25 Business Capsules

Date: 28th May, 2008

1. Ban on non-Basmati rice export from India has forced the rice exporters to knock the doors of the court.

2. Ban on export of non-Basmati rice came into effect from 31st March 2008.

3. According to the study done by HSBC, India’s GDP growth for the year 2008-09 will be 7%.

4. Last year India’s GDP growth was 8.5%.

5. ABN Amro to be re-branded as RBS in India.

6. ABN was acquired last year by a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) along with Santander (Spain) and Fortis (Belgium).

7. ABN was bought for Euro 70 billion.

8. Arun Sarin who will complete his 5 years term in Vodafone has decided to step down as Vodafone’s CEO in July 29, 2008.

9. Vittorio Colao who at present is the deputy chief executive of Vodafone will become the company’s chief executive.

10. During his tenure Arun Sarin focused on emerging market like India.

11.He helped the company to acquire controlling stake in Hutchison Essar in India.

12. Satyam Computers and GE Healthcare have decided to join hands to provide Healthcare IT solutions.

13. Indian Government is planning to levy cess on income tax and corporate tax to bail out oil companies which are reeling under pressure due to steep increase in global oil prices.

14. If petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG are sold at current rate then the state run oil companies in India will suffer a loss of Rs 2,00,000 crore in this fiscal year.

15. The state run oil companies are suffering from liquidity crisis.

16. Although Indian Oil has cash to import oil till September but HPCL and BPCL can finance import only till July.

17. Petroleum ministry wanted the custom duty to be brought to zero from the current rate of 5%.

18. It wanted the customs duty on petrol and diesel to be lowered to 2.5 % from the current rate of 7.5%.

19. Apart from customs duty the petroleum ministry also wanted a cut in the excise duty.

20. However P Chidambaram, India’s finance minister, refused any cut in excise or customs duty.

21. Oil companies in India are daily losing Rs. 580 crore.

22. Getting LPG connection in India has become costlier; now for new connection a customer will have to pay Rs 1250 per cylinder.

23. The previous rate was Rs 850 per cylinder; increase in the price of steel has been attributed as the reason for increase in price of the cylinder.

24. In the northeast region of India one will have to pay Rs 900 per cylinder as against Rs 500 which they paid earlier.

25. 10 million kitchens use cooking gas cylinder in India.