Andhranews

New Delhi, Aug. 18: Commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath on Friday said that “corrective steps” were needed in the ongoing negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with Asean. The talks are expected to be finalised by the end of this year, he said.

Meanwhile, the commerce minister also informed that foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow into India increased 47 per cent to $1.7 billion in April-June quarter, as against $1.1 billion in the same period last fiscal. It is expected that a FTA with Asean (Association of South East Asian Nations) will come into being from January next year. Mr Nath said, “We’ll need to have some correctives. Negotiations are going on and if there is convergence, we will conclude talks by the end of this year.”

The commerce minister said that owing to delay in concluding negotiations, there will not be an early harvest programme to reduce tariffs on select items and it was expected that the FTA would be implemented in one go. The commerce minister also informed that he is going to Kuala Lumpur next week for a ministerial-level meeting.

It may be pointed out here that the India-Asean FTA negotiations hit a roadblock after New Delhi submitted a negative list of items of around 1,400. The list, on which there will be no tariff cuts, was subsequently reduced to about 560 items. However, Asean was insisting that the list be reduced further to less than 100 items.

On its part, India had indicated against such a possibility. Mr Nath also spoke against the possibility of reducing the list below 100. Regarding FDI, the commerce minister also informed that the FDI inflow in the month of June grew 102 per cent to $534 million, as against $264 million in June last year. India’s export during July increased 41 per cent to $10.2 billion.

Total exports in April-July this fiscal rose by 34 per cent to $38 billion. Imports in July increased 24 per cent to $14.1 billion. Cumulative imports in the first four months of this fiscal rose 29 per cent to $54.5 billion. The minister informed that these were provisional figures compared to the year-ago period provisional figures.

Mumbai, Aug. 18: The market saw very flat trading with the Sensex closing down 11.76 points at 11,465.72 and the Nifty gaining just 2.85 points to close at 3356.75. The turnover, too, was low at Rs 27,510 crores with the F&O sector accounting for Rs 17,859 crores.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), there were 466 stocks that ended in the green and 427 in the red. However, the sentiment was good particularly in the mid-cap stocks on news that the FII had been buying in a big way. On Au-gust 17, they bought stocks worth 173.9 million.

Hyderabad, Aug. 18: Even as Pepsi and Coca-Cola filed petitions in the Kerala high court on Friday, challenging the state government’s ban on the manufacture and sale of their soft drinks, Pepsi said the company would be roping in scientists as brand ambassadors to endorse the purity of its carbonated drinks.

Coca-Cola is expected to follow suit. Rajeev Bakshi, chairman of Pepsi India Holdings, told reporters here on Friday that Pepsi will be launching the campaign with “scientists of international repute and credibility” who will talk about the purity of its drinks.

Earlier this month, the Centre for Science and Environment, a “public interest organisation”, alleged that its studies of tests 57 samples of 11 soft drink brands, from 25 different manufacturing plants of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo., had found a cocktail of 3-5 different pesticides in all samples. Mr Bakshi said Pepsi’s products are “absolutely safe”.

“We meet or exceed all applicable government standards, including those relating to agricultural pesticide residues, in every country in which we operate, including in India. Our products were completely safe three years ago when the India pesticide discussion first surfaced, and since then, we have increased testingon key ingredients,” he said.

Asked whether Pepsi was considering a lawsuit against CSE, Mr Bakshi replied in the negative. “There is no validated testing methodology for testing finished food products anywhere in the world. The government has indicated that it will come up with the norms for testing finished food products by April next year. We will comply with the norms when we are notified.”

Mr Bakshi said. “Violation of the PFA is a non-bailable offence. The government should check Pepsi’s products’ purity. If the pesticide residues are above 0.5 ppb, hang me,” Mr Bakshi said.

Mumbai. Aug. 18: ICICI Bank, has become the first Indian bank to issue Tier-I subordinated perpetual bonds in the international markets, where it has raised $340 million from the issue, which would augment its Tier-I capital base.

