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Govt bans all edible oil exports

New Delhi, March 18: The government has banned the export of all edible oils for a period of one year, a move considered to boost the domestic supplies and contain the rising prices of vegetable oils in the country.

The restriction is effective from March 17 for a period of one year, Directorate General of Foreign Trade said in a notification on its website.

India mainly exports groundnut oil and coconut oil. The country exported about 30,000 tons of groundnut oil and 5,000 each of coconut oil and mustard oil during the first four months of edible oil year, a Mumbai-based vegetable oils trade body, the Solvent Extractors` Association (SEA) said.

Edible oil year runs from November to October.

India annually consumes about 10 million tons of edible oils, with imports contributing half of that.

Last month, the country`s vegetable oils imports surged by nearly three-fold to 4.30 lakh tons compared to 1.50 lakh tons in the previous year. While non-edible oils went up by four times at 84,237 tons, SEA data said.

SEBI looking into alleged insider trading in RPL shares’

New Delhi, March 18: Market regulator SEBI is investigating the alleged insider trading activities in the shares of Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Petroleum, Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

"SEBI has informed that it has initiated an examination in the matter," Minister of State for Finance P K Bansal said in a written reply.

Bansal was replying to a query by Amar Singh (SP) on whether the government had taken any action against the promoters/affiliates of Reliance Industries Ltd regarding the recent mammoth insider trading activities in the shares of Reliance Petroleum Ltd.

Reliance Industries Ltd had raised Rs 4,023 crore by divesting 4.01% of its stake in Reliance Petroleum Ltd, the company said on November 24.

While actual date for the stake sale is not known, the shares of Reliance Petroleum had moved by a wide margin between late October and early November.

FIIs should pay full amount upfront if time gap in IPO cut`

Mumbai, March 18: Market regulator SEBI on Tuesday said like retail investors, FIIs should also pay the full amount of IPOs upfront, if its idea of reducing the time gap between the last day of subscription and the listing of the scrip is implemented.

"FIIs have to put up margins, retail investors have to pay 100%. This is related to a time gap between the last day of subscription and the day the securities get listed. If the time is crunched, then there is no reason why everyone cannot pay all upfront," SEBI Chairman C B Bhave said at a Euromoney Conference.

The market regulator said the present process that requires three or four weeks is not acceptable in today`s state of modern infrastructure in the country.

"We want to reduce this. In a few months, we will tell the markets what our roadmap is and how we plan to crunch this time lag between the last date of subscription and listing date. We should be able to achieve this in lesser period of time," he said.

On the issue of Participatory Notes, he said 190 FIIs and 470 sub-accounts have registered with SEBI since October end last year when liberal registration policy was announced.

"This is a good progress. We take 15 days to three weeks to register FIIs unless the applications are incomplete (and) where some correspondence is needed," he said.

Bhave said SEBI did not recognise hedge funds and private equity funds as separate categories.

No plans to sell stake in Petronet: ADB

New Delhi, March 18: Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday said it has no plans to sell its 5.2% stake in Petronet LNG Ltd for which suitors like steel czar Lakshmi N Mittal and Chevron Corp of US were lining up.

"There is no internal regulations that prohibit ADB from being a debt financier as well as equity holder in the same company," ADB said in an e-mailed statement.

Petronet CEO and Managing Director Prosad Dasgupta had on February 26 stated that ADB was likely to exit Petronet by the year end as its internal regulations prohibited it from being a lender and an equity holder in the same company.

"ADB has not yet decided to sell Petronet shares," the multilateral lending agency said. "When and if ADB decides to do so, appropriate sales procedure will be followed."

Dasgupta had stated that ADB was likely to sell its shares in Petronet after it along with German development bank KfW approved a USD 169 million loan to Petronet for its expansion projects at Dahej and new terminal at Kochi

Worried about dollar, global economy: Wen

Beijing, March 18: China is deeply concerned about the potential global economic fallout from the US sub-prime crisis, which could make its job of balancing growth and fighting inflation more challenging, Premier Wen Jiabao said on Tuesday.

Although Wen told a news conference it would be difficult to keep inflation this year to within Beijing's 4.8% target, he said he was confident the government would succeed at its main task for this year: checking price rises while engineering stable growth.

But he highlighted the increasing uncertainties brought about by the US sub-prime crisis, which has spawned a fall in the dollar, slammed stock markets worldwide and fed into a surge in oil prices.

