RIL's Mumbai SEZs to rake in huge investment
Mumbai: Reliance Industries' (RIL) two mega special economic zones (SEZ) coming up in Navi Mumbai are likely to rake in investment worth Rs3 lakh crore in sectors like banking, finance, pharma, auto, gem and jewellery and other non-polluting industries.

The Mumbai Special Economic Zone (MSEZ) and Navi-Mumbai Special Economic Zone (NMSEZ), being set up next to each other, will involve investments of about Rs31,000 crore for required infrastructure for setting up industrial units in an area of 140 square kilometres.

NMSEZ will come up as a joint venture with City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra holding26 pc stake and RIL holding the rest in 4,000 hectares. The entire land for the project has already been acquired by CIDCO of which 1,600 hectares has so far been bought by RIL.

MSEZ will be set up in 10,000 hectares of land adjacent to NMSEZ, totally owned by RIL. RIL has so far bought 1,000 hectares of land for the SEZ.
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PM launches backward regions grant fund
Mandya: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has launched the Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF) in Barpeta district.
The BRGF is meant to bridge regional disparities in development and help backward regions like Barpeta in Assam catch up with the rest of the country, Singh said.

The government has taken 250 districts in the country under the BRGF and Rs3,750 crore has been provided to the fund for the year with each district receiving an additional Rs15 crore annually exclusively for developing infrastructure. The government has taken up 11 districts in Assam: — Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Cachar, Goalpara, Hailakandi, Morigaon, Dhemaji, Karbi Anglong, Kokrajhar, North Cachar Hills, and North Lakhimpur. The BRGF will be implemented totally through the panchayati raj institutions and the basis for programmes is the district panchayat.

The programmes would be implemented through district plans prepared at the grassroot level with the active participation at the gram panchayat, block panchayat and the zila panchayat levels, Singh said.
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Export competitiveness getting impacted by cess, levies: Assocham
New Delhi: High transaction cost, inadequate infrastructure combined with various levies and cess are adversely impacting India's export competitiveness, especially in sectors like engineering goods, metals, ores, textile, leather and pharma, said a study by industry body Assocham said on Monday.

The study points out that the aggregate adverse impact of bottlenecks like poor infrastructure and cumbersome procedures on exports was to the extent of 14 per cent of the total value of exports, according to a study by the chamber.

The study found that exporters who import higher volumes of inputs incur very high transaction costs, which leads to increased manufacturing cost. The government should check related procedures to reduce transaction costs on imports and exports, it said in a release.

Cess and levies impact exports the most with an incidence of around 5.22 per cent of freight on board (FOB) value. Assocham said metals and ores are the most burdened sector with a number of cess, levies, poor infrastructure and export procedures.
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Defence budget may be hiked by 4.5 pc
New Delhi: The defence budget for 2007-08 may be increased by only around 4.5 per cent - if the Army is not able to find a way to spend Rs4,000 crore on capital equipment.

In November-December last year, the finance ministry held back Rs3,000 crore from the Army's capital outlay and warned the services that they would lose another Rs4,000 crore in the budgetary outlay for the forthcoming fiscal, unless they showed evidence of intent to spend.

Under the fiscal responsibility law, those ministries that is unable to spend the money allocated ti it in the prescribed timeframe, would have to return the unspent funds.

For the services 2004-05 was the only year when there was no surrender of funds left unspent by the services. Before and after, every year, money has been returned to the Consolidated Fund of India.

This is because of the government's new offset policy and the reluctance of officers to put their signature assenting to big-ticket expenditure for fear of being accused of accepting kickbacks.

The services are expected to spend money on the 126 multi-role combat aircraft for the Indian Air Force, the Smerch multi-barrel rocket launcher to be purchased from Russia and signing of a contract for 8-10 long-range maritime patrol aircraft for the Navy.
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