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[rakeshmalik]

Indian salaries to increase by 16%

New Delhi, Sept 12: Salaries in India are expected to increase by 16 percent in 2009, one of the highest in the Asia-Pacific region driven by strong economic growth and pressure on employers due to soaring inflation, a latest report says.

As per a report by the Hong Kong based compensation firm HR Business Solutions (HRBS) pay increases in the Asia-Pacific region are likely grow even as the economies are expected to be impacted by the global slowdown.

"The forecast pay increase in India averaging 16 percent is one of the highest among all the countries," the report stated.

The HRBS 2009 pay increase forecast is based primarily on four economic factors --GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, manpower demand and past pay increase trends.

Elaborating further it said that the Indian economy is reported to be cooling, but still it is expected to achieve a growth rate of 7-8 percent in 2008, which is among the strongest in the region after China.

"In addition, it has the fourth highest inflation rate of over 12 percent in 2008 which increases pay rise pressures on employers. Labour demand is still robust and there is a lack of sufficient supply of the skills-set required by India's rapidly growing services, manufacturing, construction and retail industries to boot," the HRBS report added.

Economic growth rates in Asia are mostly forecast to be moderately lower in 2008 relative to 2007, while inflation rate across the Asia-Pacific region has soared to an all-time high. "In many of the Asian countries, demand for manpower continues and in some cases, while general unemployment rate remains high, the labour market is extremely tight for qualified employees, for example, India, China and Vietnam," it stated.

Besides, in some developed economies such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, while the unemployment rate is low, the demand for people has been strong.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka is the other country, which is forecast to see a higher double-digit rise in salaries of about 17 percent in 2009. The country's inflation rate of more than 16 percent is the next highest in Asia after Vietnam and firms in Sri Lanka are hiring and facing challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled human capital.

Most of the neighbouring countries of India - Pakistan, China and Bangladesh are forecast to post around 11 percent of expected pay increase.

In 2008, the salary increase in India had averaged at 14.9 percent.

Other Asia-Pacific countries like China, Vietnam and Indonesia are forecast to see a rise of 11 percent, 12.4 per cent and 12.7 percent, respectively in 2009.

Earlier, in a separate report on Asian compensations, global HR consultancy Mercer had forecast that India was likely to witness over 14 percent increase in salaries annually for the next three years as the corporates were facing shortage of talent.

The Mercer report had also stated that India, Vietnam and Indonesia were the only three countries in the Asia-Pacific region, which are likely to see a double-digit increase in salaries until 2011.

 

[rakeshmalik]

Pakistan inflation hits 30-yr high: Government

Karachi, Sept 12: Pakistan's inflation hit a 30-year high in June, official figures showed on Friday, with experts forecasting it will take at least six months to be reined in.

The country's Bureau of Statistics said in its August report that the consumer prices index jumped 25.33 percent from a year earlier, after reaching 24.33 percent in July.

"We are facing super inflation in our country," said Kaiser Bengali, an economist and head of the government's poverty-alleviation based Benazir Income Support Programme.

"It will take a minimum of six months to get the inflation decreased if sustainable fiscal management is applied by the government," he said.

Bengali said Pakistan was facing double-digit inflation for three years.

"Inflation increased during 2007-08 mainly due to increases in the oil and food prices and that happened in almost all the countries. It is a universal phenomenon," he said.

New President Asif Ali Zardari, who was sworn in on Tuesday, has pledged to tackle an economy which is already dependent on foreign aid.

The country's stock market has lost around 40 percent of its value since January, in a politically volatile climate.

Rauf Nizamani, an independent economist, however, said Pakistan may soon benefit from a decrease in oil and rice prices in the international market.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "The government is already subsidising around 14 rupees on diesel and cannot decrease its prices in the near future. A mere decrease in petrol prices could help little in sorting out inflation. It will take many months to see the inflation decreased."

 

[rakeshmalik]

Indirect tax collections touch Rs 1,12,643 cr

New Delhi, Sept 12: Government's revenue from indirect tax, comprising customs, excise and service tax, has touched Rs 1,12, 643 crore by August-end, thus achieving over 35 percent of the budget estimates for the current fiscal.

Revenue collections from customs and excise duty grew by 10.5 percent to Rs 93,856 crore by August-end, while service tax collections rose by 24.9 percent at Rs 18,787 crore till July-end, against Rs 15,043 crore collected during the same period last year, a Finance Ministry statement said.

