Rural jobs scheme to become a reality on Feb. 2
New Delhi: UPA government's ambitious national rural employment guarantee programme that promises 100 days of engagement to every rural household will be formally launched on February 2 in 200 districts, including Sonia Gandhi's constituency Rae Bareli.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will flag off the scheme by accepting application forms from job aspirants in rural areas. Chief Ministers of various states will also launch the scheme simultaneously in their states using the same process on the same day.

Initially the programme was meant for 150 districts but it was later decided to add 50 more to the first phase of the programme.

A sum of Rs10,000 crore will be needed for the phase for the remaining months of the current financial year.

While Rs5,500 crore will come from the sampoorna grameen rozgar yojana fund, Rs4,500 crore will be obtained from the food-for-work scheme. Singh also said all the necessary guidelines had been finalised for the implementation of the programme in consultation with states and experts.
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Weak states need to raise Tax-GDP to cut deficit: Rangarajan
New Delhi: Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council chairman, C Rangarajan said that financially weak states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand should aim to raise their Tax-GDP ratios and use funds effectively in social sectors.

He said that by doing so these states can raise revenues that can be used for higher developmental expenditure.

Introduction of value-added tax itself will go a long way in raising revenues, he said, but added that States need to raise revenues from other sources as well. In this context, he said that the States should rationalise property taxes and stamp duties to raise additional revenues.

With low tax-GDP ratios, the fiscal deficit in these states was also higher, he said. Bihar was an exception, as its spending is relatively lower and hence has lower deficit.
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Demand for lead to rise, as car sales boom
New Delhi: India being a net importer of lead metal, may soon have to increase imports of the metal as demand for the substance is expected to jump by more than 100,000 tonnes over the next four years to feed booming automakers, according to industry officials.

Automobile batteries that have a high lead component account for about two-thirds of the lead sales in India. Passenger vehicle sales are expected to remain robust this year after topping one million units for two years in a row in 2005.

The officials say lead consumption would grow to 280,000 tonnes in 2006 from about 250,000 tonnes in 2005.
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Traders say govt failed to honour commitments on VAT
New Delhi: The Confederation of all India Traders today slammed the central government saying it had failed to honour its commitments made in the white paper on value-added tax.

Praveen Khandelwal, secretary-general, CAIT, said, "This has resulted in different states setting different rates for the same item leading to loss of business for traders," he said while releasing a note on "Nine months of the VAT".

The body has proposed setting up of a special working group to remove VAT disparities that have emerged in states.

For example, one per cent VAT was decided for gold but Rajasthan went ahead with 0.25 per cent and Uttar Pradesh with 0.15 per cent. Delhi has recently changed its rate from one per cent to 0.1 per cent. In hardware, Delhi has a 4 per cent rate but Punjab has 12.5 per cent.

Khandelwal also criticised the government for its failure to bring dealers within the VAT network. The revenue department is charging dealers with a fine of Rs10,000 even if there is any error in VAT returns. This only needed rectification and did not call for a fine, he said.
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Government wants OVL to share more details on acquisitions
New Delhi: The Petroleum ministry wants ONGC Videsh to share details of its overseas acquisition with the Government with details and has suggested that its parent company Oil and Natural Gas Corp should make available sufficient funds for overseas equity oil.

Sources said that while OVL claims that it prefers to send only a brief note in advance to avoid leakage of sensitive commercial information, the ministry says the short lead time was not sufficient to examine equity participation proposals.

The ministry said that the Empowered Committee of Secretaries' decision-making process necessitates that "OVL provide sufficient information well in advance for the deliberations at the ECS meeting to be purposeful."
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Rs1 crore collection expected from phase II of FM radio
New Delhi: According to a study the government is likely to collect Rs1,350 crore as One Time Entry Fee (OTEF) in phase II of radio licensing. Licences will be granted for 338 FM radio stations in 91 cities, the bidding for which starts this Friday.

This is nearly half of the total investment of Rs2,600 crore that the Phase II of FM licensing will attract, the study conducted by Big River Radio, a consulting firm for setting up and managing radio stations said.

It said that the government is likely to earn a revenue of over Rs50 crore annually through the four per cent revenue share scheme it announced in July last year.
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Govt. against scrapping airport bid process
New Delhi: The government has said that the modernisation plan of the Delhi-Mumbai airport would not be scrapped though it was open to re-evaluation of the bids already submitted.

According to highly placed sources, the process could be delayed if the government decided to undertake "re-evaluation or rectification" of the bids, but there was no question of the entire process being scrapped.

They said the civil aviation sector needed a focus and direction at this moment and a lot of it depended on the modernisation of the two important metro airports, which together handled almost half of the country's air traffic.

However, sources made it clear that in case the government decided to go for re-evaluation of the bids, only contentious issues would be gone through.
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China is leading exporter of textiles to India
New Delhi: China is the leading source of India's textile imports in the last five years as the volume of textile imports have gone up to US$548.81mn in 2004-05 from US$78.71mn in 2000-01, industry body Assocham said.

Out of India's total textile imports at US$597.74mn in 2000-01, China's share was US$78.71mn. This further rose by 597.26 per cent to US$548.81mn in 2004-05 as India's total textile imports touched US$1502.50mn , it said in a release.

India's textile imports from China in 2000-01 were 13.17 per cent of total global textile imports. This tripled to 36.53 per cent in 2004-05, the chamber said in a study on 'Post ATC Competitiveness and Protectionism'.
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Railways perceive no threat from low cost domestic airlines
New Delhi: While not perceiving any threat from domestic airlines the railways does not like to be complacent and is charting out a slew of measures to improve passenger services and rail safety according to Railway Board chairman J P Batra.

Batra contends that all the airlines put together don't carry the number of passengers in a year that the Railways ferry in a single day.

Batra outlined a number of innovative steps that will be initiated this year in view of projections of substantial increase in both passenger and freight segments. He said a pilot project would soon be launched in Delhi for upgradation of passenger reservation.

Under this scheme, wait-listed passengers would be accommodated to higher classes subject to availability. This would be subsequently extended throughout the country.
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