GENERAL
Plans for modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports took off today with the government announcing that the GMR-Fraport consortium had won the bid for the Delhi airport project while the Mumbai airport work was bagged by the GVK-South Africa combine.

ECONOMY
THE ECONOMY is growing faster than you thought. Latest figures of GDP growth rate for 2004-05, released by the Central Statistical Organisation today show the economy grew by 7.5% instead of the advances estimates of 6.9%. The CSO said this happened due to the change in base year to 1999-2000 from 1993-94. Commenting on the figures, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the economy will achieve at least 7.5% growth rate of GDP in the current fiscal, and indicated that it could be higher.

CORPORATE/INDUSTRY
INDIANOIL has placed a detailed offer for acquisition of Canadian major Niko Resources Ltd’s Indian oil and gas assets. The assets include Niko’s 10 per cent interest in the deep water block Krishna- Godavari (KG) basin held jointly with Reliance (90 per cent).

COMMUNICATIONS
THE TATA Group may have to reduce its stake in Idea Cellular to less than 10% over the next three to four months. This is believed to be part of an undertaking given by the Tatas to the government to ensure compliance with licence conditions that stipulate that the same per son or entity cannot hold more than 10% in two telecom operators(telecos) within the same circle, according to industry sources.

BPO
AFTER Wipro and IBM, one of the biggest recruiters on the city’s BPO street is tipped to be ICICI OneSource. Though the official launch of its Kolkata BPO unit is unlikely to happen before June, ICICI One Source has silently started hiring ITeS professionals in batches for entry-level jobs. While several headhunting firms are likely to be involved in the exercise, ICICI OneSource has just given the initial recruitment mandate for its Kolkata BPO facility to 2COMS Consulting, a city-based staffing firm.