Union Cabinet approves 6th Pay Commission
New Delhi: The Union Cabinet has approved the setting up of the Sixth Pay Commission for nearly 3.3 million central government employees with an outer time frame of 18 months to submit its recommendations. The Commission will also consider whether any interim relief is to be granted to the employees.

The Commission will comprise one Chairman in the rank of a Minister of State, one part-time member and one member-secretary in the rank of Secretary and Additional Secretary, respectively. Central Government employees have demanded a new pay commission since the Fifth Pay Commission was set up 12 years ago in April 1994 and submitted its report in January 1997.

The Fifth Pay Commission had recommended a substantial hike in salaries and its financial impact on an annual basis was estimated at Rs17,000 crore. However, the Commission's other recommendations, such as a phased reduction in staff strength and fewer holidays in a year were not implemented.

The impact of the Fifth Pay Commission went beyond the Centre as almost immediately the State Governments faced pressures from their employees for parity in wages. Consequently, State finances came under severe strain and it took nearly five years for them to recover from the impact.

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has said that the Sixth Pay Commission would not hurt the fiscal situation and should not cause any apprehension among foreign investors.
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DoT tells ISPs to ban only 17 listed Web pages
New Delhi: The Department of Telecom has asked Internet Service Providers to ban to only the 17 Web pages listed by the Government on July 13. The move from DoT comes after Internet users expressed outrage at not being able to access the entire Web Site on which the banned Web page was located.

It has also issued a show-cause notice to the ISPs as to why action should not be taken for blocking unintended Web sites. The DoT letter could lead to users being able to access sites such as blogspot and geocities soon.

Earlier, the DoT had asked all the ISPs to block access to Web pages such as princesskimberly.blogspot and pajamaeditors.blogspot. Some of the ISPs, however, ended up blocking the entire blogspot.com, a popular blogging site.

In response the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) has shot off a letter to the DoT saying that it was not practical to block Web pages that are an extension of a sub domain (Web pages with a `slash'). Therefore, ISPs have to block the entire site.
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BPO sector posts 5 pc growth: Study
Bangalore: BPOs in India have attained significant growth and a market share of 5.1 per cent of the total contract value signed compared to less than 3 per cent during the corresponding period in 2005. Indian BPOs also continue to win relatively larger and more varied deals. However the number of mega deals (more than $1 billion) itself has reduced (about 6.1 per cent drop from last year) and contract periods are getting shorter. According to a study by TPI India, a sourcing advisory solutions firm, the global outsourcing market is bigger than that in the same period last year in terms of the total contract value (TCV), supported partly by 92 BPO contracts signed during the first half of 2006.

The 92 contracts are valued at $11 million, a 20 per cent gain in BPO TCV this time last year.

An analysis of deals, on which TPI is now advising, shows that 47 per cent of these involve offshoring compared to 28 per cent during the corresponding period last year. And out of the total 150 deals closed in the county in the first half, about 23 per cent involved restructuring and renewal of existing contracts.
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Excise duty on synthetic fibre intermediates slashed by half
New Delhi: The government has slashed the excise duty on key intermediates for synthetic fibre, including paraxylene,Dimethyl terephthalate (DMT), pure terephthalic acid (PTA), polyester chips, and acrylonitrile from 16 per cent to 8 per cent, and on mono ethylene glycol (MEG) from 16 per cent to 12 per cent.

This year's Budget had reduced the excise duty on synthetic fibre to 8 per cent, while retaining the duty on intermediates at 16 per cent. As a result, companies could claim input credit of 16 per cent, but offset it only against the 8-per-cent duty on fibre.

Sources said this caused large accumulation of Modvat credit in companies' books which was causing cash flow problems. This decision comes after several representations by producers of synthetic fibre for bringing down the excise duty on intermediates.

Some analysts said a small anomaly still existed because the duty on MEG had still not been reduced to 8 per cent and there would still be some accumulation of credit for those that are using MEG as an intermediate.
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HC says CAS should be implemented by year-end
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has directed the Centre to implement conditional access system (CAS) across the three metros of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata by this year-end.

The Information & Broadcasting ministry, which had asked for time till January 31, 2007, for CAS' rollout, has agreed to meet the court-set deadline.

Industry experts say CAS will help bring down the cable bill as viewers will be able to pick and choose their channels and will also force broadcasters to announce individual pricing for each channel to allow a consumer to pick and pay for what he wants to view.

Monthly cable bills in New Delhi range between Rs150-400, but with the implementation of CAS are expected to come down as viewers would only have to pay for the channels they choose to view, and not for the entire bouquet.

However, consumers will have to purchase a set-top box, which is priced between Rs1,500 and Rs1,800, or rent it for about Rs30 a month.

In case the consumer decides to pick just the free-to-air channels, his bill could be as low as Rs72 a month.

At present, there are 60-odd free-to-air channels including Doordarshan and some entertainment and news channels, while the rest are pay.
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