Shipping ministry passes final draft on NMDP
New Delhi: The shipping ministry has approved the final draft of the National Maritime Development Programme (NMDP), which will now be sent to the infrastructure committee, under the PM, for approval.

The government has approved expansion of capacity at the Jawaharlal Nehru port and Kandla port, involving a cost of Rs800 crore and Rs154 crore, respectively.

While phase I involves a total cost of Rs31,971 crore, phase II is estimated to cost Rs23,833 crore. The private sector's contribution for phase I and II will be around Rs19,112 crore and Rs15,394 crore. The corresponding contribution of the government will be Rs1,350 crore and Rs2,259 crore.

Major projects will include deepening of channels, development of berths, replacement of equipment and port connectivity, among others.

The government is looking at adding a capacity of 252mlt in all major ports by '09. Currently, total capacity in Kolkata, Haldia, Paradip, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Mumbai, Cochin, JNPT and Kandla, among others ports, stands at 397.5mlt.
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DoT hauled up on spectrum allocation
New Delhi: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on information technology has hauled up the department of telecommunications (DoT) for its haphazard planning and spectrum allocation policy, and for its failure to anticipate the demand.

The lack of planning on the part of the department had led to an ad-hoc and injudicious allocation of spectrum, which in turn had caused "non-availability of this scarce resource to telecom operators when they needed it the most for faster expansion," the committee said in its report.

The committee said it was "deeply concerned by the defence ministry's complaint that the WPC took between two and three years to give clearances for spectrum.

It also hauled up the DoT on the lack of progress in its talks with the defence ministry for the vacation of spectrum by the latter. The DoT has maintained that talks were on since February 2005, but even after 10 months, it did not take a final view on the requirement of the defence services and the vacation of spectrum.

The report added that the future roadmap for spectrum allocation must be chalked out in a coordinated and phased manner to carter to short- and long-term requirements of both the telecom service providers and the defence sector.
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Govt. relaxes entry rules for foreign investors
New Delhi: The government has said foreign investors eligible through the automatic approval route should seek prior approval only in case of specific reasons.

The investors are advised to access the automatic route where the policy so permits. Whenever prior approval is sought for activities or royalty payments eligible for automatic route, the investors would need to indicate the specific reason for seeking it, according to the government.

This means if a company wants to invest in a sector covered under the automatic route, it need not take the prior approval of the government. It will need to apply for the government's permission only if it is for a specific purpose.

The statement said foreign direct investment (FDI) up to 100 per cent is permitted under the automatic route in most sectors or activities. It is also allowed for foreign technology collaboration where the payments are within five per cent for domestic sales and eight per cent for exports.
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Fresh investments being made in metals sector
Mumbai: Indian and multinational companies are announcing large investments in the metals sector. Eleven Indian and multinational metal companies have already lined up investments of US$69.9bn (Rs31,800 crore) in greenfield and brownfield projects.

These projects are to be implemented in the next four to six years and are likely to increase the capacity of the steel industry by a whopping 103 million tonnes.

The foreign direct investments in steel sector would come from Mittal Steel, which has planned to invest US$8.7bn while Posco would invest US$11.3bn and Vedanta US$2.7bn.

The Indian companies, which are proposing investments are Tata Steel ( US$16.7bn), Jindal Vijayanagar Steel (US$11.6bn), Jindal Steel & Power (US$5.3bn), Ispat Industries (US$3.3bn), Bhushan Steel (US$2bn) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (US$1.9bn).
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Legal outsourcing the next big wave
New Delhi: Outsourcing is gradually expanding to encompass different sectors and the legal sector seems set to see the next big wave. According to a study by the US based Forester Research, the current annual value of legal outsourcing is worth US$80mn and can rise up to US$4bn to fetch 79,000 jobs in India by 2015.

The report says that the benefit of the outsourcing companies in the US would translate into a cost saving of about 10 per cent to 12 per cent. The potential of the Indian resources to absorb the increasing demand in legal outsourcing is high because India enjoys the economic advantages of the wage difference and less perks and overheads.

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) has also projected that legal processing outsourcing providers (LPOs) in India will soon rise up to three to four billion dollar.
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