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| Yamaha Motor ties up with Bank of Baroda Excelsior Correspondent JAMMU, Nov 18: Yamaha Motor India has announced its tie up with Bank of Baroda to offer attractive two-wheeler loan schemes to the customers.......more India
confident of KOLKATA, Nov 18: India is confident of achieving the 12 per cent growth target for exports by the end of the current fiscal....more Polo amusement plans major investments abroad NEW DELHI, Nov 18: Polo Amusement Park Ltd, which runs the fun’n’food village theme .....more Mineral
production NEW DELHI, Nov 18: The mineral production has recorded a positive growth of 4.4 per cent......more |
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Scitex digital printing introduces new product line up in India MUMBAI, Nov 18: Scitex digital printing will officially introduce its new product line up and strategy....more Rbi fixes
dollar MUMBAI, Nov 18: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today fixed the reference rate at....more BHEL wins
power NEW DELHI, Nov 18: State-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd said today it has bagged......more Crisil
assigns P1 for MUMBAI, Nov 18 : Crisil has assigned P1 rating for the Rs 25 crore Commercial Paper (CP) programme of Supreme...more |
Yamaha Motor ties up with Bank of Baroda Excelsior Correspondent JAMMU, Nov 18: Yamaha Motor India has announced its tie up with Bank of Baroda to offer attractive two-wheeler loan schemes to the customers. The tie up will enable Yamaha Motor India to expand its reach within the country by utilizing Bank of Baroda’s over 2750 strong bank network including branches of the Bank in Jammu and Kashmir. Through this agreement, Yamaha Motor’s customers will get loan options at a remarkably competitive rate of interest on all Yamaha products. With this strategic tie-up, the company seeks to consolidate this position across all segments. Bank of Baroda has also identified customer and two wheeler finance as a major focus activity. The two players have now tied together to make the two-wheeler buying much easier both for urban and rural customers. Yamaha Motor India Private Limited made its initial foray into India in 1985. Subsequently in 1996, it entered into a 50:50 joint venture with Escorts Group. However by mutual consent, Yamaha acquired stake in the remaining half as well two years ago, bringing Indian operations under its complete control as a 100 percent subsidiary of Yamaha Motor Company Limited, Japan. The company pioneered the the volume bike segment with the launch of its 100 cc 2 stroke motor cycle RX100. Since then it has introduced an entire range of 2 stroke and 4 stroke bikes in India. Today its products like kitty include CRUX, CRUX R in the standard segment, Libero in the deluxe segment and Enticer and RX 135 in the pleasure segment. |
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India confident of achieving 12% export target: Jaitley KOLKATA, Nov 18: India is confident of achieving the 12 per cent growth target for exports by the end of the current fiscal despite the hardening of the rupee and the weakening of the dollar in recent times, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Jaitley said today. With the international economies like the US showing signs of revival, the exports were set to grow as the purchasing powers will increase following the revival, Mr Jaitley told reporters here. During the last six months the country recorded a double digit growth of 10 per cent despite tremendous pressure on the dollar, he said adding that September was the turnaround month as the economic activity started picking up during that time. The country registered a 18 per cent growth in 2002-03 despite the continuous rupee hardening factor and the effect on the businesses worldwide after the 9/11, he said. Earlier, speaking on the occasion of inaguration of international trade facilitation centre, he urged the exporters of the country to be competitive and said the Centre would enable minimising the procedural delays that add to the cost of the product and make it less competitive. The minimisation of procedural delays will enable reduction of cost to the rate of about 14 per cent, he said. Highlighting the potentials of the eastern region in the service sector, he said manufacturing also needs attention as it meets disguised unemployment from the agricultural sector. He expressed satisfaction over the economic growth of the country and said the country would soon emerge as a super power in exports. The facilitation Centre would house the Apex Export Promotion Councils like the Engineering Export Promotion Council, the Capexil, the Shellac Export Promotion Council, the Plastics Export Promotuion Council, the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, the Export Import Bank of India and India Trade Promotion Organisation. Minister of State for Commerce and Industries S B Mookherjee said the Centre would act as a single window for exports in the east which lacked the required infrastructure. He also hailed the gesture of the State Government in waiving the Rs one crore stamp duty for the facilitation Centre in which the Union goGernment lent Rs 6.50 crore for construction. State Commerce and Industry Minister Nirupam Sen said West Bengal, which mainly exports agri-products, gems and jewellery among others, has set a target of achieving nine per cent share in the country’s exports by 2007. We have already garnered a share of 4.8 per cent in the recent times, he said. He said the efforts of the state like formulation of the West Bengal Export Policy and setting up of foundry park, Manikanchan, the Gems and Jewellery Export Park and Falta Special Economic Zone (SEZ) were efforts in that direction. He also emphasised on the growth of the iron and steel sector in the state. Union Commerce Secretary Dipak Chatterjee and Engineering Export Promotion Council vice-chairman Rakesh Shah also spoke on the occasion. (UNI) |
