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Package for
weak NEW DELHI, Dec 27: The Government will soon come out with a package for the revival of weak public sector banks on the recommendations of.....more
NEW DELHI, Dec 27: Precious metals gained further momentum on the bullion market today as both the precious metals usurge on local buying ....more Tips acquires music labels in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada MUMBAI, Dec 27: Leading music company Tips Industries Ltd has acquired music labels in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada languages.......more ‘Watch out India, Russia is competing with you in IT’ NEW YORK, Dec 27: Russia is slowly competing with India as market for outsourcing software development by the American companies, an ...more |
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NPCIL all set to meet new challenges in 21st century MUMBAI, Dec 27: Although the country’s nuclear power programme aimed at reaching a target of 10,000 mw by 2000 remained a dream, the Nuclear...more CRISIL gives MUMBAI,Dec 27: The Credit Rating Information Services of India Ltd (CRISIL) has placed the ‘A -’ rating assigned to the Rs 264.2 million...more
China hopes to emulate India’s success in software exports BEIJING, Dec 27: China hopes to emulate the success of India’s software sector by giving priority to Research and Development (R&D) in the tenth five .. .....more WASHINGTON, Dec 27: The year 2000 may be looked back upon in the technology world as the year of transition. There was ........more |
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Package for weak banks soon: Patil NEW DELHI, Dec 27: The Government will soon come out with a package for the revival of weak public sector banks on the recommendations of a group set up for the purpose, Minister of State for Finance Balasaheb Vikhe Patil has said. The group in the ministry was likely to submit its report ahead of the Republic Day or latest by March, Mr Patil told UNI. The package would seek to help the weak banks without placing any burden on the Government, he said. The group was going into the suggestions from banks which had primarily sought subsidisation of the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) and infusion of some fresh capital to ensure debt-equity ratio norms. The VRS, being offered by various banks with slight modifications in the Indian Banks Association (IBA) model, had met with a good response as these were very flexible, providing among other things, the option to rejoin service after five years but without the seniority benefit. The total number of those who opted for the vrs would be available by the end of January, he said. As of now, it was clear that employees "are enthused and there are a number of takers" for the VRS. Asked about the steps being taken to reduce Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) which amounted to a staggering Rs 60,000 crore, he said a one-time settlement was being offered to defaulters, including companies and individuals. "There are some problems" with loans of below Rs five crore, while those involving above this amount was being referred to the boards of the respective banks on a case-by-case basis. Expressing the hope that the recovery this year would be "good," Mr Patil said about Rs 3,000 crore was recovered in the first seven months of this fiscal. Against willful defaulters, banks were taking hard action without sparing anyone. The property and assets of such defaulters were being attached to recover the dues. Asked about lending to the priority sectors, the minister said that while the target was 40 per cent, the average lending was about 42 per cent. Some banks had even achieved 55 per cent lending to such sectors. However, he admitted that there was some shortfall in some areas such as agriculture. While the 18 per cent target for agriculture was exceeded in some parts of Uttar Pradesh, it fell short in some states. He expressed the hope that banks would achieve the target by making use of the Kisan Credit Card Scheme, the expansion of which was the only way to help farmers raise output. The scheme, which offered funds at less expensive rates, could be used by farmers for insurance as well. (UNI) |
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NEW DELHI, Dec 27: Precious metals gained further momentum on the bullion market today as both the precious metals usurge on local buying influenced by higher overseas advices and closed with gains. Marketmen said despite closure of some of the overseas bullion markets, prices of gold was up at 274.50 US dollar per ounce. They said trading activity remained thin as most of traders were in holiday mood as the year-end is approaching. Standard gold and ornaments jumped up further by Rs.15 at Rs.4595 and Rs.4445 per ten gram respectively. Sovereign, on the other hand, remained unchanged at Rs 3825 per piece of eight gram. Silver ready was also better by Rs.30 at Rs.7630 per kilo along with the bullish trend. Silver weekly delivery was higher by Rs.25 at Rs.7645 per kilo. Silver coins were quoted at Rs.10,900/11,100 per 100 pieces against the previous level of Rs.10,900/11,000. The following were today’s quotations: Silver ready 7630 and delivery 7645. Silver coins buyer 10,900 and seller 11,100 standard gold 4595, ornaments 4445 and sovereign 3825. (PTI) |
