21.02.2007

• Telecom levies may be cut, tariffs set to drop
• Indian telecom operators now pay about 30% of their total revenues as levies, which are among the highest in the world.
• DoT has been seeking a reduction of the licence fee to a flat 6% to bring mobile telephony in line with the licence fee paid by national and international long distance operators.
• Indian retail
• Organized accounts for just over 4% of the total retail industry and is expected to grow from $1200 crores ($12 bn) to about $17,500 to $20,000 crores by 2016.
• The sector is expected to see an investment of about $3000 crores ($30 bn) over the next 4-5 years.
• About treaty shopping
• This refers to registering companies in tax havens to avoid paying taxes. It is a matter of concern for finance ministry for sometime due to the large loss in revenue – about Rs. 2,300 crores or more annually through companies routing their investments through tax havens like Mauritius, Cyprus, the UAE etc.
• Founder of Internet
• Mr. Vint Cerf is one of the founders of Internet. He currently works for Google as its Chief Internet Evangelist and Vice President.
• He says that there are about 2.5 bn devices which are accessing the internet.
• Internet has touched a population of 100 crores. It does not reach the remaining 550 crore population as yet.
• MD of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, India
• Deepak Kapoor has taken over as MD from Mr. Roopen Roy.
• Forex reserve management
• Is done by RBI. It usually invests these reserves in low yield overseas treasury instruments. That is treasury bonds of other countries – usually the US and other developed countries. This has given us a return of just 3.9% during the period 2001-2005.
• Taking a cue from countries like China and Singapore which have floated SPVs for overseas investments, India is also toying with the idea of establishing an SPV with about $1000 crores ($10 bn) to start with.
• One more option that can be availed is meeting the forex ECB requirements and other overseas financing requirements of domestic corporate entities.
• The Planning Commission proposed idea of using these fund infrastructure development through investment in corporate and infrastructure bonds, has now been given up considering its inflationary impact on the economy through increased money supply.
• Air traffic figures for the country
• Total passenger traffic during 2005-06 was 7.34 crores (73.35 mn).
• Cargo traffic was about 1404 tonnes during the same period.
• Indo-Pak trade during the first 7 months of this financial year 2006-07
• India exported $78.9 crores ($789 mn) worth of goods to Pakistan.
• India’s imports were at $18.7 crores ($187 mn).
• Solving the SEZ land problems
• Reliance has come up with a novel idea to solve the land requirements problem. After developing the SEZ, it will return 12.5% of the land acquired to the land owners. This will be really valuable land: developed land in a top industrial zone can fetch Rs. 5 crore an acre. Reliance will also leave untouched the homestead land of villagers within the SEZ. So, each family will end u pwith hoestead and additional land worth crores. This is a good way of making farmers partners in an industrial project.
• Britain’s is known as…
• We all know that famous quote about Britishers as a nation of shopkeepers.
• But do you know that it is also recently plagued with a peculiar problem of cycle thieves!!! Reportedly about 1200 bicycles are being stolen in Britain every day. Police are attributing this to the ease with which the stolen cycles can be sold over the Internet through online auctions.
• Incidentally there was a movie titled “The Bicycle Thief” made by one Vittorio De Sica, almost 6 decades ago.
• Direct selling business
• You would have heard of Amway; right? India’s direct selling business provided employment to about 4,000 people in addition to creating a community of 12.5 lakhs (1.25 mn) distributors.
• Globally direct selling business is worth a whopping $8500 crores ($85 bn), churned out by 3 crores (30 mn) direct sellers across 165 countries.
• The Indian direct selling industry has touched an annual revenue of about Rs. 3,500 crores.
• Bombay Stock Exchange CEO
• Rajnikant Patel
• The BSE is mandated by SEBI to demutualize (reduce the brokers’ stake in the Exchange) to about 49% by May 17, 2007.
• About SLR and CRR
• Banks have to maintain an SLR (Statutory Liquidity Ratio) of 25% with the RBI. That is, they have to invest this much of money in government securities. On this, they get a return of about 7.5%.
• A 1% reduction in SLR would release about Rs. 25,000 crores into the system.
• On CRR balances, banks will not get any interest. This is currently kept at 6% (actually it will be 6% by March 3^rd).
• A 0.5% hike in CRR will drain out about Rs. 14,000 crores from the system.