Maxicon to launch Myanmar-India-Bangladesh direct service..........

‘Offset clause for Aerospace can fetch big business for India’........

Inflation control and robust GDP cannot go together: FM.....

Oil regulator asks IGL to halt setting up new stations.......

Edible oil prices up on strong global cues

NEW DELHI, Apr 16: An upward trend continued in edible oil prices in the wholesale oils and oilseeds market today largely on the back of higher outside advices amidst millers buying and registered gains between Rs 100 and Rs 350 a quintal.

Non-edible oils, on the other side, were unaltered in the absence of demand from consuming industries.

Traders said apart from firming outside advices pick up in demand from vanaspati millers and local parties also gave push to rising edible oil prices.

Among edible oils, groundnut mill delivery oil posted Rs 100 higher at Rs 7,100 per quintal while cottonseed mill delivery shot up by Rs 200 at Rs 5,600 a quintal.

Soyabean refined mill delivery and soyabean degum (Delhi) in tandem with general trend traded notably higher at Rs 6,000 and Rs 5,900 a quintal.

Palmoline (RBD) oil and crude palm oil (CPO)also strengthened to Rs 5,750 and Rs 4,600 per quintal from Rs 5,450 and Rs 4,550.

Following were today's quotations in rs. Qauintal:

Oilseeds: mustard seed 2325-2500 and Groundnutseed 2700-3000.

Vanaspati ghee (15 litres tin) 875-980.

Edible oils: Groundnut mill delivery 7,100, Groundnut Solvent refined (per tin) 1210-1235, Mustard Expeller 5,650, Mustard Pakki ghani (per tin) 865-940, Mustard kachi ghani (per tin) 920-1000, Sunflower 6,500, Sesame mill delivery 7,800, Soybean Refined mill delivery 6,000, Soyabean degum (Delhi) 5,900, Crude Palm Oil (Ex-kandla) 4,600, Cottonseed mill delivery 5,600, palmoline (RBD) 5,450, Rice bran (phy) 4,600 and coconut (per tin) 915-960.

Non-edible oils: linseed 4900 Mahuwa 4400, castor 5500-6000,

Neem 3900-4000, Rice bran 3900-4050 and palm fatty 3125-3200.

Oilcakes: groundnut dehusk 770-820, Sesame 925-1125, Mustard (new) 1000-1025, Mustard 975-980 and Cottonseed 975-1100. (PTI)

Oil regulator asks IGL to halt setting up new stations

NEW DELHI, Apr 16: In a setback to the preparations for holding 2010 Commonwealth Games, oil regulator has asked CNG retailer Indraprastha Gas Ltd to stop setting up new dispensing stations in the national capital.

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board says IGL does not have "proper authorisation" for retailing CNG to automobiles and piped natural gas to households and industries in the national capital and its adjoining township of NOIDA, industry sources said.

The regulator, which did not find the numerous letters from the government and the Supreme Court order for replacing diesel in public transport vehicles with environment-friendly CNG as strong enough ground for operation of IGL, issued notices to the company to "immediately stop" all its expansion plans in the national capital and NOIDA.

Sources said PNGRB also did not take note of the fact that IGL came into existence 10 years ago when the regulator was not set up and there was no format for authorisation from the Government for beginning city gas distribution work.

PNGRB came into existence only last year.

When contacted, IGL Managing Director Om Narayan confirmed having stopped all work in the national capital on instructions from the regulator.

IGL had planned an extensive expansion of its CNG dispensing network and had planned to supply piped natural gas to the Commonwealth Games village for meeting its fuel needs. All this has been halted now, sources said.

Concerned that the surprise move may derail plans for setting up green infrastructure for the Commonwealth Games, the Petroleum Ministry is likely to take up the issue with PNGRB and explain that IGL was a creation of the Government and is not an unauthorised operator. (PTI)

Saria up on fresh buying

NEW DELHI, Apr 16: In limited deals, saria prices strengthened in the wholesale steel and iron market today on fresh buying by stockists in view of pick up in constructions activity.

However, prices of other steels remained flat on some deals.

In the saria section, Kamdhenu 8-mm,10-mm and 12-mm were traded higher at Rs.46,700, Rs.46,150 and Rs.45,160 as compared to previous levels of Rs.46,200, Rs.45,750 and Rs.44,775 per tone respectively.

Following were today's quotations in Rs per tonne:

CTD saria (kamdhenu) 8-mm, 46,700, 10-mm, 46,150, 12-mm 45,160, 16-25 mm 46,150.

Rathi tor steel : 8-mm 46,100, 10-mm 45,600, 12-mm 44,600, 16-20 mm 46,050 and 25-32 mm 46,200.

Saria Jai bharat (iso 9002) 8-mm 45,800, 10 mm 45,300 12-mm 44,500, 16-25 mm 45,000.