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Polo amusement plans major investments abroad NEW DELHI, Nov 18: Polo Amusement Park Ltd, which runs the fun’n’food village theme parks, is looking beyond Indian shores and plans to enter new markets like Australia, Thailand and Uzbekistan with the aim of making 70 million dollar in turnover investment. Papl managing director Balwant Chawla told UNI that the company was looking at investments overseas on expectations of good growth. "For this expansion drive, our company would be investing 100 million Australian dollars for the venture in Australia and four million US dollars for the Thai venture. "These would be made through our 100 per cent-owned subsidiaries in these countries," Mr Chawla said. For Uzbekistan, he said Papl had entered into a 50:50 joint venture with the city of Tashkent as part of which the two would make an investment of four million dollars to fund the theme park project. He said Papl, which runs two theme parks in India, would be funding the investments through internal accruals as well as debt. "Our two parks in India, one at Delhi and the other at Nagpur, are doing well and we expect a 8-10 per cent growth annually as the nascent market expands with time," he said. Mr Chawla said to diversify the offerings of their parks and make them an attractive destination, the company had tied up with a Japanese firm to open a snow park at their Delhi property. "The new attraction at fun ‘n’ foods will be the snow park which is a one-of-its kind facility and will offer features like skiing, skating and ice hockey," he said. The snow park, to be called polo Patine Lazer Snow Park, has been developed in collaboration with Japanese companies Patine and Lazer. Papl and the its Japanese partners had also set up a manufacturing facility at Nagpur in Maharashtra where they would be making equipment used for theme parks. "Currently, the indigenisation level is at a low 10 per cent and we expect that by the year 2005, we can source all components locally," Mr Chawla said. He said apart from catering to the domestic market, the Nagpur manufacturing facility would also look at exports. "The CIS countries, Middle East and neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will be where we would market products manufactured here," he said. Papl holds 50 per cent stake in the new venture while the two Japanese partners hold 25 per cent each. Mr Chawla said the ‘theme park’ market in India looked promising and the company expected the volumes to grow with time. "Although the concept entered late, it is witnessing one of the fastest growths." The two parks run by the company saw nearly one million visitors last year and Mr Chawla said they expected the numbers to go up by ten per cent this year. Asked why the company was making investments overseas despite expecting good growth in the Indian market, he said their research had shown that it was difficult in India to successfully run big projects. "We are into big concept parks and understand that India does not offer much of a market for large enterprises. "Therefore, we are looking at foreign markets," Mr Chawla said. (UNI) |
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Mineral production up 4.4 pc in Sept NEW DELHI, Nov 18: The mineral production has recorded a positive growth of 4.4 per cent as compared to the corresponding month of previous year. However, mineral production from mining and quarrying sector registered a marginal growth of about 0.2 per cent in September 2003 as compared to the preceding month. According to data released by the ministry of mines, the total value of mineral production excluding atomic and minor minerals in the country during September 2003 was Rs 4,679 crore as compared to Rs 4,648 crore in August 2003. The contribution of coal was the highest at Rs 1,709 crore, recording a growth of 37 per cent. Next in the order of importance were crude petroleum Rs 1,513 crore, utilised natural gas Rs 737 crore, iron ore Rs 238 crore, lignite Rs 153 crore and limestone Rs 119 crore. These six minerals together contributed 96 per cent of total value of mineral production in September 2003. Production level of important minerals in September 2003 were coal 261 lakh tonnes, lignite 22 lakh tonnes, utilised natural gas 2,544 million cu. M., crude petroleum 27 lakh tonnes, bauxite 775 thousand tonnes, chromite 217 thousand tonnes, copper concentrate 11 thousand tonnes, gold 294 Kg, iron ore 79 lakh tonnes, lead concentrate 6 thousand tonnes, manganese ore 123 thousand tonnes, zinc concentrate 51 thousand tonnes, apatite and phosphorite 103 thousand tonnes, dolomite 299 thousand tonnes, limestone 119 lakh tonnes and magnesite 28 thousand tonnes. During September 2003, the output of apatite and phosphorite increased by 62 per cent, gold 26 per cent, zinc concentrate 21 per cent, iron ore 9 per cent, bauxite 8 per cent, lead concentrate and limestone 4 per cent each as compared to the preceding month. However, the output of magnesite decreased by 7 per cent, copper concentrate 5 per cent, utilised natural gas and dolomite 3 per cent each, manganese ore 2 per cent and lignite 1 per cent. The production of coal, crude petroleum and chromite remained almost same at the level of previous month. (UNI) |