This translates to a spread of 247 basis points over a 10-year period of the US treasuries and below the tight-end of the initial price guidance, according to the company’s statement on Friday. The non-cumulative bonds carry a coupon rate of 7.25 per cent per annum and have evinced strong interest from investors worldwide. A total of 37 per cent of the securities were sold in the US, 30 per cent in Asia and 33 per cent in Europe.

Mumbai, Aug. 18: Within days of increasing prime lending and consumer loan rates, India’s leading bank State Bank of India on Friday announced a hike in interest rates on fixed deposits by up to 0.5 per cent — a move that is likely to be followed by others.

As per the revised rates, to come into effect from Saturday, fixed deposits would now attract a maximum of 8.5 per cent interest under super saver term deposit for senior citizens followed by 8 per cent interest under the same scheme for others.

This revision comes less than a month of the RBI hiking its short term transaction rates with banks (repo and reverse repo rates) by 0.25 per cent during the first quarter (2006-07) review of the credit policy that led to announcement by banks to increase their lending rates.

Mumbai, Aug. 18: The clinical research market in India is estimated to be $100 million and is expected to grow to $300 million by 2010, say industry experts. The easy availability of patient pool, diverse disease profiles in the patient population, an estimated cost savings of 50 per cent in Phase I studies and 60 per cent in Phase II and III studies are the major driving forces that bring India among one of the most-preferred Asian countries for R&D activities.

However, the Chinese pharmaceutical market is one of the fastest-growing in the world and it is estimated to be the fifth-largest by 2010 and third-largest by 2020. According to Mr Manoj Mehta, research associate, pharma and chemical division, Ficci, “India, which accounts for $20 million of outsourced research, is expected to grab total $2 billion business over the next decade.”

“India has a huge market (1.1 billion population), a high intellectual capital and capable work force, which makes the pharmaceutical industry more attractive,” he added. However, lack of resources to compete with MNCs for new drug discovery research and to commercialise molecules on a worldwide basis, along with lack of strong linkages between industry and academia and inadequate regulatory standards prove to be the weak link for the pharmaceutical R&D in the country.

“The solution lies with pro-active measures such as public-private partnerships and encouragement of R&D. Also, there is much to do in terms of addressing further regulatory and infrastructure challenges, where the industry will have to work closely and swiftly with the government to address these issues,” said Mr Mehta.

Hyderabad, Aug. 18: Eyeing a foothold in the growing pharma retail market, Hyderabad-based Optival Health Solutions (OHS) has firmed up plans to expand its chain of pharma stores, Aushadhi, to the national level with a presence in Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and New Delhi.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Mr Madhukar Gangadi, the company CEO, said, “We have 53 Aushadhi stores in Hyderabad now and by September another 30 stores would come up in Bangalore. Thereafter, we would expand into the markets of Mumbai, Pune and New Delhi in four months and the short-term target is to have a presence in the top 10 cities of the country.” The privately held firm plans to spread out its network in the State too, covering all the 25 district headquarters in 30 days.

Having invested Rs 10 crores till now, Optival Health Solutions expects to close its second round funding by September which would add Rs 27 crores to the expansion kitty. The nascent pharma retail sector has been generating substantial interest in the industry as a result of which new players such as Pantaloon group, Manipal, have already announced their entry and the Ambanis, Zydus Cadilla and Dr Morepen, according to reports, are also considering a foray.

Right now, Aushadhi, Apollo, Medicine Shoppe and 98.4o are the existing players in the market which is expected to touch Rs 50,000 crores by 2010, according to an A.T. Kearney report. OHS has adopted the low-cost model of pharma retail wherein the company does not target locations where real estate prices are high. Although OHS had sales of Rs 12 crores from its existing network of stores, which have attained break-even levels, it expects to double that figure once its Bangalore operations begin.

OHS has launched a loyalty programme named ‘Senior Citizens Benefit Programme’ which gives a free card to senior citizens who walk into its stores. Cardholders will get a 13.4 per cent (net of 10 per cent on MRP) discount on purchase of medicines. This card will entitle cardholders to discounted prices on blood sugar testing.