Amba saria (iso-9002) 8-mm 45,200, 10-mm 43,700, 12-mm 44,100, 16-25-mm 44,500.

Amba shakti: (TMT) 8-mm 46,000, 10 mm 46,200, 12 mm 44,600, 16 to 25 mm 43,900.

M S Angle: (50x5) (50x6) 40,200, (25x3) (32x3) (40x3) 39,700, (40x5) (40x6) 40,400. Angle capital (ISI) (50X5) (50X6) 42,000, (40X5) (40x6) 42,500, (35X5) (65X6) 42,700.

Garder (joist) (150x75) 42,000 (175x85) 42,200 (200x100) 42,000 (125x70) 42,200. T-IRON (40X5) (40X6)(50X6) 41,500.

Ingot and Scrap: Bhivari 32,000, Govindgarh 33,000, Ghaziabad 31,000, Muzaffarnagar 30,500. (PTI)

Maxicon to launch Myanmar-India-
Bangladesh direct service

HYDERABAD, Apr 16: Maxicon Container Line Pve Ltd, a division of city-based Seaways Group, will launch a direct Myanmar-India-Bangladesh service, with the first cargo vessel the 852 TEU capacity, "MV Marina Star 2" embarking on its maiden voyage to Chennai from Yangon on April 21.

The next vessel of 1118 TEU capacity, "MV Emirates Gondwana," planned for the first week of May, 2008, will connect Yangon directly to Nhava Sheva (Mumbai) and call on Colombo/Chittagong port in the return voyage, according to a press release here.

The direct service will significantly help to reduce the transit time and provide regular services to both East and West coasts of India.

"MV Marina Star 2" will provide thrice a month connection to the East Coast of India while "MV Emirates Gondwana" will provide fortnightly connection to the West Coast. (UNI)

‘Offset clause for Aerospace can
fetch big business for India’

BANGALORE, Apr 16: With Indian Aerospace and Defence budget expected to touch USD 100 billion mark in the next 10 years, an offset clause warranting foreign defence vendors to source 30 to 50 per cent of contract value within India, is expected to fetch several billion dollars worth of business for local industry.

The Indian offset policy states that any defence contract worth over Rs 3,000 million that India enters into with a foreign vendor will have an industrial offset liability to the extent of 30 to 50 per cent, which presents a huge opportunity for India, said Bejoy George, Vice President, Global Sales, Quest.

Quest is a provider of outsourced engineering services and manufacturing.

"The foreign vendor would therefore have to source his equipment or services from India, which is 30 to 50 percent of the contract value, which means that foreign vendors would now have to look for Indian firms to partner with them to cater to this offset obligation," he said.

"This spells business of around one billion USD annually in three to four years, up from USD 150 million currently", Bejoy said.

The Indian aerospace and defence buying budget is expected to be USD 100 billion in next 10 years - this indicates an offset value of USD 30 to 50 billion (depending on the offset percentange applicable to each order) coming into India, Bejoy said.

India’s offset clause in terms of the tender for 126 MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) states that 50 per cent of this contract value should be invested by the supplier in the country.

This again would mean a business opportunity worth USD five to six billion over a period of 7 to 10 years, starting 2012-2013, he said.

Also the long-range maritime reconnaissance (LRMR) patrol aircraft order would be worth around USD two billion, and the offset clauses would generate about USD 700 to 800 million of business to Indian firms, Bejoy said, outlining the huge potential here.

Another military aircraft order, that is expected to be placed, is for high altitude utility helicopters worth around USD 500 to 700 million.

Regarding civilian offset clause, Airbus obligations, due to sale of aircraft to Indian Airlines a couple of years ago, was expected to be to the tune of around USD 800 million.

Also, the Boeing obligation due to the sale to the erstwhile Air India (Now Indian) was expected to be around USD 2.2 billion over a period of five to seven years.

"Hence there is a definite visibility of above USD 10 billion due to military aircraft orders and civilian aircraft orders for India, over the next 7 to 1O years", he said.

The aerospace products and services which include aerospace application software, embedded systems and hardware is around USD 150 million annually as of now.

India has the opportunity to reach at least the USD one billion annually in a span of three to five years, he said.

"This growth is in line with overall engineering services business being outsourced to Indian firms; during 2004-2005, between USD 1.2 billion and USD 1.8 billion worth of engineering services were offshored to India and this figure is expected to reach between USD 45 billion and USD 65 billion by 2020", he said quoting Nasscom-Booze Allen Hamilton report on engineering services outsourcing.

According to Bejoy, another source of aerospace business coming to India would be from some of the big players in the aerospace sector in the US, Europe and Japan.

