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No merger with any other airline: Paramount

Chennai, March 13: Paramount Airways on Thursday ruled out its merger with any other airline in India, saying they were a profit making organisation and were looking at acquisitions.

"We are making profits. We are looking at acquisitions. Why should we merge with any other airline?" Paramount managing director M Thiagarajan told a press conference here.

He said some low cost airlines had approached Paramount for taking over their airlines. However, the airline had declined all such offers as its business model was not suitable for running such airlines, he said.

He said Paramount would start operations in the western sector from June or July 2008. The first base in western India would be Pune and Goa and later would start operating from Ahmedabad, Baroda and Mumbai.

"Operations in the north and north-eastern sector will be started by 2010 and the maiden international flight will be in 2011," he said.

Paramount would acquire two more aircraft by May next, he said, adding that the present fleet strength of five would be increased to 40 by 2010.

As a profitable private limited company, his company would depend on accrual of funds to meet its expansion plan, he said.

Thiagarajan said his company had recently received the 'The Century International Quality Era Award' at an international quality convention in Geneva.

Sonia completes 10 years as Cong President

Sonia Gandhi completes 10 years as Congress president on Friday, an unparalleled feat in the history of the grand old party. The 61-year-old was a near greenhorn in politics as she had a disdain for things political when she became the daughter-in-law of the first family of Congress by marrying Rajiv Gandhi. None of the Nehru-Gandhi family members had been president of the Congress party for as much time as Sonia.

Sonia to inaugurate Rajiv Gandhi International Airport airport in Hyderabad

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Indiabulls, Unitech put Singapore REIT IPOs on hold

Mumbai, March 14: Developers Indiabulls Real Estate and Unitech Ltd have put their plans for initial public offers of their Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) in Singapore on hold because of volatile markets, officials said on Friday.

Larger rival DLF Ltd might also delay its plans for a Singapore RIET listing, a source said earlier this week.

"Our bankers have advised us to wait and watch till the markets stabilise," said R Nagaraju, General Manager of corporate planning at Unitech, which had planned to raise about USD 500 million from the IPO.

"There is no point in going into the market now. Once the markets stabilise, we will make a decision," he said.

Unitech and Indiabulls Real Estate had received approval for the IPOs, the Business Standard paper reported on Friday, adding the two companies were now exploring private placements.

Nagaraju declined comment on the placement, while an official at Indiabulls Real Estate said "all options were open".

"The first option was obviously the REIT. But we will wait till the markets stabilise for that," said Ajit Mittal, head of investor relations.

Indiabulls Real Estate was expected to raise about USD1 billion from the IPO, bankers have said.

A source said on Thursday that DLF might delay a planned IPO in Singapore of its REIT and instead opt for a private placement to raise about USD500 million.

DLF, India's most valuable property firm, had planned to raise USD1.5 billion from the Singapore listing.

Volatile markets have seen more than USD23 billion in global IPO plans postponed or withdrawn, according to Thompson Financial.

Indian developers, hit by soaring land costs and curbs on bank loans, are looking to tap REITs, which are not yet allowed in India, although draft guidelines for them were issued in December.

Oil breaches USD 111 a barrel

London, March 14: Oil rose to a fresh record high on Friday, hitting new peaks for the seventh trading day, as a weak dollar overshadowed an increase in US crude inventories.

US crude for April delivery struck a new high of USD 111 a barrel. It was trading at USD 110.93, up USD 1.01 at the time of going to press. London Brent crude for April, which expires on Friday, also hit a new peak at USD 107.88. It was trading at USD 107.77.

“We’re looking at the US currency, we’re looking at speculation and we’re looking at geopolitics. Those three things tying together are defying fundamentals,” said Peter McGuire, managing director of Commodity Warrants Australia.

The dollar dropped to a 12-year low against the yen and a record low versus the euro on Thursday on uncertainty about the long-term impact of the US Federal Reserve’s efforts to ease strained credit and money markets.

