Defunct urea PSUs to be restarted: Paswan
New Delhi: According to the minister for fertilisers, chemicals and steel, Ram Vilas Paswan, the Government plans to restart eight urea producing units in the public sector lying defunct in various parts of the country and also go in for joint ventures in foreign countries for meeting the growing demand for urea.

The eight naphtha-based urea plants are located in five States - Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal. These plants would eventually become gas-based in course of time he said.

The minister said that GAIL (India) Ltd and ONGC have already been requested to make available the required amount of gas for the proposed expansion plans.

Paswan said that the Government was trying to go in for more joint ventures to compensate losses being incurred due to fluctuations in urea prices in the international market.
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Gujarat will implement VAT
Gandhinagar: BJP-ruled States have finally decided to migrate to the value-added tax (VAT) regime and the Gujarat Cabinet has given an in-principle decision to adopt the new tax system.

The actual date for the implementation of VAT will be decided after the BJP-ruled States of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand present their case before the Empowered Committee on VAT on Friday.
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Channels may sue TRAI over cable rates and mandatory content sharing
New Delhi: Private broadcasters may take Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) to court challenging its order to fix the annual increase in cable television rates at 4 per cent for 2006 and over the mandatory sharing of content with Prasar Bharati.

The industry feels that these two decisions will cause massive loss of revenues to the broadcasters.

It is estimated that the mandatory content sharing with Prasar Bharati would lead to an annual loss of over Rs350 crore in advertising in sports broadcasting alone. Sports associations also say the value of bids for sporting events like the BCCI-organised matches may decrease as a result of this move.

In addition, the losses arising out of the 4 per cent hike in cable rates may be much higher for the broadcasters.

Last year, a hike in cable charges was capped at 7 per cent. Broadcasting industry is of the view that it should be freed from the practice of TRAI fixing the rate of increase.

The cable distribution business is estimated at Rs10,000 crore per annum and it is growing at about 25 per cent. But due to under-declaration of subscribers by the cable operators, broadcasters manage to get just about 25 per cent of this.
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