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Lockout continues SILIGURI, June 26: The efforts of the Deputy Labour Commissioner to lift the lock-out from ....more
FARIDABAD, June 26: The Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala has cautioned....more Indian
IT seminar TOKYO, June 26: The World Trade Centre Osaka today said it will hold an Information....more MTNL to compensate consumer for faulty telephone NEW DELHI, June 26: A city consumer court has ...more |
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Attukonchu fresh KOCHI, June 26: Attukonchu or Scampi, a variety of giant fresh water prawn once plentiful in the Kuttanad region of Kerala is set to make a comeback with Vietnamese assistance. . ...more PHUKET, THAILAND, June 26: Asian wheat consumption is unlikely to drop in the coming months despite higher world prices, a senior US trade official said. ...more
Gold
prices bounce NEW DELHI, June 26: Gold prices bounced back on the bullion market on local buying in the face of restricted supply and closed with gains. ...more |
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FARIDABAD, June 26: The Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala has cautioned the farmers against the ill-designs of those vested interests who were trying to create panic among them in the name of WTO. "The interests of the farmers were safe in the hands of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Heavy duty would be imposed on the import of agricultural products to safeguard the country’s exports and the interests of the farmers would be fully protected," he said. He reminded that the Prime Minister had safeguarded the interests of milk producers by imposing 60 per cent import duty on milk. The Chief Minister was speaking after inaugurating the building of Mewat model school at Hathin in this district last evening. He said that the State Government had been taking steps to promote agriculture sector besides other related sectors. He said that a Livestock Development Board had been set up besides sending a delegation of farmers to Israel so as to apprise them of the latest technological developments. "The Government was also laying stress on diversification of crops by encouraging the farmers to take up cultivation of vegetables, fruits and flowers." Mr Chautala said that the Government was laying stress on the development of Mewat area. He urged the people to educate girls as the Government had been implementing a number of schemes for their education. He added that seats had been reserved for them in polytechnics. (UNI) |
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Indian IT seminar to be held in Osaka TOKYO, June 26: The World Trade Centre Osaka today said it will hold an Information Technology (IT) seminar jointly with India’s Hyderabad Software Exporters’ Association in Osaka on July 3. The seminar, "India Hyderabad Information Technology enterprise seminar", will provide the most recent information about Indian IT enterprises and software development. The IT industry has been growing rapidly in India in recent years, and software exports especially has kept growing about 50 per cent annually since 1995. The Hyderabad software association is made up of about 150 software companies in Hyderabad in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad is the second largest concentration of software enterprises in India, according to a spokeswoman at the World Trade Centre Osaka. The Association’s President, J.A. Chowdary, will give a speech at the seminar, following business negotiations between six Indian IT companies and Japanese companies. The trade centre official said 47 Japanese companies, including Mitsubishi Electric, Toshiba and Matsushita, will participate in the seminar. (AGENCIES) |
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MTNL to compensate consumer for faulty telephone NEW DELHI, June 26: A city consumer court has ordered Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) to pay a compensation of Rs 2,500 to a consumer whose telephone did not work properly for about eight months. The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum (north district), which found MTNL guilty of deficiency in service, also asked it to pay a further amount of Rs 1,000 as cost of litigation to complainant Banawari Lal Sharma. "Since telephone of the complainant did not work properly for about eight months and during this period telephone of the complainant was out of order quite off and on, to that extent we hold the MTNL guilty of deficiency in service," Forum President P K Jain and member P N Gupta said in an order. However, the forum rejected Sharma’s plea for refund of full rental for the whole period during which his telephone did not work properly as MTNL had already given him rent rebate except for some days. Sharma, a resident of New Rohtak road, had approached the forum after his telephone allegedly remained out of order from August 18 last year to April 23 this year. He had demanded Rs 25,000 as compensation for the alleged deficiency in service, mental pain and agony, besides the cost of litigation and rent rebate for the eight months. On its part MTNL had filed a written statement claiming that Sharma’s telephone did not remain out of order for the entire eight months and that he had already been allowed rent rebate. (PTI) |
