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Assocham: India Inc CEOs disappointed with Mumbai's disaster management
New Delhi: A majority of India's top CEOs have blamed the unplanned and unchecked development of suburbs and the complete failure of the city's disaster management for the miseries inflicted by the floods in the country's financial capital in the last week of July.

An Assocham business barometer (ABB) survey of the country's leading CEOs, including those living in Mumbai, revealed that the India Inc was disappointed with the complete failure of disaster management in the metropolis.

A vast majority of 80% of the 150 corporate heads surveyed by the ABB also felt that the meteorological department could have saved much loss to the life and property if it had given timely warning.

As much as 90% of respondents highlighted the gaps in the infrastructure, which are growing in unplanned way in mega cities and are also taking the load of huge migration of unemployed labour force from smaller cities and rural areas.

The CEOs said there should be emphasis on the infrastructure, including sewerage, roads, electricity and communications systems in metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore.

Over 81% of the CEOs surveyed felt only a negligible part of the tax paid by the citizens in metropolis is invested in the development of cities.

Despite the sufferings, over 80% of them felt that Mumbai would not lose its prime position of being the financial capital. They said no other city has the kind of trading markets with modern technology; wide banking network; quality regulatory practices in the banking and stock markets; growing commodities futures markets; fair settlement systems; and availability of skilled English speaking workforce.

Although the local transport system, mainly the train network, in Mumbai has served the working population well, 70% of the company heads strongly felt that the city of this size and importance needs a modern system of ferrying people from their homes to workplaces.

An overwhelming 90% of the industry leaders warned that what happened to Mumbai last week could be repeated in other major cities as well.
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VSNL and Reliance amicably settle bandwidth issue
Mumbai: The Tata group company, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), in a letter on July 27, 2005, to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), has said that it had amicably settled the bandwidth issue with the Reliance group-owned Flag Telecom.

Reliance Infocomm had earlier complained to TRAI, stating that the Tata group company was restricting access on its Flag Europe Asia (FEA) cable, resulting in an artificial rise in bandwidth prices. On the other hand, VSNL had accused Reliance of overselling bandwidth on the cable system and creating a bandwidth shortage.

In a letter dated July 12, 2005, Reliance Infocomm had also accused VSNL of possessing "virtual monopoly" in submarine cable landing segment and had sought Trai to "adopt a ex-ante regulatory approach".

Reliance had acquired Flag Telecom, which has a landing station in Mumbai, on October 16, 2003. Incidentally, Flag's landing station in Mumbai is controlled by its archrival VSNL, under a construction and maintenance agreement signed earlier.

VSNL has stated that this was a commercial dispute and was resolved to the satisfaction of both the parties, and further that there was hardly any evidence of undue competition in the submarine cable system in India.
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Bharti likely to outsource BPO operation
New Delhi: In what can potentially be a mega outsourcing deal, the Bharti group is likely to sign a contract ranging between Rs900-1100 crore with four BPO companies in order to outsource its call centre operations for both its pre-paid and post-paid mobile services.

Bharti, according to company officials, is talking to various BPO companies out of which four, Nortell, Emphasis, Daksh and Teletech, are likely to be short-listed. Officials said the company will make an announcement shortly.

The outsourcing deal comes close on the heels of Bharti signing a network management deal with Swedish equipment supplier Ericsson for US$250mn in June.

Bharti Televentures, the services arm of Bharti group, last year had entered into a mega deal with IBM for outsourcing its IT operations, including hardware, software, services and data warehousing among others in a US$750mn contract for ten years.

The current deal is likely to run close to Rs1,000 crore.

Bharti is the largest GSM cellular operator in the country and has a subscriber base of over 12 million.

The company had earlier outsourced its network management to Ericsson for managing and maintaining its GSM network.
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Tata Tele launches pocket PC phone
Calcutta: Tata Teleservices (TTSL) has launched the Ego, a pocket PC phone, which will allow its user to work on Word and Excel, download mail and streaming video clips, browse the net and chat with friends.

According to TTSL officials, Ego has a 128 MB random access memory and allows users to log on to the net at a speed of 156 kbps. The product runs on Microsoft Pocket PC Edition 2003, which makes running Outlook Express or Internet Explorer simple. Ego also has an in-built camera and flash along with photo-editing features.

Being bluetooth and infrared-enabled, it is easy to download data from other phones as well as PCs, officials said.

The phone is priced at Rs32,990 and has been sourced from Taiwanese company HTC. It is also the first offering from a CDMA operator.

TTSL is also promoting another enterprise product - VData cards that will allow the user to stay connected to the Internet through a laptop at 156 kbps across 1500 towns in the circles where the company offers services.
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Tata's dub BSNL's demand for ADC as illegal
New Delhi: In a written submission to TDSAT, Tata Teleservices has asserted that its fixed wireless service "Walky" was not only legal but actually the state-run telecom major BSNL's demand for a levy known as access deficit charge (ADC), was illegal.

"BSNL wishes to collect ADC charges, which are neither due nor payable, but is an illegal demand. The attempt by the BSNL to collect such charges is an endeavour to destroy the market of (Tatas)," the company said in its written submission at the TDSAT which has reserved the judgement on the same.

