Ministry eases duty free norms
New Delhi: The rules for duty free purchases made at airports have been relaxed by the civil aviation ministry. Under the new system, purchases will be delivered to passengers at the boarding area, before the departure. The new regulations will come into effect from September 1. However, the ban on carriage of liquids items as part of hand baggage will continue. According to the regulations, the duty free items would be sold under cash receipts incorporating name of the passenger, seat number and name of the carrier. The items will, however, not be handed over at the shops, but at the boarding area.

The items purchased will be kept in a uniquely identifiable bag with receipt attached. It will be the duty of the shop-owner to get the bag checked and delivered.

Shop-owners will be required to ensure that no prohibited goods are sold. All employees kept for delivering items have to be security whetted. Shops have been advised to stop sale of goods 30 minutes prior to departure, ensuring sufficient time for purchased items properly scanned and delivered.
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Milk powder, ghee prices zoom in NCR
New Delhi: Wholesale prices of skimmed milk powder (SMP) in Delhi have zoomed to a record high of Rs120-122 a kg, while bulk ghee is selling at Rs2,320-2,330 per 15 kg tin or Rs154-155 a kg.

At Rs120 a kg of powder and Rs155 a kg of ghee, the equivalent milk price (for six per cent fat and nine per cent solids-not-fat) works out to Rs21.15 a kg or Rs21.78 a litre without deducting for processing costs and various overheads.

Hence farmers are selling most of their milk to private dairies, which pay a little more than the co-operatives. This has hit liquid milk supplies. Mother Dairy's milk procurement now stands at 8-9 lakh litres per day (LLPD) against sales of 20-21 LLPD in the National Capital Region while in this season it would have been procuring 14-15 LLPD and meeting the rest through stocks of powder mil. But now, with its procurement falling by 6-7 LLPD, it has also run out of stocks.

The current situation is expected to continue at least till Diwali
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U.N. Labor Agency begins meeting on Asia
Busan: The International Labor Organization has started a meeting to examine the impact of globalization and development on work in the Asia-Pacific region and find ways to improve conditions in the region, home to 60 percent of the global work force.

Representatives from 40 countries and regions in the Asia-Pacific as well as workers' and employers' organizations are attending the ILO Asian Regional Meeting through Friday. Other leaders attending the opening day were Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayaka and Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit.

The ILO released a report earlier on Tuesday, titled "Labor and Social Trends in Asia and the Pacific 2006: Progress toward Decent Work. The report shows that while economic and working conditions in Asia have improved, much remains to be done.

The report found that economic growth in China and India, which it called "the two main engines behind the rise of Asia," has dramatically reduced the number of people subsisting below the poverty level of US$1 a day, with about 250 million people having risen above that benchmark since 1990.

However, over 600 million Asians live below that level, or "more than two-thirds of the world's poor," the report said. "If the poverty line is raised to US$2 a day, Asia has about 1.9 billion poor people," or more than three-fourths of the world total, it said.

The percentage of people living on US$1 a day in South Asia, which includes India and Bangladesh, dropped to 28.4 percent in 2003 from 40.9 percent in 1990, the report said. In East Asia, which includes China, it fell to 14.9 percent from 31.2 percent.
In China where gross domestic product grew 59 percent and productivity surged nearly 40 percent between 2000 and 2004, growth in job creation managed about 5 percent, the agency's report said. Most Southeast Asian countries had higher joblessness in 2004 than in 1995, suggesting that the region is still suffering the effects of the 1997-98 financial crisis in the form of weak job creation, the report said.

In the area of child labor the report said that the number of working children, defined as being between the ages of 5 to 14, in Asia fell to 122.3 million in 2004 from 127.3 million in 2000, citing improved access to education. Still, Asia has about two-thirds of the world's children who work.

In the worst cases, the report said that children in the region are subjected to "slavery, trafficking into exploitative situations, debt bondage and other forms of forced labor, forced recruitment into armed conflict, prostitution, pornography and other illicit activities."
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Depreciation claims on wind turbines may become tradeable
Pune: The central government is may make it possible to make depreciation claims available for investments made in wind turbines tradeable in order to attract more investments in the wind energy sector.

