Inflation touches 6.73 pc
New Delhi: The annual wholesale price index-based inflation has continued to rise and touched 6.73 per cent for the week ended February 3, up from the previous week's 6.58 per cent mainly due to a rise in prices of pulses, cereals and vegetables within Primary Articles, apart from manufactured products including cement, steel and machinery items.

The Primary Articles group shot up 12.26 per cent year-on-year, with both the food and non-food article prices surging over 12 per cent each during the latest reported week.

Wheat prices shot up over 11 per cent, rice prices about five per cent and prices of pulses over 23 per cent. Fruits and vegetable prices were up 19 per cent, with prices of onions up 82 per cent. The heavyweight manufactured products group was up 6.37 per cent, with metals and metal product prices shooting up nearly 17 per cent.
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Petrol, diesel prices cut
New Delhi: The UPA Government has for the second time in three months, announced a reduction in the retail selling prices of petrol and diesel by Rs2 per litre and Re1 per litre, respectively.

The Petroleum Minister, Murli Deora, said the reduced prices would be effective from midnight tonight.

The Government had announced identical price reduction in November last year. "The burden of this price reduction will be met partly by revenue (in terms of duty restructuring) and partly through oil bonds already approved by the Government," Deora said.

With this reduction, the retail-selling price at Delhi for petrol will be Rs42.85 per litre and Rs30.25 per litre on diesel. The prices have been reduced taking the average of the Indian crude basket for the first fortnight of February at $56.12 per barrel. The Indian crude basket on Wednesday stood at $55.49 a barrel.

Following the reduction, industry sources said the under-recovery on diesel will increase to Rs2.30 per litre from Rs1.30, while the profit, which the OMCs had started making on petrol of about Rs2 per litre, would be neutralised.

Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, with the largest market share in retail business among the public sector companies, would bear an additional burden of Rs8 crore per day due to the price cut.
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Rail fares may be cut due to diesel price cut
New Delhi: Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav may announce a reduction in passenger fares in the forthcoming Railway Budget due to the Re1 cut in diesel prices since diesel locomotives comprised almost half the railway fleet.

The cut could also lead to a reduction in freight rates for essential commodities, including grain and industrial commodities like steel and coal, officials said.

The diesel price cut, however, is not expected to have any impact on freight and rentals in the road transport sector, which accounts for 80 per cent of the transport industry. However, a small change in rates for bulk cargo and corporate consignments is being expected in a week.
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UPA govt faces criticism on price rise
New Delhi: Pressure has been building against the UPA government on the issue of price rise just before the budget session of the Parliament and allies are demanding urgent measures to check spiralling inflation.

Sharad Pawar-led NCP has asked the Congress-led coalition to get its act together on the issue of price rise.

RJD leader and Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, whose party is the second largest constituent of the UPA is also a worried man.

In fact leaders in the Congress, which is heading the coalition, are also concerned over the price graph going up unhindered despite measures by the Manmohan Singh government.

Ruling party circles are worried about the price line and its political fallout.
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Rlys to build tele network for staff
Kolkata: The Indian Railways is planning to build a special captive mobile network, spanning 63,000 km tracks, for 2 lakh of its employees through a closed user group (CUG). The network would be executed by RailTel Corporation of India, a 100 pc subsidiary of Indian Railways.

The Railways also plans to offer cellular coverage along railway tracks for enabling travelling passengers to enjoy seamless mobile connectivity and is in talks with five telecom majors - public sector BSNL, Hutchison Essar, Reliance Telecom, Idea Cellular and Tata Teleservices for this.

The special network will have features exclusively for railways. It will include call override facilities, enhanced multi-level priority and pre-emption services as well as emergency calls - features not available on regular networks officials said.

The network will also offer locationbased addressing, allowing loco drivers to dial a single number to contact the nearest station master, depending on the train's location. It will include number translation that will convert dialled train number to respective train driver's telephone number. Features will include support for data service and offer mobile radio functions.

The entire 63,000 km of tracks will be covered in two phases. In the first phase, the operator will have to cover 16,000 km encompassing key stations within a year. The rest will be covered in the next couple of years, said a RailTel official.
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