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Major quake rocks Nicobar Islands
Chennai: A major earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale rocked the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and parts of coastal south India at 9.12 p.m. on Sunday. There were no reports of loss of life or damage to property.

According to the Indian Meteorological Department, the epicentre of the earthquake was in the seabed 420 km south of Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The United States Geological Survey, which measured the earthquake as 7.0 on the Richter scale, said it was located at a depth of 10 km.

In the Nicobar group of islands, people felt the tremor for about 15 seconds. However, there was no rise in the sea level, which is an indicator of a tsunami. In New Delhi, science and technology minister Kapil Sibal said the current situation did not justify a tsunami warning. "There is nothing to worry about at the moment. We are keeping a vigil and there is no rise in the sea to suggest a tsunami is waiting to hit. There should be no panic," he said. But the Disaster Management Control room has been activated and it will remain in touch with authorities in the islands and in Tamil Nadu.

The tremors have come in the wake of unusually high tides in the last two days, which submerged many low-lying areas in the islands.

In Sri Lanka, the tremors were felt in Colombo and some other districts including Kandy and Matale. Aceh province in Indonesia too felt the impact of the quake.

Sunday's quake was the third hitting the Andamans this month. On July 2, a magnitude 5.1 quake hit North Andaman and 11 days later, another quake of 5.5 struck a region off the west coast of Little Andaman.
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PMO gives ONGC's Mangalore plan decisive push
New Delhi: The Prime Minister's Office has stepped into the tug-of -war between the Karnataka Govt. and the oil ministry on the State Govt.'s side and asked the ministry to allow state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation to implement its Rs25,000-crore plan, which envisages the oil major becoming a fully integrated energy company.

For Karnataka it means that ONGC can now go ahead and set up a LNG (liquefied natural gas), petrochemicals and electricity generation facilities at Mangalore.

ONGC had signed an MoU with the Karnataka government last year for these projects but was unable to proceed in the face of opposition from the parent oil ministry. The oil ministry did not approve of chairman Subir Raha's "Well to Wire" vision of turning the company into an integrated energy major and viewed these projects as a deviation from ONGC's core competence of exploration.

After several rounds of review meetings with officials from the oil ministry, ONGC and Karnataka, the PMO cleared the project last fortnight, even as parties across the political spectrum in the state were criticising the delay in implementing the project.

ONGC plans to spend Rs5,000 crore on an LNG terminal for the import and re-gasification of 10 million tonnes of gas, Rs1,100 crore on a gas processing plant, Rs9,000 crore on a petrochemicals complex and Rs4,624 crore on a 1,445 mw power plant besides Rs2,000 crore on pipelines.

The PMO has ordered that ONGC implement these projects through its subsidiary Mangalore Refinery and Petrocemicals Ltd (MRPL) and restrict itself to contracting LNG imports and providing finance and guarantees.

Also approved was ONGC's plan to become Karnataka's co-promoter for the proposed Mangalore Special Economic Zone.

ONGC has also been given the freedom to float wholly-owned subsidiaries for petrochemicals and power project. It could also float equity in market and/or to non-competing technology partners, retaining a minimum 26% equity and management control.
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India may unlock FDI channels in a broad spectrum of service areas
New Delhi: India is set to unlock FDI channels multilaterally, along the lines of the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (Ceca), with a note to the Cabinet by the commerce and industry ministry proposing that autonomous regimes be bound in a broad spectrum of service areas.

This grand offer under Mode 4 (commercial presence) is designed to coax the QUAD countries (US, EU, Japan and Canada) to react to India's requests in Mode 4 (movement of persons) appropriately, commerce and industry ministry officials have indicated. In the revised offer India would bind FDI in telecom services at 49% instead of the autonomous level of 74%, and that in banking and insurance at 49% and 26% respectively.

This apart, FDI at 51% would be bound in townships, housing, built-up infrastructure and construction development projects. Recently, 100% FDI was allowed in construction and townships, subject to certain conditions.

"Whatever service areas we had opened up for Singapore, will be offered multilaterally under the WTO," said the official. If this proposal materialises, Singapore's advantageous access to Indian services sector would exist for just two years, that is until the WTO services pact under the Doha Round becomes effective January 2007.
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China offers technological upgrades towards settling silk row with India
New Delhi: China has expressed its willingness to transfer the technology for producing superior quality silk, provided India withdraws anti-dumping cases against Chinese silk imports worth USD1.5bn.

Transfer of technology may open up joint ventures (JVs) between Indian and Chinese firms and resolve the issue of dumping permanently. Senior Chinese officials have recently met several top officials in New Delhi, explaining their viewpoint.