V. Subramanian, secretary, ministry of non-conventional energy sources (MNES), individuals are forming companies only to invest in wind turbines, and they have no other major heads of income against which to offset the sizeable depreciation they can claim, he said. He added that if the depreciation entitlement is made tradeable, more investors will come into the sector.

Subramanian hinted that the present system of allowing flat 80 per cent depreciation for wind energy investmenrts will be withdrawn, and the investor will instead get tax credit for units of power generated and supplied. These tax credits will then be recorded in the form of some certificates so that they can be sold and bought on the lines of equity shares or other financial instruments, he said.
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SEZs to cause Rs1,75,48-cr loss
New Delhi: The Finance ministry has come up with figures to support its opposing the move to lift the 150 cap on SEZs. The loss projections that it has thrown up are huge by any standards.
The finance ministry says that four years from now, revenue losses will be a whopping Rs1,75,487 crore. To put the amount in perspective, the revenue estimates for the current financial year stand at Rs4,03,465 crore.

While it may be argued that revenue growth would continue to take place at a fast clip and the losses would therefore be much lesser in proportion, the revenue foregone on customs waivers on raw material inputs alone would be a staggering Rs69,421 crore by 2009-10.

As against this, the projected investment inflow into SEZs is pegged at Rs3,60,000 crore during the same period (2009-10). Here the finance ministry says the exchequer would stand to lose Rs40,068 crore on account of excise and customs waivers that the developers get.

Interestingly, the assumptions presume that the SEZs will export 100 per cent of their production, while operational SEZs have around 17 per cent of their output being sold to the domestic tariff areas.

Also, the income tax exemption available to the developers has not been factored in while calculating the figures and this could further increase the revenue loss.
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NRS 2006: Daily newspapers added 12.6mn readers
Chennai: The National Readership Studies Council, which released the findings of NRS 2006, found The Times of India to be the most read English daily with 7.4 million readers and while HT added 3.6 lakh new readers in Mumbai, it lost readership across the Hindi belt.

Two dailies have captured more than two crore readers. These include the Dainik Jagran (with 2.12 crore) and Dainik Bhaskar (2.10 crore). The gap between the two papers has reduced from 38 lakh readers to two lakh readers this year, says the study.

An additional 7 million readers were added over last year, and the reach of the press medium comprising dailies and magazines increased from 206 million to 222 million over last year, according to the NRS.

Daily newspapers added 12.6 million readers from last year to reach 203.6 million while there has been a drop of 7.1 million magazine readers.

Press reach has stabilised in urban India at 45 per cent. Press reach in rural India has also stayed at the same at 19 per cent albeit on a much larger population base. The number of readers in rural India (110 million) is now roughly equal to that in urban India (112 million).
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DoT to take decision on telecom companies with higher FDI
New Delhi: The department of telecommunication (DoT) has drawn up a proposal that only telecom companies with foreign direct investment (FDI) above 49 per cent have restrictions on foreigners as bosses.

The DoT is preparing two draft Cabinet notes. One is based on the directive of the Prime Minister's Office for excluding telecom companies with FDI up to 49 per cent from the purview of conditions in Press Note 5, and another for laying down uniform terms for security.

Under Press Note 5, issued in November 2005, the chairman, managing director, chief executive officer, chief technical officer, and chief financial officer of these telecom companies had to be Indian citizens.

Secondly, no remote access could be provided to any equipment manufacturer outside the country for repair or maintenance work.

Operators had to obtain from roaming partners the traceable identity of their roaming customers when abroad. And, a resident promoter had to have a minimum 10 per cent equity in the firm. Under the proposed policy, for telecom companies with up to 49 per cent FDI, foreign affiliates and equipment manufacturers would be allowed 24x7 remote access. However, an identified government agency would have to be intimated.

The policy, which had called for compliance by all operators by March 2006, was opposed by telecom companies as being too harsh.

The fresh proposal differentiates between telecom companies with up to 49 per cent foreign holding and those with FDI above that level. If it is cleared by the Cabinet, the proposal could be beneficial to companies like Tata Tele and Reliance Communications, whose foreign holding is well below 49 per cent while companies like Bharti and Hutchison-Essar, in which foreign holding is well above 49 per cent, will continue to be within the ambit of the guidelines.
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