Tata Motors starts work at Singur small car plant
Kolkata: Tata Motors has made a symbolic gesture at starting construction work on its Rs1,000-crore small car plant in Singur at Hooghly district, which has been the scene of protests and agitations for the past couple of months.

A bhumi puja for the plant was held at the site on January 21 though not on land, the transfer of which is still a subject of controversy. There was a large police presence in the area and the district administration had extended the period for prohibitory orders under Section 144 CrPC till January 28.

Section 144 was first imposed on the area for a month on November 30 which was extended on December 29, the day Ms Mamata Banerjee ended her indefinite fast in the city.

A Tata Motors release said that the company had taken "initial preliminary steps for the construction of the small car plant with the consent of the West Bengal Industrial Development The company has already taken steps to train people from the area for association with the project and is also organising groups of women from affected Singur families to supply food to the construction workers.
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Trai plans ADC review
New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will undertake another review of the controversial access deficit charges (ADC). The telecom regulator had reduced the subsidy by 33 per cent the previous time it had conducted a review to Rs3,335 crore for the year 2006-07 from Rs5,340 crore. The reduction had enabled operators to lower STD rates to Re1 per minute.

ADC is a levy that telephone subscribers in urban areas pay to subsidise cheaper phone services in rural areas. According to TRAI sources, the total quantum of money collected should come down further as the traffic volume has increased substantially. A decrease in ADC will result in overall reduction in telephone tariffs.
Since Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd is undertaking most of the rural telephony, the money collected by private operators in the form of access deficit charges is passed on to the state-owned telecom company.

While private telecom operators are in favour of completely doing away with the subsidy, BSNL wants an increase in the amount collected. At present operators pay 1.5 per cent of their annual revenues as ADC.

As per TRAI's own roadmap, this ADC is to be merged with the Universal Services Obligation (USO) Fund for which operators contribute 5 per cent of their annual revenues. BSNL is, however, expected to oppose the move as it had done on previous occasion when it had filed a case in the telecom dispute settlement tribunal against TRAI.
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SAP plans RFID centre
Bangalore: SAP Research is planning to set up an RFID competency centre in India in association with its partners. Radio frequency identification (RFID) works by tagging objects with a chip containing relevant data (such as price). The chip transmits the information on it wirelessly to a reader. This method is an alternative to bar codes, but whereas the scanner needs to be oriented towards the code, RFID tags can be read from a distance of a hundred feet.

The RFID competency centre will probably be set up at SAP Labs facility in the city in the next few months. The company has been integrating RFID in many of their projects, including one in the education sector and another for emergency evacuations in a building.
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Tulip to invest Rs 2,500 cr
Sonepat: Real estate firm Tulip Infratech plans to invest Rs2,500 crore over the next 3-4 years to develop five projects, which includes group housing and integrated township. The company says it has identified three group housing projects and two integrated townships for development over the next 3-4 years. The project cost of all these properties would be about Rs2,500 crore, including the land cost.

Of the five properties, four would be in the state of Haryana, while one would be in Uttar Pradesh.

The company has already launched here its first project spread over 15 acre and comprising 800 flats at a cost of Rs200 crore, he said and added that the other projects would be rolled out in the next six months.

The flats here are being offered to the customers at a cost of Rs1,800 per square feet.

Tulip Infratech would develop two integrated townships at Yamuna Nagar and Saharanpur (UP) each spread over 60 acre.

While the township at Yamunanagar would cost the company Rs1,000 crore, the one at Saharanpur would be developed at an investment of Rs700 crore.

Tulip presently has a land bank of 200 acre.
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RIL may spin off KG assets: mulls foreign partner
Mumbai: The Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries (RIL) is planning to spin off its oil & gas assets in the hydrocarbon-rich Krishna-Godavari basin into a separate company and would offer a stake to a foreign partner. RIL is said to be discussing the move internally as part of its plan to begin commercial production from the fields.

Goldman Sachs has estimated the value of the D6 discovery of 14 trillion cubic feet at between $36 billion and $40 billion. This amount is expected to rise in line with gas prices and additional discoveries. Selling a small stake to a foreign partner would net a big amount for RIL.

Also, many of the discoveries are located in deep water at depths of over 5,000 metres and Indian companies have little experience of operating in such depths against global oil giants like Chevron, Exxon and BP who have built up technical know-how over the years.

A separate company could also solve the prblem of funding. Transporting gas from the fields to the surface and then sending it across the country will require enormous capital.
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