"I am closely watching and feel deeply worried about the global economic situation, especially the US economy," Wen told reporters after the closing session of the National People's Congress, or Parliament.

"What concerns me now is the continuous depreciation of the US dollar and when the dollar will hit bottom."

The dollar is trading near 13-year lows against the yen and record lows against the euro, after the US Federal Reserve has repeatedly cut interest rates and after it took the rare step of cutting its discount rate on Sunday.

Wen said that Beijing would have to take the changing economic landscape into account when deciding on further policy steps, despite its having switched to a "tight" monetary policy at the end of last year to curb excessive growth in investment and credit.

While many other countries are facing a credit crunch in the wake of the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market, China is struggling to contain a surge in liquidity stemming from its massive trade surplus.

"Global economic developments cannot but have an impact on China. Therefore, at the same time as pursuing these policies, we must pay close attention to international economic developments and, based on changing trends, be flexible and timely in adopting corresponding countermeasures," he said.

Wen stressed the need to walk a fine line between fighting inflation, which hit a nearly 12-year high pace of 8.7% from a year earlier in February, and slamming on the brakes too hard. An abrupt slowdown in output would contradict efforts to create at least 10 million new jobs a year, he said.

He did not specify what role the yuan could play in fighting inflation, but noted that it had strengthened by about 15% against the dollar over the last two years, with the pace of appreciation accelerating recently.

The yuan was trading at 7.0853 per dollar on Tuesday, meaning it has strengthened a further 14.5% against the dollar since the landmark revaluation in July 2005. Some economists say it needs to strengthen significantly more to help fend off inflows of cash and hence fight inflation.

"Maintaining stable and fairly fast economic growth while curbing inflation is not a target just for this year, but for the next five years," Wen said.

"The outcome of these policies must be viewed in the medium to long term. It is very difficult to see them in a short one or two months."

US Stocks Heading for Higher Open As Traders Anticipate Big Rate Cut From Federal Reserve

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks were poised to open higher Tuesday as investors anticipated a massive interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve just two days after the central bIn the meantime, investors will be hearing from two rivals of Bear Stearns Cos. -- Lehman Brothers Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. -- which are scheduled to release their fiscal first-quarter earnings Tuesday morning. Both are expected to post profits, but profits that are significantly lower than they were a year ago. Investors will want to get more details about the souring mortgage-backed bets on their books.

Stockholders have been especially pessimistic about Lehman Brothers, as it is the investment bank most similar in structure and exposure to Bear Stearns. Lehman shares fell 19 percent on Monday after JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Sunday it was buying Bear Stearns for just $2 a share, or $236 million.

The Fed on Sunday, in addition to guaranteeing up to $30 billion of Bear's most troubled assets for JPMorgan, lowered its discount rate -- the rate it charges banks directly -- by a quarter-point. It also is allowing more types of financial firms to borrow from the central bank, and is accepting more various types of collateral.

After these signals that the Fed is ready to use everything in its arsenal to boost liquidity in the financial system, traders who bet on the Fed's next rate move are pricing in a 100 percent chance of a full-point rate cut. That would bring the target fed funds rate -- the rate that banks charge each other for overnight loans -- to 2 percent from 3 percent.

Lower rates tend to trigger economic growth. But with the credit markets so tight with nervousness, many market watchers are unsure whether more rate cuts are going to be enough to loosen them up again.

Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 111, or 0.93 percent, to 12,108. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures rose 15.10, or 1.18 percent, to 1,294.60, while Nasdaq 100 index futures rose 18.2, or 1.41 percent, to 1,713.50.

On Monday, the Dow rebounded from an initial drop of nearly 200 points to finish up 21 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes ended lower as investors fled instead to large companies apt to be reliable during a weak economy.

Bond prices fell. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which move opposite its price, rose to 3.36 percent from 3.30 percent late Friday. The dollar fell against most other major currencies, while gold prices rose.

Light, sweet crude rose $1.60 to $107.28 per barrel in premarket electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

After selling off Monday, stock markets overseas rebounded. Japan's Nikkei stock average bounced 1.50 percent, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index rose 1.4 percent. In midday trading, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 1.64 percent, Germany's DAX index added 1.71 percent, and France's CAC-40 increased 1.78 percent.

ank backed JPMorgan's buy of Bear Stearns and also loosened up its lending.