It was one service that was truly novel, but apparently Boeing, the airplane manufacturer, hasn’t found it viable. The service in question being Connexion, Boeing’s in-flight Internet-access service. Boeing says that it has failed to build a market for high-speed Internet access on airplanes, despite spending “substantial time, resources and technology.”

The Internet access is provided via a hump-backed contraption on the top of the plane’s fuselage, connecting five wireless Local Area Network nodes throughout the cabin. The antenna is hooked into a geo-stationary satellite, which enabled Wi-Max laptops to hook into the Internet via the nearest “hotspot” in the cabin. Boeing says it would work with customers in phasing out the six-year-old Connexion service. Sad.

Wonder chip

And, now, get set for the introduction of a new WLAN-plus-Bluetooth chip, all in one neat package, in your mobile handsets, with Marvell, a provider of storage, communications, and consumer silicon solutions, saying that it has launched such a chip in a 90-nm CMOS. According to Marvell, the chips can also be used for for battery-powered media players, portable gaming consoles, smartphones, PDAs and ultra-low-power computing platforms.

It says that the WLAN-plus — Bluetooth solution has leading-edge integration, extensive host offload capability and advanced co-existence and power save modes — with a footprint of less than 80 mm3. The chip is expected to extend the battery life of consumer electronics devices, enabling a new level of mobile consumer broadband experience.

Software compatible

The Marvell 88W8688 represents five years of interaction with our customers and partners. It is a software compatible platform that will allow them to launch products that are varied in scope and application ranging from gaming to cameras to smartphones up to emerging converged products,” says Paramesh Gopi, vice-president and general manager of the embedded and emerging business unit, communications and consumer business group at Marvell.

“The Marvell 88W8688 marks our fourth generation complimentary wireless solution and offers an extremely competitive cost structure thereby enabling mass adoption of both technologies into all tiers of consumer electronics.” The Marvell 88W8688 builds on the company’s embedded Layer 2 (MAC) and Layer 3 software. The integration of Bluetooth 2.0 EDR — which is firmware upgradeable to Bluetooth 2.1 features — and WLAN subsystems on a single die allows fully optimised simultaneous dual radio operations.

Hyderabad, Aug. 18: It is official. Reliance Retail would launch its Rs 25,000 crore retail initiative from Hyderabad this September, as was reported by this newspaper last week.
Talking to the media on the sidelines of a CII conference in New Delhi on Friday, Reliance Retail president and Chief Executive (Operations and Strategy) Raghu Pillai said, “We will be opening our first store in Hyderabad in September and this will be a very large store with food, vegetables and staples.”

Reliance Retail first announced its plans in June this year and said that it would be listing the company subsequently. Reliance has already signed agreements with the West Bengal and Punjab governments, as it moves forward in tying up for procurements and roll out.

“We are in talks with quite a few State governments and cooperative chains for alliances,” Mr Pillai said. He said the company had plans to spread to other parts of the country “as soon as we can”. He, however, refused to divulge the number of stores the company was planning to have by yearend. “We are talking to a variety of brands and the entire thing will be finalised in the next six months.”

Mr Pillai said the Reliance Retail strategy would be to “take out extra costs from the supply chain” in order to offer products at competitive prices. As part of backward integration efforts to cut down costs, the company is looking at partnering companies, including consumer durables, for direct procurements.

New Delhi, Aug. 18: The Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI), an association of CDMA operators, didn’t attend the meeting called by the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (Trai) to sort out the issues concerning the price and the band of 3 generation mobile phones. There were reports of major differences between Tata and Reliance.

The meeting was called by Trai to sort out the differences between the CDMA and GSM operators over the band in which 3G spectrum should be allocated. “But now, according to sources, differences have come up within the CDMA lobby as Tata and Reliance have started asking for different prices and the AUSPI is divided,” said a source within Trai.