27.06.2007

• Yesterday we noted something about the East Asian Currency crisis in Discover It blog. Today we look at the second part of that. Follow this link to read it.
• Mobile wallet
• Airtel and IBM are working on a mobile wallet that can turn our mobile phone into a credit or debit card and also offer a host of other services. Our credit or debit card information will be incorporated in the mobile SIM.
• Mobile Wallet has been pioneered in Japan by NTT-DoCoMo and is gaining popularity there.
• About Apple CEO, Steve Jobs
• A high-performance achiever’s biography will be inspiring at times. An article that is reproduced in today’s ET is worth a read. Follow this link to read it.
• On OCIs and PIOs
• Do you remember that we noted about OCIs and PIOs sometime back in our Discover It blog. Follow this to know some basic info about them.
• Now, a proposal to give equal rights to OCIs and NRIs was shot down by the finance ministry.
• The OCI scheme was notified in 2005. An OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) is essentially a person of Indian origin having the advantage of dual citizenship.
• By definition an NRI is one who stays in India for less than 182 days in the country.
• Committee on evolving a policy for coal distribution
• It is headed by HC Gupta
• Is our economy monsoon-dependent?
• We are fed on this belief for quite long to forget this. But empirical evidence contradicts this view.
• 2004 was the worst year in recent times, which recorded abnormal rainfall deviation from normal. Though GDP slowed, manufacturing showed blistering pace during that year. Inflation was much lower than the previous year.
• In 2005 also the country received lower rainfall than normal. Despite this there was growth in GDP and manufacturing and inflation was lower.
• In 2006, though rainfall was much better than in the previous two years, inflation doubled.
• This shows the view that our economy is monsoon-dependent is not correct.
• Problems besetting our oil exploration sector
• We get a clear picture of this when we look at the Cairn experience in Rajasthan (Barmer). With the oil discovery here, the Company expects to produce about 20% of the country’s output i.e., 1,50,000 barrels per day by 2009.
• But there are problems facing the company in evacuating the crude for refining it. There are two routes to refining crude produced here. Either it can be refined by constructing a refinery locally or it can be refined in other refineries located on the western coast by transporting it there through pipelines. If a local refinery is to be built, economies of scale demand that a large refinery (much beyond the needed 3-4 MT capacity) be built. But if such a refinery is built, it needs more crude which needs to be transported to it – again possibly by a pipeline and also it would take 4 to 5 years to build one.
• If, on the other hand, a pipeline is to be used, it is proving to be a costly affair in view of the delay in approving it by the petroleum ministry. The delay is attributed to the contract which authorized the government to name a nominee to evacuate the crude. The nominee turned out to be MRPL which drove a hard bargain. The upshot is that Cairn and ONGC have agreed to build a pipeline at a capital cost of $600 mn to be shared between them @70:30.
• What does all this point to? The policy muddle in the sector. It is time the government moves fast and clears the muddle. Unless it does so, it sure sends a wrong signal to prospective investors in our oil exploration business.
• World’s longest sea bridge
• Is built over Hangzhou Bay near Cixi in China’s Zhejiang Province.
• It is 36 km long and connects Jiaxing and Ningbo cities.