With the railway budget for the next fiscal scheduled to be presented later this month, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad on Wednesday indicated that there would be no fare hike.

EMPHASISING th government’s resolve to go ahead with corporatisation of airports despite persisting opposition from the Left parties,the Union Cabinet has cleared selection of GMR-Fraport and GVK-South African Airports as joint venture partners, for the Delhi and Mumbai airports, respectively. The Cabinet gave the nod at its meeting on Wednesday.

The country’s second largest truck maker Ashok Leyland announced on Wednesday that it had signed a Rs 230 crore order to supply 872 specialised water carriers for the Indian Army. The delivery of the water carriers will start later this year and by the end of second quarter of the next fiscal. MD R Seshasayee also said that the company will enter the tactical vehicle segment by making armoured vehicles.

GOLD fell from its highest in 25 years in volatile trade on Wednesday as the dollar hovered near four-week highs and profit taking hit Japanese futures, but the market sentiment remained positive, dealers said. Silver lacked strength to repeat the previous day’s gains that lifted prices to a 22-year peak, while platinum stayed below its record high of $1,079. Spot gold fell to as low as $565.05 an ounce before rising to $566.10/567.00 by 1013 GMT, against $568.30/569.20 late in New York. Silver fell to $9.67/9.70 an ounce from $9.80/9.83 in New York. It rose as much as $9.92 on Tuesday.

The government favoured the merger of telecom PSUs – BSNL and MTNL and the modalities were being worked out based on the suggestions submitted to it by an expert committee three months ago, Minister of State for Communications and IT Shakeel Ahmad said today.

Hundreds of thousands of computers are believed to be infected by a worm set to activate on Friday that could corrupt documents using the most common file types, including “.doc,” “.pdf,” and “.zip,” experts have warned. The worm is expected to affect machines mostly in India, Peru, Turkey and Italy, said Mr Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for Finnish security company F-Secure Corp. The worm, known as “CME-24,” “BlackWorm,” “Mywife.E” or a number of other monikers, even tries to disable antivirus software that is out of date, he said. F-Secure also has created a free removal tool. “If you are infected, and you find out about it today, you still have time to get rid of the virus,” Mr Hypponen said. Microsoft Corp issued an advisory today warning customers about the worm, which affects most ver sions of its Windows operating system.

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.

Ack : ~ Kunal Vyas

The economy of India is the fourth-largest in the world as measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), with a GDP of US $3.36 trillion. When measured in USD exchange-rate terms, it is the tenth largest in the world, with a GDP of US $691.87 billion (2004). India was the second fastest growing major economy in the world, with a GDP growth rate of 8.1% at the end of the first quarter of 2005–2006.

However, India’s huge population results in a relatively low per capita income of $3,100 at PPP. The country’s economy is diverse and encompasses agriculture, handicrafts, industries and a multitude of services. Services are the major source of economic growth in India today, though two-thirds of the Indian workforce earn their livelihood directly or indirectly through agriculture. In recent times, India has also capitalised on its large number of highly educated people who are fluent in the English language to become a major exporter of software services, financial services and software engineers.

Read More

Dell Inc., the world’s largest computer maker, will set up its fourth customer contact centre in India, Chief Executive Kevin Rollins said in a statement on Monday.

The company also plans to double the size of its India-based product development team during the next two years, the statement said.

The contact centre in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of Delhi, is expected to add up to 1,000 workers to Dell’s total Indian employment of 10,000 by the end of 2006.

India will be the only country in Dell’s 30-site customer contact network that supports customers in all geographic regions

News :~
World Bank team to visit Bihar
Indian American wins astronomy prize for clocking pulsars

Sports : ~
Michaella takes out Sania in Australian Open
Pierce becomes highest seed knocked out of Open
Asian challengers fade quickly at Australian Open

Technology :~
Oracle says Fusion package on track for 2008

Buisness :~
L&T Q3 net nearly doubles, orders jump