One third of medicines to go under price control
New Delhi: The Government has said that the pharmaceutical policy proposes to bring only 33 per cent of the medicines in value terms under price control.

"The 354 formulation drugs that are proposed to be brought under price control will form only eight per cent in value terms, while the 74 bulk drugs account for 25 per cent and in all only 33 per cent of medicines would be brought under price control," the Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister, Ram Vilas Paswan, told the press here.

Paswan said that the policy was necessary to abide by the Supreme Court order of making essential medicines affordable to the public.

He pointed out that there was a fundamental difference between the earlier price control order and the present proposal. While the earlier drug price control order was aimed at ending monopoly on drugs by companies the present one is aimed at controlling the prices of only the essential drugs he said.
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Government may control steel prices
New Delhi: The government has given a warning to private steel producers to check prices or be prepared for an intervention, a move that may lead to indirect controlling of prices by the government.

Union Chemicals Fertiliser and Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan the move to talk to the private players was necessitated as they controlled about two-thirds of the market while the public sector steel units have only about one-third of the market.

He said that even if the PSUs lower the steel prices, it would not affect the overall market prices unless the private players do not lower it and the middlemen are making profit from the price differentials between the PSUs and private players.

He said the price control is in the interest of consumers.
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ISPs to block 18 websites after Mumbai blasts
New Delhi: The Department of Telecom has directed all the 150 operational Internet Service Providers to block 18 websites. The deadly Mumbai bomb blasts were followed by an escalation in terror and hate messages on the internet. The 18 websites, according to the Government, could be used by terror groups to communicate and spread provocative messages.

Two websites www.dalitstan.org and hinduunity.org figure among the blocked sites. It is not immediately clear till what time period this blockade will be in force.

Deepak Maheshwari, secretary, Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) said the Association has received the instructions from the government and the sites have been blocked accordingly, he said.

Te software industry has however, criticized the government's decision to block the sites. "The move was neither desirable nor feasible," said NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik said in Chennai today.
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Government may ban `illegal' voice calls: ISPAI
New Delhi: The Department of Telecom (DoT) is planning ban messenger-based telephony services such as those offered by Skype, Yahoo, MSN, and Net2Phone.

This is after ISPs requested the government to do so.

Before January 2006, ISPs were offering Internet telephony free cost but now the Government has asked them to pay a fee to offer the service even as messenger-based telephony services such as Skype offers voice calls without any licence from India.

In a letter to the DoT, the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) said: "Internet telephony services can be offered in India either by an ISP specifically permitted to do so or by a unified access service licensee. However, several service providers such as Skype, Net2Phone, Yahoo, and MSN, are providing Internet telephony services to people in India. Most of these foreign service providers do offer termination in Indian fixed-line telephones as well."
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