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Scitex digital printing
introduces new MUMBAI, Nov 18: Scitex digital printing will officially introduce its new product line up and strategy for Versamark printing systems in India. According to the company release, it has recently announced sweeping changes to its Versamark brand family at Xplor international, recognised worldwide as a premiere document management trade show and conference held in USA. In the product realignment, the Versamark brand family now has three distinct product lines: an entry-level monochrome series, ‘Versamark jetblack’ a mid-line series, ‘Versmark vantage’ and a high-end series, ‘Versamark ultra’. Both ‘jetblack’ and ‘vantage’ products are available with a print speed of 350 Feet Per Minute (FPM) and can be upgraded to 500 FPM. ‘ultra’ is avaialble at 500 FPM with the capability to print up to 1000 FPM. Each series offers several models of printing systems, and each model features high-speed, 100 per cent variable data digital printing technology and a modular design architecture that are the hallmarks of printing equipment from Scitex digital printing, it added. (UNI) |
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Rbi fixes dollar reference rate higher at 45.54 MUMBAI, Nov 18: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today fixed the reference rate at Rs 45.54 per US dollar, 13 paise higher than Monday’s fix of Rs 45.41. (UNI) |
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BHEL wins power generating equipment order from HNL NEW DELHI, Nov 18: State-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd said today it has bagged an order from Hindustan Newsprint Ltd for installing a 7 Mw Steam Turbine Generator (STG) set in Kerala. BHEL will install the STG in the captive power plant at Hindustan Newsprint Ltd’s Kottaysm factory, said an official statement issued here. BHEL has earlier supplied a Chemical Recovery Boiler of 140 tonnes per day capacity for HNL’s same unit at Kottayam. BHEL is responsible for manufacturing, supply, erection and commissioning of a 7 Mw STG set with associated auxiliaries. The equipment will be manufactured at the company’s Hyderabad plant. (UNI) |
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Crisil assigns P1 for supreme
industries MUMBAI, Nov 18 : Crisil has assigned P1 rating for the Rs 25 crore Commercial Paper (CP) programme of Supreme Industries Ltd. According to crisil release, the assigned rating reflects Supreme Industires Ltd’s strong market position in its diversified product segments of moulded furniture, pvc piping systems, industrial moulded components and protective packaging. However, the company’s margins continue to remain under pressure on account of processing pressures from a large unorganised sector and over capacity in the plastic processing industry. The rating is also constrained by high volatility in raw material prices, which puts pressure on operating margins. While low net profit margins, moderate debt coverage indicators and low current ratio constrain the rating, crisil expects the company to continue its efforts towards debt reduction to offset the impact of pressure on operating margins. (UNI) |
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Govt plans to bring drug
transportation MUMBAI, Nov 18: The Government is planning to bring transportation of medicines and raw materials under the ambit of drug control regulations, and will soon increase the number of medical devices under the drug and cosmetics act — presently, there are only three. This was stated by Deputy Drug Controller of India Dr M Venkateswarlu at a conference ‘CII Pharma Expo 2003’ organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here. "Drug regulations in the country have moved in tandem with the evolution of the pharmaceutical industry. In the light of dynamic changes in the pharmaceutical sector, we are contemplating a series of new measures that would perlocate down the entire supply chain, so that ultimately the public at large is benefitted," Dr Venkateswarlu said. Deputy Drug Controller informed that other initiatives that the Government has taken include upgrading of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) requirements under schedule M, issuance of guidelines for clinical trials and bio-equivalence studies, good laboratory practices for Government and private testing laboratories, concepts of Drug Master Files (DMF) for imported drugs and GMP for ayurvedic products. Speaking at the seminar, Lupin Ltd executive vice president (quality operations regulatory compliance) Dr V G Nayak stressed on the need of streamlining good pharmaceutical practices across the board for the Indian pharma sector to assume global leadership. "There are several problem areas faced by Indian companies in meeting FDA requirements including failure to inform on withdrawal of certain facilities within the plant or change of site, manufacture of different categories of drugs as well as non-pharma products (including pesticides) at the same location, difference in stated and actual testing procedures, lack of depth in stability programmes, amongst several others," Mr Nayak said. Pfizer ltd senior director S Ramakrishnan, while addressing the seminar, said that more than 15 per cent of the scientists in Pfizer’s laboratories worldwide are Indian. "Certainly Indian pharmaceutical companies can do the same thing on our own shores. In fact, Indian companies stand to gain substantially once the new Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protocol is in place in 2005," Mr Ramakrishnan said. According to him, the new IPR regime would provide a host of benefits to Indian companies like access to the USd 73 billion US and European markets. However, Indian companies need to build around core products, adding substantial value to them, rather than merely altering the process to get a copy. Mr Ramakrishnan also mentioned R D is very specialised and only companies with tremendous resources and expertise should focus energies in this direction. These are the type with 70 per cent export contribution to their toplines. Smaller companies could focus on other areas like marketing and distribution, he added. Vision IPR consulting - Advisor Dr Prabudha Ganguli, associated capsules ltd chairman and managing director Ajit Singh, Wellquest clinical research president Dr Satish Bhatia, quintiles qecg services operations head Dr Jogin Desai, Wockhardt Ltd president (domestic operations) Arvind Vasudeva, Infosys technologies consultant (domain consulting group) Giresh Murti were among those who spoke in the conference. (UNI) |
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Penthouse warns of loss, delays quarterly report LOS ANGELES, Nov 18: Publisher Penthouse international inc., whose Racy Magazine Penthouse is on the auction block after a steep drop in circulation, said on Monday it expects a net loss on lower sales in the September quarter, and delayed its quarterly report. Penthouse international, parent of Adult Magazine Penthouse, said in a filing with the securities and exchange commission that it sees net revenues for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2003, falling to 8 million from 12 million a year earlier. It said it expects to report a net loss in the quarter, but cannot be certain what the net loss will be. Penthouse international said it must delay filing its quarterly report while it works on chapter 11 bankruptcy at one of its units and deals with recent management changes. Robert Guccione, who founded Penthouse magazine, resigned as chairman and chief executive of the parent company early this month, after a steep drop in circulation put the publication on the auction block. His departure followed the August filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization by subsidiary general media inc. Penthouse international shares ended trading off 6 cents, or 1.11 percent, at 48 cents per share on Monday. (AGENCIES) |
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Japan silent on any retaliation to US steel duties TOKYO, Nov 18: Japanese Trade Minister Shoichi Nakagawa declined to disclose on Tuesday possible countermeasures Japan could take against US steel import tariffs that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruled illegal last week. Under WTO rules, Japan, the European union and other countries that had complained to the Geneva-based wto over Washington’s so-called "safeguard" steps, have until early next month to impose sanctions if Washington does not scrap the duties. "It is our duty to prepare what we can under WTO rules. But I cannot say what items would be affected or what the scale of the measures would be," Nakagawa told a news conference. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun financial daily reported at the weekend that the ministry of economy, trade and industry was considering retaliatory tariffs of some 10 billion yen ( 91.85 million) a year in five areas, such as chemical and energy products. "The figures mentioned seem to be drawn up from estimated damage that the tariffs have inflicted on our producers," Nakagawa said of the newspaper report. "However, although I think our people are steadily working on due process, I have not received any formal report," he added. US Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Monday that the tariffs had been useful, adding that the decision over whether to scrap or keep them lay with US President George W Bush. "I wasn’t part of the administration when they were (imposed) but I think they served a useful purpose for that time and we await what the President’s final decision will be in response to the WTO action," Snow said in an interview with the CNBC television network. (AGENCIES) Kotak Mahindra mutual fund
launches ‘kotak MUMBAI, Nov 18: Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund (Kotak mutual) announced the launch of the ‘Kotak gilt investment-provident fund trust plan’, an exclusive, tailor-made investment solution for provident funds and trusts in India, a company release said here. According to the release, the ‘Kotak gilt investment’ is offering tailor-made multiple maturity dates for investments to plan their investors’ future cash flows. It also offers the right to exercise a unique put option between the 23rd and the last day of each month to keep investments liquid to meet the provident funds’ payment obligations. The plan also offers a Recurring Withdrawal Facility (RWF), providing investors with the flexibility to withdraw fixed or appreciation amounts on a monthly or quartely basis. The RWF appreciation options allows provident funds to realise gains on a regular basis. Commenting on the launch, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company Ltd Director C Jayaram said, "Kotak gilt was the first of its kind to be started in India. The PF trust plan has several unique, customised features for PFs. We believe that PFs investing in this plan stand to benefit, and we expect a good response from the industry." (UNI) |
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