Fortune Global Forum holding special forum on India
Beijing: The prestigious Fortune Global Forum 2005, opening today with top executives of firms from across the world in attendance, will be holding a special session on India for the first time since its inception in 1995.

The Fortune Global Forum, to be held from May 16-18 will hold a panel discussion on India, themed 'India: The Other Emerging Powerhouse,' to be led by Infosys CEO Nandan Neilekani.

The theme at this year's meet is "China and New Asian Century." Chinese President Hu Jintao will deliver the forum's opening address at a Gala Dinner on Monday.

Besides Nilekani, the panel discussion on India would be addressed by Prannoy Roy, Editor-in-Chief, NDTV, Lakshmi Narayanan, CEO Cognizant Technology Solutions as also Michael Patsalos-Fox, Chairman, Americas Region, McKinsey & Company. Other leading Indian businessmen scheduled to attend the meeting include A M Naik, chairman of L&T.

Fortune Global Forum is an annual meet for world economic magnates to discuss issues that global businesses face.
Back to News Review index page  

Reliance to raise Jamnagar refinery capacity
New Delhi: Reliance Industries Ltd, India's largest private sector firm, intends to raise the capacity of its Jamnagar oil refinery to 60 million tonnes per annum by 2009, in a move that may involve an investment of up to Rs15,000 crore.

Company officials said that they are looking at various options. Reliance is talking to Bechtel, the engineering, procurement and construction contractor which had built the Jamnagar refinery in 1990s.

Jamnagar refinery is India's largest oil refinery and after the capacity expansion Reliance would become the country's largest refiner surpassing state-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC).

It is also the only refinery in the country, which is able to process a wide variety of crudes - from very light to very heavy (from 18 to 45 degree API) and from sweet to very heavy (with sulphur content from 0 to 4.5 percent).
Back to News Review index page  

Air India resumes services to Canada
New Delhi: Air India has resumed air services between India and Canada. The new flight being flown by the newest jet in Air India's inventory, a Boeing 777, flies on the Delhi-Amritsar-Birmingham route onto Toronto.

The fight route targets the large Punjabi diaspora across three continents.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel has also announced a direct service between Kolkata and London and a flight between Amritsar and Dubai.

"There are many big cities and regions which are not yet internationally connected. Air India is the national carrier and it should not just operate out of Mumbai or Delhi but should also reach out to the major cities. This is our endeavour," said Patel.
Back to News Review index page  

Vestas eyes Rs1,000 crore revenue in FY-06
New Delhi: Riding on a 100 per cent growth in revenue last year to over Rs500 crore, wind energy company Vestas RRB India has said it will invest Rs30 crore in its manufacturing capacity in Chennai in order to target Rs2,000 crore revenues for the next fiscal.

"We expect to double revenues this fiscal to Rs1,000 crore compared to over Rs500 crore in 2004-05. In the next fiscal also, we expect to grow at 100 per cent in turnover," Vestas RRB India Managing Director Rakesh Bakshi said.

The company, an Indo-Danish joint venture, manufactures wind energy generators and control panels at its Chennai facility and will be investing Rs30 crore this fiscal to expand the facility for making wind farm blades. The investment would be met through internal accruals, Bakshi said.

In line with the rapid growth of the country's wind energy sector, which grew over 41 percent in 2004 in terms of capacity addition, the company has also been experiencing exponential growth for the last two years.

In 2004, India added 875 MW capacity to emerge as one of the world's fastest growing wind energy producers. It has a total installed capacity of about 3,000 MW and is all set to replace Denmark, which has installed capacity of 3,117 MW, to become the fourth largest player in wind energy.
Back to News Review index page  

Hyundai to make India export base for Getz
Seoul: Riding high on the success of its small car Santro, Korean car major Hyundai has planned to develop India as a production and export base for its recently launched premium compact car `Getz'. Hyundai has been exporting mostly 'Santro' and mid-size 'Accent' cars till now.

The company has been manufacturing about 1500 units of the Getz monthly. If it decides to make India an export hub, the production capacity could be increased to 50,000 annually, he added.

Hyundai India, which is targeting the one million mark in car sales in the Indian market by March 2006, has lined up investments to the tune of 700 million dollars to increase production capacity at its plant near Chennai to 400,000 units annually from the current level of 250,000 units.
Back to News Review index page  

GAIL enhances customer service with Gas Management System
New Delhi: State-owned gas utility GAIL (India) Ltd has implemented an innovative 'Gas Management System' to simplify gas transportation and distribution.

"The web-enabled system ensures better co-ordination and total transparency and thus is a step towards advanced customer service," GAIL said in a press release here. GMS facilitates smooth handling of different streams of natural gas from multiple supply sources pumped into the pipeline systems for delivery to multiple end users.

GMS has been implemented on Hazira-Vijaipur-Jagdishpur (HVJ) pipeline, Dahej-Vijaipur pipeline, South Gujarat, North Gujarat, Mumbai, KG Basin, Cauvery Basin, Agartala, Lakwa and Rajasthan pipeline networks.

GAIL transmits 80 million standard cubic meters per day of gas through a 5400-km pipeline network.

GMS creates a common platform by integrating multiple players - the suppliers (ONGC, Petronet LNG, Panna/Mukta Tapti joint venture, Cairn Energy and Oil India), shippers (IOC and BPCL), customers (power, fertilizer plants and other industries) and transporter (GAIL).

The system facilitates in contract management, long term gas scheduling, nominations between buyers and sellers, gas allocation and delivery to customers from multiple shippers.

"Facilitating gas reconciliation in interconnected and independent pipeline networks, the system has interface with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems to get daily gas sale and gas purchase data," the release said.
Back to News Review index page