one of the fastest growing markets.
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Pfizer and Cognizant in multi-year deal
Mumbai/Chennai: Pfizer Global Research and Development (PGRD) and IT service provider Cognizant Technology Solutions have inked a multi-year deal for business process outsourcing solutions in clinical data management and biometrics.

The deal between PGRD's Indian affiliate and Chennai-based Cognizant allows Pfizer to leverage the IT services pool, capturing the "cost-productivity" advantage that India offers, a Pfizer communiqué issued here today said.

Pfizer India Biometrics Division has already been providing data capture, data management, statistics and programming services for its parent's Phase I, II, III global trials for seven years. Cognizant will be supplementing these efforts.

However, while Pfizer's biometrics division provides services to the company's global research and development locations, Cognizant's partnership will support the development operations group of PGRD in India, Pfizer officials said. Initially, the job would be done out of Pfizer premises and subsequently moved to Cognizant's new facility in Mumbai. This would mean that, in about six months' time, the Mumbai location would become Cognizant's sixth across India.

According to a spokesperson for Cognizant, the outfit would have about 90 people initially.
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Corporate Results
L&T Q3 net up 29 per cent
Mumbai: Engineering and construction giant Larsen & Toubro today posted a 29 per cent jump in its third quarter net profit. The company's net profit has surged to Rs132 crore for the third quarter ended December 31, 2004 compared to Rs101.80 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.

The company's third quarter sales have gone up by 36 per cent to Rs3230 crore in October-December from Rs2375 crore in the Q3 of the previous year. Net profit for the nine months ended December 31, 2004 rose to Rs650.17 crore as compared to Rs246.59 crore in the corresponding period last year.

Net sales of the company during the nine-month period were reported at Rs 8834.53 crore as against Rs 6035.69 crore in the corresponding period of last fiscal. Engineering and Construction (E&C) segment of the company reported order booking of Rs3161 crore for the quarter. The total order booking for the nine-month period aggregated to Rs7853 crore.

L&T's other income in Q3 is at Rs83.5 crore compared to Rs43.4 crore in Q3 of 2003-04.

The company's Q3 EPS is at Rs8.68, up from an EPS of Rs7.29 in the December ending quarter of 2003.

Maruti Q3 net up 70 per cent
New Delhi: Maruti has posted impressive third quarter results, with its net profit in the October-December period surging ahead by 70 per cent to Rs239 crore from Rs140 crore in the corresponding period of 2003-04.

India's largest carmaker has registered other income at Rs127 crore in Q3 compared to Rs107 crore in the same period in the previous year. Maruti's sales in the December ending quarter touched Rs2875 crore from Rs2268 crore in the third quarter of 2003-04.

The company's Q3 EPS stood at Rs8.3 compared to an EPS of Rs4.87 in the same period a year ago.

M&M Q3 net jumps 53 per cent
Mumbai: Utility vehicle and tractor maker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has posted a 53 per cent jump in net profit for the third quarter.

The company's net profit for the quarter ending December 31, 2004 soared to Rs131.18 crore compared to Rs87.41 crore for the corresponding period last fiscal.

M&M third quarter sales rose by 33 per cent to Rs1772 crore from Rs1327 crore in the October-December quarter of 2003-04.

The company's EPS in the period under review was Rs 11.48.

MRPL Q3 net surges 628 per cent
New Delhi: Aided by high refining margins and better capacity utilization, Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) today reported a huge jump of 628 per cent in its third quarter net profit.

The company's net profit for the October-December quarter rose to Rs288.39 crore from Rs39.64 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal. MRPL's total income increased by 56.23 per cent to Rs5032.89 crore for the third quarter from Rs3221.43 crore in Q3 of 2003-04.

The refinery achieved a throughput of 3.023 Million Metric Tonnes (MMT), achieving capacity utilisation of 125 per cent over 110 per cent during the corresponding period last fiscal. Export sales were up 13 per cent at Rs2,017 crore over Rs1,783 crore in the same period of 2003-04.

During the nine months ended December 31, 2004, the net profit stood at Rs569 crore as against a loss of Rs92 crore while net sales rose to Rs.13,371.69 crore (Rs 7,810.23 crore).

Realisation of product exports during the nine-month period was up by 33 per cent at Rs4,375 crore over Rs3,281 crore in the same period of last fiscal.

Kochi Refineries Q3 net up 163 percent
New Delhi: Kochi Refineries Ltd has recorded a 163.17 per cent increase in its net profit for the third quarter. The oil PSU major's net profit soared to Rs288.7 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2004 compared to Rs109.7 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

The total income rose 46.69 per cent to Rs3602.9 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2004 against Rs2456.1 crore during the same period the previous year.

Radico Khaitan Q3 net up 60 per cent
New Delhi: Liquor major Radico Khaitan has reported a 60 per cent jump in net profit in the third quarter of this fiscal. Profit after tax stood at Rs10.95 crore during October-December 2004 over Rs6.85 crore during the year ago period, a company statement said.

The company had recently expanded its range by launching '8 PM Bermuda' white rum.

Century Textiles Q3 net up 254 per cent
Mumbai: Century Textiles and Industries Ltd has reported a 254 per cent rise in its net profit for the third quarter. The company's net profit for the quarter ended December 31, 2004 soared to Rs31.86 crore as against Rs9 crore in the corresponding period of the last fiscal.

Net sales during the reporting quarter were up at Rs649.19 crore as against Rs549.77 crore in the same period of 2003-04.

Net profit for the nine months ended December 31, 2004 rose to Rs69.99 crore as compared to Rs34.21 crore while net sales rose to Rs1,844.50 crore (Rs1,616.26 crore).
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