“Commodities are likely to have been the key beneficiary of the aggressive Fed rate-cutting cycle,” Citigroup said in its research note. Investors have rushed into commodities to hedge against inflation and the softening dollar. That has contributed to oil’s rally, despite concerns over a recession in top oil consumer the US and rising fuel inventories.

Oil prices rebounded after a drop on Wednesday caused by US government data that showed crude stocks rose more than expected last week and gasoline stocks were at a 15-year high.

RBI says bought USD13.63 bn in Jan

Mumbai, March 14: India's central bank bought a record USD13.63 billion in intervention in January, when the rupee fell just short of a 10-year high against the dollar, its monthly bulletin showed.

In 2007, the central bank bought USD74.9 billion in intervention. The Indian currency climbed more than 12 percent against the dollar last year, a gain second only to the Philippine peso among Asian currencies, ending 2007 at 39.42 per dollar.

stock market strong

Sensex 15727.26 369.91
Nifty 4742.40 118.80
Djia 12145.74 35.50
Nasdaq 2263.61 19.74
Rs/$ 40.44 -0.08

Stock market reflecting worldwide developments: FM
14 Mar, 2008, 1518 hrs IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: Noting that some volatility is to be expected in the bourses due to turbulence in global financial markets, finance minister P Chidambaram on Friday said the stock market is not the sole indicator of India's economy.

"The stock market is reflecting worldwide developments. In fact, it is really reflecting the developed economies as well as the Asian economies," he said in a reply in Lok Sabha.

"But some volatility is to be expected especially when there is turbulence in the international financial markets," the minister said.

"The stock market is an important indicator, but we should not look at the stock market as the sole indicator of India's economy," Chidambaram said.

He said the Sensex only captures the share price movement of 30 stocks and the Nifty captures the share price movements of either 50 or 100 stocks.

He said the country has a well-established regulatory system in place and it would ensure there is no excessive volatility in the market.

On the appreciation of the rupee, he said it is not solely attributable to US recession.

"It is the result of a number of factors like our productivity gains in India -- both labour productivity and capital factor productivity," Chidambaram said.

He said the rupee has appreciated rather significantly against the US dollar which he said is weakening for reasons which are relevant to the US.

The rupee has not appreciated to the same extent against the Euro or the Yen, Chidambaram added.

V-Guard lists at 10% premium
13 Mar, 2008, 1024 hrs IST, INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK

MUMBAI: Shares of V-Guard Industries listed Thursday at Rs 90, premium of Rs 8 or 9.75 per cent, against issue price of Rs 82 on the NSE.

At 9.55 am, the stock was trading at Rs 93.70, up Rs 11.70 or 14.27 per cent. It touched a high of Rs 96.65 and low of Rs 82 in trade so far on volume of 1,41,587 shares.

India's skyrocketing hotel prices figure at Berlin tourism show
14 Mar, 2008, 1321 hrs IST............................


BERLIN: For many Indian exhibitors at Berlin's International Tourism Bourse (ITB), the world's largest tourism show, their country's skyrocketing hotel room prices could seriously hit the inbound leisure tourism traffic.

India's tourism industry, plagued for decades with inadequate infrastructure, seemed to have got some respite when the government, in the course of its liberalisation policy, announced that it would build up the infrastructure.

But infrastructure development has been painfully slow, as many exhibitors in Berlin said.

D K Machingal, chairman of the Kadappuram Beach Resort in Thrissur, Kerala, said a country as big and diverse as India had great potential to attract more than just five million tourists as it did in 2007, a negligible figure when compared to 20 million visitors and above recorded by Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

"Even smaller nations such as Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore attract more leisure tourists than India," Machingal told IANS at the Berlin show.

A major reason for the low arrival numbers was the "high and totally unrealistic hotel prices," according to Machingal who promotes traffic from German-speaking countries to his resort for Ayurveda treatment.

