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ONGC chalks out Rs 1-lakh crore investment plan
Kolkata: ONGC plans to invest a mammoth Rs1,00,000 crore in India and abroad in the next five years. Sources said the company had divided the entire investment plan into short (annual), medium (three years) and long-term (five years) sectors.

The investment plan has led to the company changing its stance on cross-holdings.

Officials said, "While borrowings hold the key to such investments, we will like to part-finance by unlocking our investments in IOC and GAIL."
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Birlasoft named IT partner of the year by Mercury
Bangalore: BirlaSoft, a division of the C K Birla Group, has been named the IT partner of the year 2005 by Mercury, a leader in technology optimisation software.

BirlaSoft is also on an expansion path and plans to ramp up its employee strength by 2,200 to take the total number of professionals on its rolls to 5,000 by the end of 2006.

The company has earmarked $20 million for expansion, including the setting up of three new centres.

The company set a 46,000sq ft facility in Bangalore in September this year while centres are due to come up in Hyderabad and Noida in February and May next year.

Currently, the company has 2,800 software professionals working at its facilities in Chennai, Noida, and Melbourne. The company started its operations with a centre in Chennai in 2003.
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Volvo aims entry into intra-city segment
Bangalore: Swedish bus maker Volvo is aiming for a substantial presence in the intra-city transportation segment. The company has bagged its first order for intra-city buses from the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) for 25 buses. These buses will be launched in Bangalore to carry city commuters next month. Each of these buses cost around Rs 62 lakh.

Volvo expects to close the year with sales of over 400 buses in India.

Company officials said the Volvo bus division had posted a growth of around 25 per cent over last calendar year and expects to maintain a similar growth next year also.

The intra-city Volvo 8700 low entry series, come out of the same assembly line from where Volvo trucks are built. The body is built at the Jaico Automobile Engineering Company near Bangalore. The buses have 7-litre engine meeting Euro 3 standards and are the latest model among Volvo's buses. They are equipped with low floors and are fitted with electronically controlled climate-control system. They can carry up to 90 passengers. Unlike tourist buses, these buses have two entrances with wide doors and have a kneeling mechanism that allows commuters to walk into the bus.

Several other state transport corporations are in talks with Volvo for launching these intra-city buses for commuters.
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Reliance to sign SEZ pact with Haryana
New Delhi: The Haryana government is signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Reliance Industries for the development of a special economic zone (SEZ) in the state.

Senior government officials said the proposed SEZ will be developed at an investment of Rs 25,000 crore. The Reliance SEZ would be part of the nine SEZs, for which the centre has already given its in-principle approval, the official said.

The location of new SEZs would be decided on the basis of the availability of land as well as the strategic preferences of the investors officials said.

The development of SEZs is part of the state government's renewed drive to attract more foreign investments. Recently the Haryana chief minister Ranjit Singh Hoods visited several foreign states to tap funds from companies in the US, the UK, France, Russia, Taiwan, Germany and Italy.

New technology parks are also being developed at Panchkula and Manesar, officials said.
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Tata Companies ready to meet ID norms
Kolkata: The Tata Group companies are ready to meet the deadline of December 31 of having independent directors in their respective company boards.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had mandated that all listed companies have to meet the new minimum independent director guideline by this December end.

Tata Sons director J J Irani said there was not a single company in the Tata Group where the managing director and chairman was the same person. He said he was not in favour of appointing representative of financial institutions on company board as independent directors.

The Irani committee, which submitted its report to the union law ministry and the ministry of company affairs, recommended that nominees of financial institutions could not be regarded as independent directors on the board of a company.

The recommendations, to be placed before parliament for enactment of a new companies' act, say that appointing FI nominees as independent directors goes against the concept that an independent director will not have material or pecuniary interest in the company.
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Waiting lists for cell phone connections!
New Delhi: Telecom operators again have a waiting list for phone connections just like in the old times. Only this time the waiting list is for mobile phones.

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam says it has over 1.4 million subscribers on its waiting list, and private cellular operators say they cannot offer connections to everyone for lack of capacity on their network.

Senior BSNL officials said the company had started maintaining a waiting list because release of connection has been temporarily controlled. They said the company was in the process of augmenting the cellular mobile capacity and the waiting list is likely to be cleared by the end of the current financial year.

BSNL's mobile waiting list is almost as high as its fixed line list, which has 1.6 million users awaiting a connection as on September 2005.

BSNL is even charging a fee for keeping users on its waiting list. An amount of Rs551 is collected at the time of booking a pre-paid connection. However, when a connection is issued the subscriber is given a recharge coupon of Rs300 to adjust the registration amount.
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Eurotech offers range of iPod accessories
Bangalore: Eurotech Technologies, based in Bangalore, has launched a complete range of iPod accessories certified by Apple.

Now the iPod can be integrated with a cassette player with the Cassette Deck Adapter. It can be charged while driving with the car charger accessory. Eurotech also sells a USB hot sync cable to transfer music and data to iPods from personal computers at speeds of 400 mega bit per second.

Another useful accessory is the audio splitter. This converts a single earphone on an iPod into two by splitting the audio signal from the iPod into two pairs of headphones while maintaining all the high quality crystal-clear audio the iPod is famous for.

So, two people can now share music on the iPod simultaneously for Rs300 excluding VAT.

The car charger is designed to provide the right amount of power to safely charge the iPod. It has an LED display that tells about the charging status.
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CDMA growth spurts
New Delhi: CDMA-based mobile subscriber base spurted by 11.77 lakh connections in November 2005, led by Tata Teleservices, which added 7.28 lakh new users followed by Reliance Infocomm. The total CDMA-based mobile base in India has now touched 1.55 crore subscribers.

Reliance added 4.48 lakh new users in the month. Its mobile user base stood at 1.22 crore and total user base stands including fixed wireless and wireline 1.45 crore.

CDMA-based players added a total 14.60-lakh subscribers, which includes about 11.8 lakh in the CDMA mobile sector and 2.2 lakh in the fixed wireless and the rest through wireline.

GSM players Bharti, which offers wireline and fixed wireless telephony added 41,681 new users in November taking the total to a little over 11-lakh subscribers while HFCL added 5,737 new users and Shyam Telelink added 645 new users.
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GE Shipping acquires stake in USL
Mumbai: Great Eastern Shipping Company (GE Shipping) has bought a 26-per cent stake in domestic barge operations and cargo handling firm United Shippers Ltd (USL) for an undisclosed amount.

GE Shipping says it has no plans to get involved in the day-to-day activities of the company or even to send a representative to the USL board.

USL will use the proceeds from the stake sale to fund the company's expansion plans. It plans to set up a container freight station and a railway siding to handle containers near Mumbai.

USL is a closely held company and has operational headquarters at Jamnagar (Gujarat). It owns and operates over 70 barges and nine tugs along with other port equipment and truck fleet.

The company is also a cargo charterer and has handled over 3-million tonnes of cargo last year.
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