Fed Poised to Cut Interest Rates Again
Tuesday March 18, 8:10 am ET
By Martin Crutsinger, Economics Writer ................................
Fed Poised to Cut Rates Aggressively As It Combats Weak Economy and Severe Credit Crisis
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve is expected to aggressively lower interest rates in its intensified battle against the credit crisis and spreading economic weakness. More relief is expected Tuesday when the central bank is expected to cut a key interest rate by one-half to a full percentage point.Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues have already been working overtime, employing a variety of novel approaches to keep the economy out of a recession or at least moderate the impact of any downturn.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made the rounds of the morning TV shows Tuesday to underscore the administration's commitment to keeping turmoil in the financial markets from worsening a struggling economy.

"The priority we have is a stable, orderly financial markets," he said on CBS' "The Early Show. "This is very important to the health of our economy and it's very important to the American people because access to credit is key to businesses that need to invest to create jobs, it's key to families that need to borrow to finance a home or for college education."

He said the focus of policymakers "is reducing the spillover into the real economy from the turbulence and disruptions in our financial markets."

To those who would complain that the administration is more interested in bailing out Wall Street than struggling homeowners, Paulson said the thousands of Bear Stearns employees likely to lose their jobs and life savings, and thousands of shareholders who have lost billions because of the company's collapse, probably do not feel like they have been bailed out.

"There is no reason for the Fed not to be aggressive," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "The economy is in a recession, the financial system is in disarray and inflation is low."

The Fed's target for the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other on overnight loans, currently stands at 3 percent, down from 4.25 percent at the beginning of this year. That was before global market turmoil in January prompted an emergency three-quarter-point cut on Jan. 22 and a half-point move eight days later, the biggest reductions in a single month in more than a quarter-century.

Many economists believe the Fed will deliver another three-quarter-point cut or perhaps even a full one-point reduction at Tuesday's meetings because Fed officials will not want to disappoint fragile financial markets, which have been on a rollercoaster ride in recent days as they have watched Bear Stearns Cos., the nation's fifth largest investment house, suddenly be brought down by the equivalent of a run on the bank.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. stepped in to announce it was purchasing Bear Stearns at a fire-sale price on Sunday in a deal helped along with a pledge that the Fed would supply a $30 billion line of credit to back up Bear Stearns' assets.

That offer over the weekend was the latest move by a central bank that has been pulling out all of the stops, including using Depression-era procedures, to pump cash into the financial system. Analysts, who faulted Bernanke for being slow to recognize the gravity of the situation last year, now give him high praise for bringing all the Fed's powers to bear.

"The Fed is doing what it can to come to rescue an economy that faces potentially a huge meltdown in financial markets," said Lyle Gramley, a former Fed governor and now an analyst with Stanford Financial Group. "The Fed is acting as a lender of last resort and being very aggressive and innovative."

In addition to providing support for the Bear Stearns sale, the Fed also announced Sunday one of the broadest expansions of its lending authority since the 1930s, saying it would allow securities dealers for at least the next six months to borrow directly from the Fed. That privilege, until now, had been confined to commercial banks.

At the same time, the Fed announced it was cutting the interest rate on those direct loans from the Fed, through a facility known as the Fed's discount window, by a quarter-point to 3.25 percent.

In other moves, the Fed last week announced that it would lend up to $200 billion of Treasury securities that it owns to investment banks starting March 27 for a period of up to 28 days in return for a like amount of the investment banks' shunned mortgage-backed securities. The Fed also announced recently that it was boosting the size of special loans it has been making since December to commercial banks.

The scale of these actions underscored the threat facing the economy from a severe credit squeeze that began with a wave of defaults on subprime mortgages last year but has now spread to other parts of the credit markets, triggering multibillion-dollar losses by some of the country's largest financial institutions.

Analysts said it will take some time to determine whether the Fed has done enough to stem the wave of panic among investors.

The rapid decline of Bear Stearns stock -- which had a market value of about $20 billion in January, only to collapse to a sales price of $2 per share, or about $236 million, this past weekend -- has given investors the chills.

"The Fed is trying very hard to figure out how to calm the markets down, but so far it hasn't been very successful," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York. "Markets are worried that there might be another Bear Stearns out there."