Tatas submitted that in case such charges were payable to BSNL, then the company would be left with no option but to increase the tariff.

"A Fixed-to-Fixed FWP local call is charged at Rs1.20 for 3 minutes. This means 40 paise a minute. Out of this, 30 paise per minute is paid to BSNL as terminating charge for local calls," leaving the company with only 10 paise a minute as remuneration, the company has submitted

On the other hand, if this FWP is treated as WLL(M), then additional levy of 30 paise per minute would have to be paid to BSNL on these calls, whereas the company would not be charging any money from the consumer.

Thus, Tatas would have to end up paying BSNL 60 paise a minute against the 40 paise per minute.
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CBI case in Centaur sale this week
New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has confirmed that it has received the first set of files and documents in the Centaur privatisation case and is likely to register a regular case this week.

The finance ministry submitted two sets of papers relating to the case in the middle and end of July and a note asking the agency to probe the deal, which had earlier come under attack from the Congress and the Left partiesm, when they were part of the opposition.

Former disinvestment minister Arun Shourie, who signed the deal, has steadfastly defended it, has already made it clear that he is prepared to face the CBI probe "anywhere and anytime".

The entire set of the documents along with the notings has been sent to the directorate of prosecution of the agency for its opinion.

The CBI received a communication from the Union government last month to probe the sale of two hotels at the airport and Juhu in Mumbai executed by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 2002.

The files submitted to the CBI also contain the notings of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, which had said sale of two Centaur hotels took place without the benefit of competition and valuation and reserve prices in these transactions were not consistent with the practice followed by the disinvestment ministry in other cases.

According to CBI sources, the files said the expressions of interest were received in October 2000 from 20 parties for Juhu Centaur and 21 parties for Airport Centaur. In case of Juhu Centaur, three parties were disqualified, 16 withdrew leaving a solitary bidder, Tulip Hospitality Services Private Ltd, in the fray.

In case of Airport Centaur, four were disqualified, 13 withdrew and the remaining four carried out due diligence exercise. But only one bidder, Batra Hospitality Private Ltd, submitted the financial bid.

Juhu Centaur was sold in March 2002 for Rs 153 crore. Airport Centaur was sold in April 2002 for Rs 83 crore. While in the case of Airport Centaur, the audit noted inconsistency in fixing the reserve price, in Juhu Centaur, the audit noted certain inconsistencies in relaxations/deviations that were offered to the sole bidder, sources said. They also said the scrutiny of the financial strength of the bidder for the Juhu Centaur was "inadequate".

Accepting the financial bid without a clear indication of source of funds necessary to finance the deal was against the prescribed requirements of the financial bid package, they said citing the files submitted to the agency.

Referring to the CAG's observations, sources said the report also mentioned that the bidder was granted repeated extensions to deposit the entire purchase consideration and to execute the sell and escrow agreement by 22 December, 2001.

The ministry also did not encash the bank guarantee submitted by the bidder despite breach of terms and conditions time and again.
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Toyota conducting feasibility study for entry into the small car segment
Kolkata: Leading Japanese automobile company Toyota is keen to enter the small car segment in the country, now dominated by Suzuki and Hyundai, and is currently carrying out a feasibility study. Toyota already produces small cars like Vios, Platz and Passo for the Japanese market.

According to T Ino, director (marketing) of Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd, Toyota Kirloskar would break even in the current year, and expects all its accumulated losses to be wiped out during 2005 itself. Ino also said that the company would invest around Rs130 crore during the current year to enhance efficiency.

Toyota would also enhance the production capacity at its existing plant near Bangalore. Ino also said that the company sold 36,000 units of Qualis, 10,000 Corollas and 1000 units of Camry last year.

In the current year, the company expects to clock 40,000 units of Innova, 10,000 units of Corolla and 1000 units of Camry.

The company had recently withdrawn Qualis from the Indian market and replaced it with the Innova.

Corolla's global sales had increased by 10% to 1.2 million units in 2004, he said claiming that it was the largest selling car in the executive segment in India.
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NMDC pays Rs.99 crore dividend to Centre for 2004-05
New Delhi: The National Mineral Development Corporation Ltd (NMDC) has paid a dividend of Rs98.81 crore to the Central Government for 2004-05.

The chairman and managing director of NMDC, B. Ramesh Kumar, handed over the dividend cheque to the Union Minister of Steel, Chemicals and Fertilisers, Ram Vilas Paswan.

An official release also said that Mr Ramesh Kumar also gave a presentation on the expansion plan for NDMC. He informed the Minister that NDMC proposes to increase the iron ore production from 20.74 million tonnes per annum to 50 mt by 2020 by increasing production from existing mines and opening new mines to meet growing demand.
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Hutch launches HutchMail
Bangalore: Hutch has announced the launch of HutchMail, an affordable GPRS-based solution that allows executives real-time access to their office mails on their Hutch phones and which can be deployed across all levels of a corporate organisation.

The handset-independent HutchMail service makes the concept of the `Wireless Worker' a reality for Indian executives by significantly reducing the cost of such a service.

HutchMail users can now use their Hutch phones to access mails from Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes.

HutchMail is available for phones including the Nokia 60 & 80 series, Sony Ericsson, Windows Pocket PC and Windows smartphones.
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