Inflation rate falls to 5.77 per cent
New Delhi: The annual Wholesale Price Index-based inflation was at 5.77 per cent during the week ended April 21, lower than the previous week's annual rise of 6.09 per cent, Government data showed on Friday.

This is the second time in the last 14 weeks that inflation has fallen below the six per cent mark. The RBI has a target of containing inflation at close to 5 per cent during 2007-08.

The annual inflation rate was 3.85 per cent during the corresponding week of the previous year. The Wholesale Price Index of all commodities remained unchanged at 210.9 during the week. During the latest reported week, inflation in the Primary Articles' group was down to 11.50 per cent, from 12.36 per cent during the previous week. The fall was seen across all major primary article sub-groups.

After showing a marginal rise in the last few weeks, inflation in the fuel group dropped to 1.01 per cent. In case of the Manufactured Products' group, inflation growth came down for the third consecutive week to 5.46 per cent.
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Business confidence falls in Jan-March quarter
New Delhi: According the `Quarterly Review 2007 Business Expectations Survey' published by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), the Business Confidence Index (BCI) and the Political Confidence Index (PCI) for the January-March quarter this year fell by 3.8 per cent over the previous quarter.

The BCI slipped from its level of 157.3 points in the previous quarter to 151.3 points. The survey points out that the BCI fell in all four of its main components - overall economic conditions, investment climate, financial positions of firms and capacity utilisation. The survey further states that the perception of firms on the current investment climate has seen the steepest fall.

Another startling highlight was that the BCI has seen a decline in all the sectors. While the capital goods sector showed the least decline, the intermediates sector showed the highest BCI decline.
Among the four regions of the country, the Western and Southern regions saw a greater loss in business confidence.

However, the loss in BCI does not imply any decline in the key performance indicators of firms. The production, domestic sales, exports, imports and profits are all expected to increase in the next six months.
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Center to notify 100 more SEZs by March 2008
Ludhiana: The Central government will notify 100 more special economic zones by the end of this financial year, according to a top commerce ministry official. Of these, 40 would be notified by the end of May.

The government has so far formally approved 234 SEZs with an expected investment of Rs3,00,000 crore. Out of these, the Centre has notified 100 SEZs so far. The government expects to attract an investment of Rs1,00,000 crore in SEZ and provide employment to five lakh people by the end of this financial year.

Officials said during the last 15 months, such zones have attracted an investment of Rs28,000 crore and created 27,000 jobs.
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Trai advocates three-tier grievance redressal structure
New Delhi: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), has directed telecom operators to set up a three-tier grievance redressal structure which will include call centres, nodal officers in each area and an appellate authority in each circle in order to address the growing customer complaints on service quality against telecom operators.

Trai said complaints pertaining to fault repair, service disruption, and disconnection of service will have to be attended by the operators within a maximum period of three days and other complaints in seven days. If unsatisfied, consumers could approach nodal officers. However, if their grievances are still not redressed, they can go in appeal to the appellate authority, which will have to adjudicate within a maximum period of three months.

However, Trai's move has not received the support of consumer advocacy groups who are miffed by the fact that the redressal would be undertaken by operators who are the defaulters.

Responding to customer complaints that the billings sent to them by operators are difficult to understand, Trai has directed operators that information on applicable tariff plan, credit limit, security deposit, method of calculating the pulse rate will have to be printed with the bill.
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