India is one of the major markets for Chinese silk exports. In May this year, India had initiated an anti-dumping investigation against Chinese silk fabric imports. This is the second anti-dumping case against Chinese silk. Earlier, an anti-dumping duty was imposed on the Chinese raw silk.

According to Chinese officials Indians use Chinese silk fabric to make value-added garments for both domestic consumption as well as exports. They say that anti-dumping duty on Chinese silk would only harm India's own silk exports.

A Chinese delegation, currently in the country to dispel doubts, has said that it will meet the Central Silk Board and other petitioners who have filed the dumping case against China. They said that they will discuss the issue with the petitioners and also offer their help in strengthening the silk industry through deploying better technology in raw silk production.

India exports silk products worth Rs3,000 crore, besides having a huge domestic market.
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FICCI study: India yet to exploit full potential in textile exports to US
New Delhi: A Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) study notes that though dismantling of the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA) quotas has opened a window of opportunity for countries such as India and China with their low cost and diversified textile production base, India is yet to exploit its full potential.

While there existed a substantial gap in exports from India and China to the US in the top eight segments of US textiles and apparel imports during January-April 2004, the study reveals that post-MFA, this difference has further accentuated in favour of China.

For example, in `women's/girl's other outerwear' segment, the lead of $528 million which China enjoyed over India during January-April 2004 increased to $983 million during January-April 2005.
According to the study, any substantial push into the US market would require India to increase its share in the apparel and accessories segment.

The study also finds that while China's textile exports to US have zoomed post-MFA, India has just managed to cling on to its share. In the first four months post-MFA, US imports of textiles and apparel were worth $29.4 billion and represented a 10.2 per cent increase over the January-April 2004 value of $26.7 billion.

While China grabbed the opportunity and increased its exports from $4893 million to $7421 million, a growth of nearly 52 per cent, India's exports to the US registered a growth of 27 per cent rising from $1379 million to $1746 million during the same period.
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Delhi, Mumbai air traffic headed for higher volumes
New Delhi: Aviation authorities are taking a fresh look at air traffic management and considering several steps to beef up flight operations across the country.

The steps being considered include spreading of flights throughout the day to get rid of the present clogging during morning and evening hours and fixing hourly slots for operations of smaller aircraft like turbo-props as they take longer time to clear the runway during take-offs and landings.

The steps are being taken with the launch of several new domestic airlines. While the Mumbai and Delhi airports can each currently allow 20 to 25 flights an hour with a peak of about 30, several international airports with single runway operations can handle as many as 60 flights.

Mumbai airport handles 526 flights a day that is about 21 an hour. Keeping this in mind, the Airports Authority of India has appointed an international consultant to firm up fresh airport traffic procedures or re-design them to enable these two airports to handle greater volume of traffic, official sources said.

Committee headed by former civil aviation secretary K Roy Paul has also submitted some recommendations on these issues, the sources said. The civil aviation ministry has started the process of recruiting about 100 air traffic controllers and working on bringing in sophisticated CNS-ATM (navigation and air traffic management) systems.
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NABARD proposes restructuring of long-term credit for co-operatives
New Delhi: NABARD has proposed a major restructuring of the long-term credit structure of cooperatives in order to make them viable and boost farm credit. The nodal bank for farm credit has expressed concern over the mounting non-performing assets of cooperatives.

NABARD Chairperson Ranjana Kumar has said the revamp of cooperatives was essential for the country to push up agriculture growth to four per cent annually from the present 1.5 per cent.

"The mounting NPAs have become a bane of long term cooperative credit structure," she said. "While across the banking structure, NPAs are showing a declining trend, State and primary cooperatives are moving in the reverse direction," Kumar said.

Gross NPAs at State Cooperative Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (SCARDBs) level increased from 18.8 per cent during 1999-2000 to 26.6 per cent in 2003-04 against the tolerable limit of five per cent. NPAs in Orissa, Bihar, Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Tripura SCARDBs have exceeded more than 50 per cent of their loans outstanding, she said.

Similarly, gross NPAs in Primary Cooperative Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (PCARDBs) rose from 21.9 per cent in 1999-2000 to 34.1 per cent in 2003-04. In states like Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu NPAs at PCARDB level were more than 50 per cent of loan outstanding. SCARDBs in Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh had shown a negtive growth in loans issued during 2003-04.

Kumar said the second report of Vaidyanathan Committee on revamping of rural cooperative credit system would be submitted next month. The report would focus on restructuring of long term cooperative loans. She said the restructuring issue of short-term cooperative loans was comprehensively covered by the first report of the Committee submitted earlier this year.

The restructuring issue of long term cooperative finances is an important issue for NABARD as ARDBs accounts for nearly 45 per cent of the organisation's refinance for investment credit.
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