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Tips acquires music labels in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada MUMBAI, Dec 27: Leading music company Tips Industries Ltd has acquired music labels in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada languages. The prominent labels are Swar Sudha Recording Company of Tenali with 191 devotional titles in Telugu, Kannada and Tamil, Karanth Enterprises, Bangalore with 74 devotional titles in Tulu, Eshwari Enterprises, Dumutu with 97 devotional songs in Tulu Cauvery Recording Co, Vijaywada with 70 film tracks, 40 basic devotional songs in Telugu stereogram, Vijaywada with 50 film tracks and four devotional songs in Telugu. With this acquisition Tips is ready to enter the regional music industry. In addition to the above acquisition, Tips has also acquired the film audio rights of some of the regional language films like Ennavale (Tamil) whose audio has already been released, Deena (Tamil) whose audio was released on December 22, Hoo Anthiya Bhoo Anthiya (Kannada) whose audio is slated for release on January 5, 2001 and Maa Aavida Needothu (Telugu) slated for release on January one next year. Other films, whose audio right have been purchased, but release is still some time away are Mee Aavida Chala Nancitidi (Telugu) and Samnatham Tharuvala (Tamil). (UNI) |
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‘Watch out India, Russia is competing with you in IT’ NEW YORK, Dec 27: Russia is slowly competing with India as market for outsourcing software development by the American companies, an economic magazine has said. India is the reigning king of software outsourcing but its advantage is beginning to erode, Forbes International says in an article entitled, ‘Watch out, India, Russia wants to be a part of your software outsourcing business.’ But Russians, it adds, don’t expect to take big bites out of India’s outsourcing revenues anytime soon. "For now, they are happy to nibble at the edges. But Russia has its own shining future ahead of it," a co-manager at Intel’s Nizhni Novgorod Software Lab Alexei Odinokov was quoted as saying. An Indian programmer, Forbes says, earns on an average 7,000 to 8,000 dollars a year, the same as Moscow techs tend to earn. But the same level of talent can be purchased in Russia’s outlying areas for about 3000 to 4000 dollars, Forbes stresses. "And the heavily populated areas of Russia are much closer to the west than India is, making it easier to do business," it says. But the recruitment process is weak in Russia and to solve that problem, large multinationals have set up their own operations on the ground, typically headed by Russian and western management specialists, the magazine says. (PTI) |
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NPCIL all set to meet new challenges in 21st century MUMBAI, Dec 27: Although the country’s nuclear power programme aimed at reaching a target of 10,000 mw by 2000 remained a dream, the Nuclear Power Corporation India Limited (NPCIL) has not lost heart and set yet another target of providing 20,000 mw to the nation by 2020 thanks to improved performance during the year. The morale of the NPCIL officials seemed to be very high despite the failure to reach the target for 2000 as they created several records in reducing the gestation period for building a power plant to narrowing the time gap between commissioning of a plant and synchronising of power to the grids. The year 2000 also proved to be very fruitful for NPCIL with commissioning of four units of 220 mw each Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR)— Kaiga 1 and 2 and Rajasthan 3 and 4, taking the total installed capacity for nuclear power to 2670 mw, besides operating all the 14 plants at an average 81 per cent of capacity and making over Rs 500 crore profit. NPCIL has also opened up itself for joint ventures/ private/public participation to handle its multi-type nuclear power reactors projects planned for the next 20 years by way of reforming and restructuring itself. AEC and NPCIL are working together for necessary amendments to Atomic Energy Act of 1962 to facilitate it. The Chairman and Managing Director of NPCIL V K Chaturvedi said these achievements during the year had established technological capabilities and maturity of both NPCIL and Indian industry. During the current year, NPCIL has also chalked out a programme to restructure and upgrade its manpower to man different types of nuclear power reactors including light water, pressurised light water, larger sized pressurised heavy water and fast breeder reators, Chaturvedi said. Efforts are being made by NPCIL to reduce project gestation period upto five and a half years by incorporating innovative and modular design concepts among other measures, Chaturvedi said. NPCIL has made a world record by bringing down the number of days taken from commissioning of a power plant and synchronising it with the grid to 16 days in the case of Kaiga 1 and 2 and Rajasthan 3 and 4 to 14 days as against a world standard of 55 days. NPCIL also made world record in commercialising the power within 40 days in Kaiga and 33 days in Rajasthan plants. Other achievements were upgrading the Rajasthan unit 2 to enhance its life by another 15 years and plant life extension work that is being carried out for Tarapur Atomic power station. During this year, all the nuclear power plants were being certified for ISO 14,000 on environmental management system and Narora Atomic Power Plant has already been conferred upon ISO 14,000, he said. (PTI) |