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Attukonchu fresh water prawn makes comeback with Vietnam help KOCHI, June 26: Attukonchu or Scampi, a variety of giant fresh water prawn once plentiful in the Kuttanad region of Kerala is set to make a comeback with Vietnamese assistance. Scampi (macrobrachium rosenberg II), is known for its fast growth, disease resistance and premium price both in the domestic and foreign markets. It is being popularised in various parts of the country both as an integrated crop with paddy and as a mono crop. Vietnam had learnt the technology in Scampi culture from neighbouring Malaysia in the early 1990s. It has deputed two experts from its Aquaculture and Fisheries Science Institute of Cantho University, to the school of Industrial Fisheries of the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) here for imparting a brief training programme on hatchery and grow-out technologies. This is under a project approved by the Netherlands University Foundation for International Co-operation (NUFFIC). Scampi had gradually vanished from Kuttanad in the early 1970s due to depletion of the stock as a result of various man-made changes in the ecosystem. CUSAT had sought Vietnamese technical help because of the high survival rate of over 50 per cent of Scampi seeds under lab conditions in that country as compared to 20 per cent in Indian conditions, according to Dr B Madhusoodana Kurup, Co-ordinator, Training and Principal Investigator, NUFFIC programme. Dr Kurup, who had led a two-member CUSAT team for a brief training programme in Scampi larviculture in Vietnam early this year, said India had woken up only recently to realise its backwardness in fishery development despite having many geographical, climatic and economic advantages. Dr Kurup and Mr Tran Ngoc Hai, one of the Vietnamese fishery experts here to impart the training programme, told UNI that Kuttanad was identical in climatic conditions to the Mekong Delta of Vietnam where scampi cultivation is being taken up extensively. Scampi has received wide acceptance as the most suitable species among fresh water prawns in most of the southeast Asian countries due to wide consumer acceptance, Dr Kurup said. Dr G Santhana Krishnan, Marine Scientist and Joint Director, (Aquaculture) of the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), said though India had made rapid progress in the production and export of fresh water prawns, its vast potential in this sector still remained unexplored. India, which was producing hardly 200 tonne of Scampi, also known as macrobrachium rosenberg II, till 1996, had exported 16,000 tonne of this species during last year as against 7,000 tonne in 1999-2000, registering a whopping 130 per cent growth in terms of quantity as compared to the previous year. Thailand’s Scampi production was a record 100,000 last year, he added. While India was endowed with an estimated 5.4 million hectares of fresh water resources and over 171,334 km length of rivers and canals, the country was utilising only 12,000 hectares for fresh water prawn culture, Dr Santhana Krishnan said. The MPEDA, he said, was extending technical and financial assistance up to 25 per cent of the capital subject to a maximum of Rs 30,000 per hectare water area with a ceiling of Rs 1.5 lakh per beneficiary for development of Scampi farms. It was providing up to Rs five lakh for establishing Scampi hatcheries of 30 million seed capacity and above. In Kerala, the Kuttanad region alone has 55,000 hectares suitable for scampi farming both as integrated farming with paddy and as mono crop besides another 30,000 hectares of kole lands (agricultural lands subject to flooding) in Thrissur district. There was scope for harvesting three scampi crops in a span of two years, he said. Besides extending training facilities in scampi cultivation, the CUSAT has also developed a highly economical and protein-rich prawn feed costing hardly Rs 13 per kg against commercial feeds costing Rs 30 per kg. The CUSAT feed was now being widely used in Kuttanad area, Dr Kurup said. He said he was impressed by the entrepreneural skills exhibited by Ms Achaamma Kurien, who had harvested 900 kg of Scampi per hectare using the cheap farm feeds in her two hectare land in Kuttanad area. She was now experimenting with her third crop. This was the first venture in the area after the university started popularising Scampi cultivation in the recent past, he said. Dr Kurup said he was confident that the Kuttanand farmers, distressed by the low returns from paddy for long, would take to scampi cultivation in right earnest, especially in view of the success achieved by Ms Kurien. In the early 1990s, the country had availed of the technical expertise from Hawaii, US, in Tiger Prawn Cultivation. Its production had now reached nearly 100,000 tonnes per year, he said. With the growing interest being shown by farmers in various parts of the country to cultivate Scampi, its seeds were being imported and even smuggled from countries like Thailand because of high demand, MPEDA Chairman K Jose Cyriac said. (UNI) |
