01.07.2009

Politics & the Nation

• NSG Hubs at Chennai and Hyderabad inaugurated
• Union Home Minister P Chidambaram inaugurated another regional NSG hub at Chennai on Wednesday morning while the Hyderabad and Kolkata NSG Hubs also became operational from today.
• The first Regional Hub of the National Security Guards was inaugurated in Mumbai on Tuesday.
• These hubs with 241 National Security Guard Commandos will help in responding quickly to terror attacks in any part of the country.
• Special forces of the Army will be used to set up anti-terror hubs in Bangalore and Jodhpur while another one in Guwahati will be set up using the Border security force.
• NSG hubs would decrease the response time and would enable it to reach any part of the country quickly in case of any terror threat.

Finance & Economy

• Bellweather component of the country's service industry looking up
• The $60 bn IT industry is reportedly seeing better days with contracts in the $25 to 30 mn range coming in steadily. This is good news for the industry which employs over 2.3 mn people in the country.
• It is reported that the domestic market looks attractive despite lower margins compared to exports. This is very positive development of much larger significance.

• TRAI unveils draft regulations on MNP
• Telecom regulator TRAI on Tuesday unveiled draft regulations for the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP), a facility that will allow consumers to change their telecom operator, but retain their phone number. The government had earlier said it would kick off MNP in metros and some states on September 20.
• Trai has proposed that new mobile users be permitted to change their operators only after 90 days of signing up with their first service provider. It has also recommended that after changing their operator, consumers need to stay with the new telco for a minimum of 90 days. It has suggested that customers give a written undertaking to their existing service provider for switching to a new operator, which will then have to mandatorily carry out all checks, including identity verification, before the process can be completed. Trai has said the process must be completed within five days.
• Customers, who wish to change their operators, will be charged a fee, which is yet to be decided.
• The Department of Telecom (DoT) has already appointed two companies — Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnect — to be the MNP service
• provider, manage day-to-day management and implementation, and also maintain the database of all numbers. While MNP will kick off in metros and category A circles such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat on September 20, the rest of the country will have access to this facility from March 20, 2010.
• Current account swings to surplus in March quarter!
• RBI data on Tuesday showed India’s current account, which captures the trade flows, boasting of a surplus of $4.75 billion during the quarter as against a deficit of $1.5 billion in the year-ago period, meaning the country has received more dollars from selling goods and services to foreign countries than it paid to buy them in the March quarter. But the current account deficit for 2008/09 widened to $29.82 billion, or 2.6% of gross domestic product (GDP), against the previous year’s $17.03 billion, or 1.5% of GDP, said the central bank.
• The capital account, meanwhile, ended in a modest surplus of $9 billion compared to $108 billion in the previous year. Remittances also grew, but not at the same pace as in the previous year.

International

• Global ariline losses at a record
• THE world’s airlines lost more than $3 billion in the first quarter of 2009, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Tuesday, maintaining its estimate for full-year losses of $9 billion.
• Both oil and jet fuel prices have risen almost $20 a barrel in the past two months, and are now 75% higher than their low point at the end of 2008.
• Do you remember our noting on 1st of June about Indian aviation industry's losses? They are expected to be about Rs. 30,000 crores for the full year.