Kareena Kapoor becomes highest paid actress in Bollywood
18 Mar, 2008, 1620 hrs IST,Gaurav Malani and Reshma Kelkar............................................ We often keep reading on which actor is at the No 1 spot in Bollywood but hardly do we read on actresses being on the list. That's primarily because in the male-dominated Bollywood, female stars are always paid less than their male counterparts.

But in the current scenario even the leading ladies are quoting in crores thanks to the corporate invasion. However, only a handful of actresses enjoy this privilege. So the next question obviously is who is at the Numero-Uno position amongst all these actresses? No, it's not Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukherjee or Preity Zinta. Kareena Kapoor quotes the highest fee today!

Kareena Kapoor always had a decent standing in the industry ever since she debuted with Refugee in 2000. Despite her hits and misses at the box-office, she never went off the scene. According to trade circles, till around a couple of years back she used to charge anywhere between Rs 70 - 90 lakhs for her films, which was a decent enough figure for any Bollywood actress then.

Her fees hiked post Omkara, when she came in the crore bracket. In fact, much before Omkara, Harry Baweja had already signed Kareena for a whopping Rs 2.25 crores for his futuristic film Love Story 2050, but subsequently Bebo opted out of the project.

Wholesale Prices Rise, Core Inflation Accelerates; Housing Construction Declines

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wholesale prices rose again in February as another hefty increase in energy costs offset falling food prices. Outside of food and energy, prices shot up at the fastest pace in 15 months.In another sign of troubles in housing, construction of new homes fell by a larger-than-expected 0.6 percent in February to an annual rate of 1.065 million units.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that wholesale prices were up 0.3 percent last month, following an even bigger 1 percent jump in January.

Outside of food and energy, the rise in inflation was a troubling 0.5 percent, the biggest increase for core inflation since a rise of 0.9 percent in November 2006.

The hefty February increase in core inflation raises concerns that relentless increases in energy costs over the past two years are beginning to spread to other areas of the economy.

That could act as a constraint on the Federal Reserve, which is trying to combat a serious economic slowdown by cutting interest rates to jump-start economic growth.

However, if inflation starts to be a problem, the Fed could be caught in the grips of stagflation, the malady of stagnant growth occurring at the same time that inflation is rising.

The February rise in wholesale prices reflected higher costs not only for energy but also for cars and light trucks as well as a 1.3 percent jump in prescription drug prices.

Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, said that the overall figure will be even worse next month given that energy prices have been soaring. Crude oil prices hit new records last week above $111 per barrel.

For the moment, Fed officials have said they view the threat of a recession as the bigger problem. Financial markets are looking for another aggressive rate cut on Tuesday, especially in light of the collapse over the weekend of Bear Stearns, Wall Street's fifth largest investment bank, and the ongoing troubles in housing.

The drop in new-home construction was a bigger decline than the 0.2 percent drop that Wall Street had been expecting although January was revised up to show a stronger gain than originally reported.

However, building permits, considered a good indication of future activity, plunged by 7.8 percent in February to an annual rate of 978,000 units, the slowest pace in 16 years.

The troubles in housing with falling sales and prices in many parts of the country have acted as a drag on the overall economy, contributing to a serious slowdown that many analysts are worried could push the country into a recession.

The 0.3 percent rise in wholesale prices reflected a 0.8 percent jump in energy costs, driven higher by 2.9 percent jump in gasoline prices and 5.7 percent increase in residential natural gas prices, the biggest jump in this price in more than two years.

Food costs at the wholesale level actually fell by 0.5 percent last month as the cost of vegetables, fruit, dairy products and pork all declined.

For the past 12 months, wholesale prices have risen by 6.4 percent while excluding food and energy, inflation is up 2.6 percent, the biggest 12-month change for core inflation since the period ending last October.

Tata Motors gets $3 billion loan from Citi, JPMorgan: Source
HONG KONG: Tata Motors Ltd has signed a deal to receive a $3 billion bridge loan from Citigroup and JPMorgan to help finance a potential purchase of luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover, a source familiar with the deal said on Tuesday.

The source, who was not authorised to speak to the media on the matter, declined to provide further details including the duration of the loan, noting details had yet to be worked out.

"It is signed, but it's still at an early process," the source said. Bridge loans tend to be of short-term duration. Citigroup, JPMorgan and Tata Motors all declined to comment. Tata is expected to agree on a deal by the end of the month to purchase the two well-known UK brands from US auto maker Ford Motor, according to media reports in India.