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PHUKET, THAILAND, June 26: Asian wheat consumption is unlikely to drop in the coming months despite higher world prices, a senior US trade official said. Rising prices — thanks to declining world wheat stocks — are unlikely to deter importers such as Japan and South Korea, although other Asian countries might reduce demand, said Alan Tracy, president of the US wheat associates yesterday. "We are going to have price rises, probably over the next six months to one year, that could be substantial. Asia is well-positioned for that.," Tracy told Reuters on the sidelines of the three-day south Asian wheat buyers conference. "There are certain markets like Japan and South Korea where the volumes won’t be affected at all. But there are other markets where I think that prices are going to have an impact." Earlier this month the US Agriculture Department cut its world wheat output estimate for 2001/02 to 569.35 million tonnes, down from last month’s 572.35 million due to crop shortfalls in leading producing countries such as the United States and China. Tracy said the US trade was closely watching the weather in China amid a sharp downward revision in wheat crop estimates by USDA and other industry organisations. "But in China, it is not the crop size that is the issue but the size of stocks. The shortfall they are going to have this year...They can cover it out of the existing stocks. They don’t have a big import need in the near term," Tracy said. According to China’s state cereals information centre, the country’s winter wheat output in 2001 - which accounts for almost the entire output — is expected to be 87 million tonnes, down 7.1 per cent from last year. But tracy expected the world wheat market to change once China joined the World Trade Organisation. "China do have substantial commitments to open up their market if they join the WTO — that is likely to happen, say, near the end of this year. Then they could start to buy more wheat, which could help spark a price rally, he said. Tracy was hopeful that US wheat would raise its market share in Asia, currently at 30 per cent of total US exports. "We expect that ratio to grow but it is difficult to predict just how this is going to work out over the next year or two — with tightening supplies, increases in prices and some of the economic difficulties that are still here (in Asia)," he said. He said US wheat sales growth in the coming months would largely depend on the size of the Australian and Canadian crops, which he added could possibly be lower than last year. "Australia and Canada — those two countries in particular don’t keep much in the way of stocks," Tracy said. He said the United States was striving to increase its share in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam — markets dominated by Australia — but that was not proving to be easy. "It has been slow for us in Vietnam. Australia has marketed its wheat very aggressively in Vietnam. We are working very hard on that market but we are yet to see very much by the way of results. But we are not giving up" he said. Australia controls about 60 per cent of the Indonesian wheat market, about 80 percent of Vietnam and nearly 70 per cent of the Malaysian market. Th United States has a meagre 10 per cent or less in those markets. Tracy said US sales to the Philippines, Japan and South Korea were steady, although Australian wheat was gaining ground in the noodles market in South Korea. "We think in the future, US will have some hard white wheats that will allow us to do a better job of competing for noodle wheat, not just in Korea but all of Asia," Rracy said. Australia is a very stong competitor in the noodles market. Our soft white wheat is a little too soft for many kinds of noodles,’’ he said. (REUTERS) |
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Gold prices bounce bank in positive zone NEW DELHI, June 26: Gold prices bounced back on the bullion market on local buying in the face of restricted supply and closed with gains. Silver on the other hand, continued to seek lower levels on persistent selling by domestic stockists. Marketmen said gold prices recovered on local customers buying in the face of tight stocks position and helped the prices to move up. They said a recovery move on the international markets where gold climbed up by 1.60 US dollar at 274.25 US dollar an ounce also influenced the trading activity. Standard gold and ornaments gained Rs.15 each at Rs.4465 and Rs.4315 per ten gram respectively. Sovereign, however, held at the last level of Rs.3725 per piece of eight gram on scattered support. Silver ready lost another Rs.10 at Rs.7210 per kilo and weekly-based by a same margin at Rs.7230 per kilo. Silver coins continued to be asked at the last level of Rs.10,900/11,000 per 100 pieces. The following were today’s quotations: Silver ready 7210 and delivery 7230. Silver coins buyer 10,900 and seller 11,000 standard gold 4465, ornaments 4315 and sovereign 3725. (PTI) |
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