Machingal also said that promotion of tourism, a major source of revenue, should be assigned to an autonomous agency that should have tourism experts drawn from the private sector.

"One can learn from Singapore which is doing a great job promoting tourism to the city and seeks active participation of the private sector. The Indian government should concentrate on building up the infrastructure and create the urgently needed facilities rather than merely spending money on publicity and marketing," he added.

Many Indian exhibitors, who described the Indian tourism ministry's allocation of huge sums of money each year on marketing and publicity as the proverbial "horse-before-the-cart" kind of strategy, said money could be better spent if infrastructure, particularly hotels, were created rather than publicizing a destination which could not offer basic amenities such as reasonably priced hotel rooms.

"You are wasting precious resources on publicity and marketing for tourists to come and have a good laugh at our country with poor infrastructure and hotel room capacity," another Indian said.

Ashish Kishore, head of the hotel and rental operations of the Gurgaon-based Yatra.com, also called for an expeditious increase of hotel capacity.

Yatra.Com, which claims to have a monthly turnover of the equivalent of some $17.5 million, mainly from domestic tourism, has been contracting rooms in hotels to thwart the soaring prices.

"The government should check whether hotels provide amenities in accordance with the prices they charge," he said. Many hotels, in his personal view, were imposing high prices simply because there was a demand from the corporate sector which could afford to pay such prices.

Ashwini Kakkar, executive vice chairman of Mumbai-based Mercury Travels Ltd, pointed to the growing disparity between India's inbound and outbound traffic.

"While incoming traffic is around five million, the outbound traffic at seven million will continue to grow by leaps and bounds. The outbound traffic will grow rapidly while inbound traffic will face hurdles for some time until the hotel room crunch is eased," Kakkar said in an interview.

This disparity, or "deficit", between incoming and outgoing traffic will grow further in the years ahead because outbound traffic is growing much faster than inbound traffic.

"India is investing some $6.2 billion in new hotel properties. All the hotels are expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2010, increasing the number of hotel rooms from 110,000 to 260,000.

"Hotel prices in India, rising from $300 up for a night in five-star hotels should come down once there is abundance of rooms available," Kakkar said.

The long-term impact of the high hotel prices, seen by many as an aberration of India's tourism sector, could be severe on India's inbound tourism as word of mouth, more effective than the ministry's paid publicity in the print and broadcast media, gets around about India's chronic hotel room shortage.

Kakkar described this year's ITB as his company's "best participation" because of the volume of enquiries he had received despite the fact that an ongoing transportation strike has very nearly crippled Berlin's lifeline.

In Kakkar's view, the huge Indian diaspora spread across the world was going to become more and more important in the future as a source of inbound tourism.

"The NRIs living in many countries are a rich source of inbound tourism. These people are keen to discover their roots and visit places in India from where their forefathers came," he maintained.

Wellness was another promising segment inherent with good business potential. But like others, Kakkar also lamented the very high hotel prices.

"I have visited Malaysia and Thailand which have beautiful infrastructure. They have five-star deluxe hotels which are far cheaper than some of the three or four star hotels in India, let alone five-star properties whose prices are very high," he said.

Besides the high-pitched presence of Jet Airways at Berlin, India's other private airline Kingfisher was also present at the show. "The German market is very important for us because many German visitors to India use our domestic flights," said Arjun Dasgupta, the deputy general manager of Kingfisher.

Perhaps one of the interesting products marketed at the show was the Deccan Odyssee by the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation, which has created a parallel product to the successful Palace on Wheels luxury train of Rajasthan.

Deccan Odyssey, which has been operating since 2003 and offers good insights to the traveller within Maharashtra and Goa, has appointed general sales agents in a number of Western countries as well as in Asia.

"We also offer facilities for conferences in our train and can provide a large hall with a comfortable seating capacity for 40 or 45 participants," said D V Dalvi, the operations officer of Deccan Odyssey. "We can also organize fashion shows for an exclusive public in our train," he added.