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CRISIL gives Tata SSl ‘A’ rating MUMBAI,Dec 27: The Credit Rating Information Services of India Ltd (CRISIL) has placed the ‘A -’ rating assigned to the Rs 264.2 million debentures programme of Tata SSL Limited (Tata SSL) on rating watch with positive implication. A CRISIL news release said here today, this follows the Tata Iron and Steel Company Ltd (TISCO ‘s CRISIL rated AA "/FAAA/P1 ") open offer for acquiring the balance 55 per cent stake in Tata SSL at a price of Rs 27 per share. Currently 45 per cent of Tata SSL is held by TISCO and its wholly owned subsidiary, Kalimatri Investment Company Ltd (KALIMATI) while the rest is with various corporate bodies and institutions and public shareholders. With this acquisition,Tata SSL will be fully owned by TISCO and Kalimati, CRISIL is in dialogue with the management of both the companies to ascertain the various modalities and implications of the above initiatives on the rated instruments. A final view of the rating of Tata SSL will be taken after making a detailed assessment of the impact of these developments, the release added.(UNI) |
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China hopes to emulate
India’s BEIJING, Dec 27: China hopes to emulate the success of India’s software sector by giving priority to Research and Development (R&D) in the tenth five year plan (2001-05), Minister of Science and Technology Zhu Lilan said here today. "We are optimistic about the future of our software industry," Zhu said while commenting on China’s potential to emerge as software giant in the new millennium, more or less on par with that of countries like India and Ireland. Addressing a press conference, Zhu said that the guiding principle under the 10th five-year plan is to carry out the strategy of "rejuvenating the country through science and education" and the Government would invest heavily into improving China’s high-technology sectors. Zhu told reporters that both India and Ireland have concentrated on overseas markets while China concentrated mainly on its domestic market, which remains to be tapped. She noted that while India’s software developers mainly targeted the US market, their counterparts in Ireland exported software in some 20 European languages to the European countries. However, she commented that the software industry situation in China and India was quite different. She noted that India’s domestic software market was not as developed as its exports front. On the other hand, China’s domestic market was huge and developing fast. But China’s software export was only minimal. (PTI) |
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WASHINGTON, Dec 27: The year 2000 may be looked back upon in the technology world as the year of transition. There was a transition on the desktop from Windows 98 to Windows me and to Windows 2000. In removable storage, the transition was from zip and jazz drives to rewritable CDs. In hardware, there were many transitions taking place - from large, bulky cathode ray tube monitors to sleek, flat-panel displays from standard keyboards and mice to wireless and infrared devices and from inkjet printers filled with compromises to ones that can rival the quality of laser printers and produce good quality colour photos to boot. So what’s ahead for 2001? as always, the short answer is "a lot of cool gadgets and tech toys." But the real news for the majority of consumers is that 2001 will likely see the maturation of a host of products that were making the transition into the mainstream in 2000. You can call 2000 "the year that wasn’t" for Microsoft’s new Windows 2000 operating system. Many in the industry expected Windows 2000 to take the desktop by storm. But many were wrong. Companies averse to adopting "1.0" versions of any new operating system stayed away from Windows 2000 in droves, insisting that they were satisfied with Windows NT and would wait until Microsoft released a "service pack" or two before considering a move. Consumers, meanwhile, balked at the steep hardware requirements of Windows 2000 - and they were not sufficiently dissatisfied with the performance of Windows 98 and later Windows ME to want to make the switch. But in 2001, you can expect Windows 2000 to encroach substantially upon the territory of its predecessors. There are many reasons that this will happen, not the least of which is that Windows 2000 is now a mature, stable platform which has been upgraded with one service pack (or upgrade) and many enhancements since its release. Also, most software and hardware vendors have now upgraded their products to work seamlessly with Windows 2000. Last year, early adopters of the robust operating system were frustrated by the snail’s pace that manufacturers took when making their products compatible with the new platform. Home users are likely to wait some time before moving to Windows 2000 in droves. But the switch to the Windows 2000 platform is inevitable, even for them. The reason is that Microsoft’s next operating system - currently code-named whistler - will signal the end of the line for the DOS-based Windows 98/ME platforms. Whistler will be based entirely on the technology behind Windows 2000. When it comes to monitors, almost everyone agrees on two points: Today’s traditional monitors are too heavy and take up too much desktop space, and the sleek flat-panel displays cost too much. Thankfully, the second part of that equation is changing quickly, and you can expect flat-panel displays to begin usurping the bulky, Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors on many desktops in 2001. The reasons: Prices of flat-panel monitors are quickly falling within reach of many computer users’ budgets, the latest generation screens are compatible with the majority of today’s graphic cards, and the standard 15-inch