"There are multiple factors driving this. Airframe manufacturers like Boeing, Bombardier, Embraer are no longer able or willing to fully bear or fund the non-recurring engineering cost-the cost involved in developing a new aircraft from a scratch and are now shifting part of it to their tier one suppliers", Bejoy said.

The tier one suppliers are selecting ESO providers in the low cost regions that offer a labour arbitrage along with the right competencies and capabilities in avionics software and mechanical components and system development.

"This is one of the most attractive reasons for foreign firms to put Indian aerospace firms on their radar", he said.

Players like Quest who possess the capabilities and experience in collaborating to reduce NRE cost would stand a good chance in bagging orders from foreign firms on this count, he said.

Another reason for aerospace work to come to India is the critical manpower crunch in aerospace engineers sector that countries like US, Europe and Japan are to face.

"There are about 635,000 aerospace engineers in the US currently and 25 per cent of them will be eligible for retirement this year. There are not enough young engineers to replace them", he said

The engineering teams in companies across developed world are in a bit of a bind.

"On one hand they are under pressure to improve productivity, cut costs and improve time-to-market and other hand they are facing critical shortage of talent owing to the sharper fall in engineering graduates from the generation after the Baby boomer generation through the seventies, eighties and nineties", Bejoy said.

"Hence, offshore outsourcing is a good way to get engineering resources and also to capture and document some of the domain knowledge in the minds of these engineers before they leave the organisation," Bejoy said.

"At Quest, we are proposing to take on these retired or retiring engineering talent from US, UK and continental Europe and chief engineer level consultants to assist us in offshored projects", he said.

Additional traction to Indian private sector aerospace players will come from Indian Government owned players like HAL, ADA.

These organistions would eventually evolve into units that specialise in core aerospace areas like writing control laws, defining functional and system level requirements and performing system level integration, while detailed design, unit testing and possibly integration testing would be outsourced to domestic private sector.

Similarly, individually component and sub-assembly manufacturing would be done by private sector while airframe integration and flight testing would be done by HAL.

"This again would be mean traction for private players in the country to win big business from HAL", he said and this could mean business ranging from USD one million to two million per helicopter manufactured by HAL and USD five to seven million per LCA/MCA manufactured by HAL.

In aerospace manufacturing space, currently the export figure for Indian are estimated to be around USD 10 million or so.

India is expected to see more work coming in with several players in US, UK, France and Germany, Japan and Italy, who are keen on setting their own captive centres or joint venture for high-end work, he said. (PTI)

Inflation control and robust GDP cannot go together: FM

NEW DELHI, Apr 16 : Inflation control measures like sucking excess money out of the economy and the robust GDP growth cannot go hand in hand, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said today.

"You cannot have both," Chidambaram said in the Rajya Sabha during the debate on price rise issue.

Finance Minister’s remarks came when senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi countered P J Kurien (Congress) saying tightening of money supply would impact growth.

Kurien was defending the Government on the issue of price rise stating the Reserve Bank has revised eight times the Cash Reserve Ratio to suck the liquidity so as to control inflation.

Chidambaram has recently stated that if GDP growth was to be sacrificed by some margin, the Government would not mind it for controlling inflation.

The RBI is due to announce the annual Credit Policy on April 29 and economists are expecting hike in the CRR in the wake of inflation touching a three-year high of 7.41 per cent, bringing the Government under political and public pressure. (PTI)

Oil regulator asks IGL to halt setting up new stations

NEW DELHI, Apr 16: In a setback to the preparations for holding 2010 Commonwealth Games, oil regulator has asked CNG retailer Indraprastha Gas Ltd to stop setting up new dispensing stations in the national capital.

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board says IGL does not have "proper authorization" for retailing CNG to automobiles and piped natural gas to households and industries in the national capital and its adjoining township of NOIDA, industry sources said.

The regulator, which did not find the numerous letters from the Government and the Supreme Court order for replacing diesel in public transport vehicles with environment-friendly CNG as strong enough ground for operation of IGL, issued notices to the company to "immediately stop" all its expansion plans in the national capital and NOIDA.

Sources said PNGRB also did not take note of the fact that IGL came into existence 10 years ago when the regulator was not set up and there was no format for authorisation from the government for beginning city gas distribution work.

PNGRB came into existence only last year.

When contacted, IGL Managing Director Om Narayan confirmed having stopped all work in the national capital on instructions from the regulator.

IGL had planned an extensive expansion of its CNG dispensing network and had planned to supply piped natural gas to the Commonwealth Games village for meeting its fuel needs. All this has been halted now, sources said.

Concerned that the surprise move may derail plans for setting up green infrastructure for the Commonwealth Games, the Petroleum Ministry is likely to take up the issue with PNGRB and explain that IGL was a creation of the Government and is not an unauthorised operator. (PTI)