Institutes mull foreign linkages
Kolkata: The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IITK), is trying to establish linkages with leading institutes like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Colorado, Boulder, Cornell University and Taiwan's National Chiao Tung University.

Towards this, the institute's entrepreneurship cell is organising a unique entrepreneur summit and will sign MoUs with the institutes to develop entrepreneurship programmes.

The institutes feel that this will not only facilitate internships and follow-up grants, but also establish horizontal and vertical linkages with the outside world to ensure better marketability of products.
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FM says inflation is biggest concern
Mumbai: Finance Minister P Chidambaram has asked commercial banks "re-balance" their loan portfolios, even as the wholesale price index-based inflation rose to 5.41 per cent in the week ending October 21 in an effort to rein in runaway credit growth.

Early this week, Reserve Bank of India Governor YV Reddy, too, asked banks to rebalance their loan growth when he unveiled the mid-year review of the monetary policy, in which the repo rate was hiked to 7.25 per cent. The RBI infuses liquidity into the system through its repo window.

Inflation surged to a four-month high of 5.41 per cent for the week ended October 21 from 5.26 per cent in the previous week, mainly due to higher food prices. Inflation had touched a one-year high of 5.5 per cent in the week ended June 17, 2006. The wholesale price index-based inflation stood at 4.49 per cent during the corresponding week last year.

The latest rise in the inflation rate is mainly on account of a 0.2 per cent rise in the index of primary articles, which has a 22.02 per cent weight in the overall index.

Within the primary articles index, the food index was up by 0.5 per cent while the non-food index declined by 0.1 per cent. The index for manufactured products, which has the highest weight of 63.75 per cent in the wholesale price index, rose by 0.1 per cent, while the index for fuel, power, light and lubricants (weight 14.23 per cent) remained unchanged.
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Ficci wants sops for pharma industry
New Delhi: The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) has urged the government to extend 150 per cent weighted deduction to investments made by pharma companies in land and buildings for research and development (R&D) purposes.

The industry body has also asked for a waiver of customs duty, excise duty and service tax for capital goods, revenue expenditure and for services received by R&D units.

FICCI has recommended that select life saving drugs should be fully exempted from customs duty.

These drugs currently attract customs duty ranging from 5 per cent to 12.5 per cent. It has also sought reduction in excise duty on pharmaceuticals from 16 per cent to 8 per cent.

Ficci has also asked for a review of the duty structure and the rate for naptha.
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