flat panel monitor gives you as much screen real estate as does a typical 17-inch crt. There’s never enough storage pace, and this is just one reason why DVD-RAM will become a mainstream commodity in 2001. DVD-RAM is a writable and rewritable form of DVD (which stands for "Digital Versatile Disc"). Currently, DVD is a marginalised product, of interest only to those who wish to play movies on their PCs -admittedly a small group. But when we are able to write to DVDs at affordable prices, the game will change entirely. The primary interest in writable DVDs lies in their capacity - a whopping 16 gb can be written to a double-sided, double-density disc. That means that DVDs could be used not only for archiving the mounds of digital photos and digital audio files currently cramping the hard drives of many computer users, but they can also be used as a viable backup medium for entire hard drives. What’s holding DVD-RAM back? they are currently very expensive a DVD-RAM set-up will run you about 500 dollars. In addition, CD-RW drives have become so popular that they have temporarily made DVD-RAM a side-show. But because of their limited storage capacity, CD-RW drives won’t last long, and DVD-RAM will gradually replace these drives as prices decrease through the first half of 2001. The year 2000 will be remembered as a turning point for digital cameras - and to some degree, digital video camcorders. If you didn’t buy a digital camera in 2000, chances are good you at least thought about buying one - or you did some research on them. The reason that digital cameras have become popular is that their quality is finally competitive - and in some cases better - than the quality you can receive from traditional film-based cameras. Plus, there are many advantages of digital cameras over traditional units: you can have complete artistic control over your photos, you can take as many pictures as you like without worrying about the cost of film, and you can print out just those pictures that you would like - assuming you have a colour printer at home. In addition, the cost of digital cameras came within reach of many budgets in 2000. In 2001, expect digital camera makers to leverage their growing installed base of users with a plethora of upgraded models designed both to push the limits of the technology and to entice people to upgrade their cameras. In 2000, cameras boasting a resolution of 3.1 megapixels were at the top of the consumer-level category, but already late in the year some manufacturers were pushing that limit. But as digital camera consumers become more sophisticated about picture taking, you can expect their demands for high-quality units to increase as well. The rush to meet those raised expectations was already apparent in late 2000, when manufacturers such as olympus released the sturdy, 35mm-like E-10 and E-100 cameras, and Canon, with its new EOS D30 camera, began bridging the gap between consumer-level and professional-level digital cameras. Colour inkjet printers became affordable over the past two years. But that does not mean that they could match the quality and durability of laser printers. That’s changing, though - to the point that colour inkjet printers now makes sense as laser replacements for most users. What’s more, over the next year, you can expect to see colour printers that can reproduce photography of stunning quality. Already, the Epson 2000P and Epson 1270 printers are leading the way in this regard. The Epson 2000P is the first desktop printer capable of reproducing photographs of archival quality - intended to last as long as 200 years. Clearly for a lot of people traditional computers and notebooks are simply too constraining. PCs require that you sit at a desk, and notebooks computers continue to be too heavy and too power-hungry. That’s why Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) - small, hand-held, computerised organisers and computing devices - took off in 2000. Expect good things from this category of consumer electronics in 2001: prices will come down, features will be loaded on, and more people will come to rely on them for everything from scheduling e-mail to note-taking. In the traditional application arena, there’s nothing more cutting-edge than speech recognition. And the big news is not that the technology exists - it has since the late ’80s - but that it has finally reached a point of accuracy that makes it usable. But will that make it mainstream in 2001? probably not. The main reason is that although speech recognition is surprisingly accurate if you take the time to "train" the program to recognise your voice, the technology is not yet "speaker independent," meaning that you cannot sit down at any PC containing speech recognition software and expect the pc to recognise what you say. Of all of the technologies likely to change the way you use the computer in 2001, broadband internet access is likely to have the largest impact. That’s because you probably already use the internet on a daily basis. It’s just that, for most people, using the internet still means waiting for pages to download. With broadband, everything changes - and the telecommunications companies are finally beginning to be able to meet the demand with high-speed Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), and cable companies are pitching in with high-speed cable access. What’s more, with high-speed, two-way satellite internet technology now also a viable option, 2001 may be the year that finally takes you into the internet fast lane. (DPA) |
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