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Assocham study: India Inc. wants deadline extension on Clause 49
New Delhi: An Assocham (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry) Business Barometer Survey of 200 CEOs and managing directors (MDs) in the country, found that eighty five per cent of them favoured a deadline extension from December 31, 2005 to March 31, 2006 for appointing independent directors in listed companies.

According to the survey, these top officials said that their companies need at least another 3-4 months to appoint competent and experienced independent directors.

A majority of 55 per cent of the top CEOs said that only the ministry of company affairs should decide the number of independent directors in the board of listed companies. The CEOs and MDs said that since independent directors are representative of the shareholders, they should also be made responsible for the acts of omission and commission of the management.
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EGoM differs decision on airport privatisation plan
New Delhi: An empowered group of ministers (EGoM) has deferred a decision on choosing opting for the best technical bid for privatisation of the Delhi and Mumbai airports, in the face of dissenting opinions within the group. A decision had been expected today.

It would appear that Gajendra Haldea, the Planning Commission's representative in an inter-ministerial group, which met last week and gave its recommendations to the EGoM, submitted a dissent note calling for cancellation of all bids and fresh bidding. It would appear that Haldea has also recommended that a jury should be appointed for re-evaluation of bids.

Taking note of the differences within the inter-ministerial group, the EGoM gave it two weeks to resolve the matter. The current session of Parliament ends in two weeks.

Meanwhile, Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP Dipankar Mukherjee has urged prime minister Manmohan Singh to immediately stop the privatisation of airports. The MP said that the bidding and evaluation process was "inordinately delaying" the airports modernisation project.

Striking a assured pose, civil aviation minister Praful Patel told reporters after the EGoM's meeting here that the process of choosing the winning bids to execute the projects would be concluded by December 31. He also said that there would be no relaxation of the conditions laid down in the "request for proposal" document, and that the report of the global technical adviser, Air Plan of Australia, would form the basis of the EGoM's decision.

The civil aviation ministry has shortlisted six consortia -- those led by Reliance, the Sterlite group, GMR, GVK, the Essel group and DS Construction -- for technical evaluation. Originally, nine consortia had shown interest in the project. Three -- the Bharti group, DLF and L&T-Pirmal -- later dropped out of the race.
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Central Silk Board misses 10th Plan target
Bangalore: With the Central Silk Board (CSB), the apex body of the Indian silk industry, failing to achieve the bivoltine silk production target set for the tenth plan, imports of silk yarn and fabrics from China are likely to be on an upswing in the foreseeable future.

To meet its total demand of 25,000 tonnes of silk, India imports nearly 9,000 tonnes silk from other countries, China in particular.

In a bid to reduce Chinese imports and increase domestic output of superior quality bivoltine silk, CSB has launched phase III of the bivoltine sericulture project jointly with Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) and Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu governments in 2002.

CSB's efforts were to raise annual bivoltine silk production to 6,500 tonnes by the end of tenth plan in 2007 from 833 tonnes in 2002. But by 2004, CSB has achieved maximum production of 900 tonnes bivoltine silk only.
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PwC survey: Corporate India reporting higher instances of fraud
New Delhi: According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Economic Crime Survey 2005, economic crime is on the rise in the country, with Indian companies reporting newer types of crimes such as money laundering and financial misappropriation.

The findings suggest that more than half the organisations surveyed in the country have faced at least one form of fraud during the last couple of years, with the number of companies reporting fraudulent incidents increasing from 24 per cent in the 2003 Survey to 54 per cent as of now.

The survey also suggests that while the most prevalent economic crime experienced in the country was counterfeiting, corruption, and bribery (in that order), here is now a seven-fold increase in the number of companies reporting financial misrepresentation, with eight per cent of the Indian respondents reporting cases of money laundering in the current survey, as against no such cases in the previous survey, PwC said in a release.

The biennial global survey, involving 3,634 companies from 34 countries, was conducted in association with Germany's Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg.

According to the survey, insiders were involved in one-third of the frauds in the country, with 37 per cent of the respondents reporting that the internal perpetrator was a member of the senior management; in 32 per cent of the cases, the culprit was from the middle management.

The survey suggests that the unusual rise in the number of reported incidences in India may be attributed to greater awareness and introduction of new legislations on fraud prevention and detection, which has resulted in organisations reporting more incidents of fraud to demonstrate transparency and better governance.
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Global chip sales for Oct. exceed US$20bn
Coimbatore: The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has put global chip sales at over US$20bn in October 2005.

The record sales, which are 6.75 per cent higher than US$18.8bn posted in the year-ago period, are driven largely by higher sales of consumer products such as cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, digital TVs and personal computers, according to the SIA president, George Scalise.

He said the demand for semiconductors was strong in all the sectors. All the semiconductor product lines tracked by the SIA saw sequential sales increases in October.

SIA's global sales report (a quarterly average) reveals that the highest percentage of change (month-on-month) was in the US at 4.3 per cent, followed by Europe at 4 per cent and Asia-Pacific at 2.1 per cent.
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