Revenue collections from customs duties grew by 17.8 percent and stood at Rs 47,734 crore during first five months of this fiscal against Rs 40,505 crore collected a year ago, while excise collection rose by merely 3.7 percent to Rs 46,122 crore, against Rs 44,469 crore during the same period a year earlier.

Earlier, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had also expressed concern about the sluggish growth in excise duty collections.

According to Budget 2008-09, indirect tax collections are estimated at Rs 3,21,264 crore during the current fiscal, which include Rs 1,18,930 crore from customs, Rs 1,37,874 crore from excise and Rs 64,460 crore from service tax.

Meanwhile, during the April-August period, the net direct tax collections stood at Rs 84,409 crore, up 38.31 percent from Rs 61,030 crore in the same period last year.

However, in August, revenue collections from customs duty slowed down, growing at 8.9 percent to Rs 9,484 crore, against Rs 8,713 crore a year ago.

Excise duty collections rose merely by 1.2 percent in August touching Rs 19,013 crore, against Rs 9,898 crore during the corresponding period last fiscal.

In July, for which latest data is available, service tax collections grew at 9.4 percent to Rs 3,876 crore against Rs 3,543 crore a year ago, the statement added.

 

[rakeshmalik]

Google may scrap ***** deal

San Francisco, Sept 13: Google Inc. may back out of its deal with ***** if the US Justice Department goes to court over it, reports said. The department is raising questions whether the online advertisement partnership would give the two companies a monopoly of the internet. Together they already handle 80% of the web searches on the internet.

The Department has hired an antitrust litigator to review evidence for a possible legal challenge to the deal.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the attorney is Sanford Litvack, a former vice chairman at Walt Disney Co. and chief of the Justice Department's antitrust division during the Carter administration.

Litvack is reviewing evidence the department has gathered in what could become an antitrust case focused either on Google itself or on the search-advertising partnership it announced with ***** in June, the Journal reported. That deal was part of *****'s attempt to ward off a takeover attempt by Microsoft Corp.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

But ***** said in a statement, "We have been informed that the Justice Department, as they sometimes do, is seeking advice from an outside consultant, but that we should read nothing into that fact. We remain confident that the deal is lawful."

Google executives also have repeatedly predicted the partnership will clear all regulatory hurdles. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt even went so far as to recently declare that Google intended to pursue the ***** partnership next month, even the Justice Department hadn't completed its review.

But Internet industry consultant Scott Cleland of Precursor LLC said Litvack's hiring, coupled with opposition from a group of major advertisers, doesn't bode well for the deal. "This is turning into a very serious investigation," Cleland said. "Google and ***** have a steep hill to climb."

Blair Levin, a regulatory analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, said in a note to clients that the hiring of an outside lawyer such as Litvack is a "rare" move by the department that likely indicates a legal challenge against a company or transaction.

"The stakes are ... far higher for *****," Levin wrote, because Google has "already succeeded in keeping ***** out of the arms of Microsoft."

Before embracing the Google deal, ***** rejected Microsoft's USD 47.5 billion takeover offer — a decision now haunting *****'s board, with the company's stock price nearly 50 percent below Microsoft's last offer of USD 33 per share.

***** shares fell 68 cents Tuesday to USD 17.58 while Google shares shed USD 1.29 to USD 418.66.

If regulators challenge the Google partnership, it would give *****'s already testy shareholders another compelling reason to question the judgment of the company's leadership, said Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler.

"***** is in a perilous position right now," Kessler said. "They walked away from a variety of different deals to work with Google. One could argue that was a colossal mistake."

After withdrawing its takeover bid, Microsoft tried to buy *****'s online search engine in a complex deal that could have paid out more than USD30 billion over the next decade.

***** is instead counting on Google's superior technology for identifying moneymaking ads to boost its annual revenue by about USD800 million.

Because they aren't swapping stock or cash, Google and ***** could have launched their advertising partnership shortly after it was announced in mid-June. Realizing the Justice Department would have antitrust concerns, the two companies voluntarily agreed to postpone the partnership's starting date until October, to give regulators time to examine the ramifications.

"It reflected a desire by the companies not to thumb their noses at the government," said Howard Morse, an antitrust lawyer who formerly worked for the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition.

Should regulators raise a red flag, the government could either try to negotiate revisions to the partnership with the two companies or sue to block the deal. A lawsuit probably also would seek a temporary restraining order to prevent the companies from working together until a trial takes place.

The partnership between the two companies would allow Google to sell some of the ads displayed alongside search results on *****'s Web site. Insisting the deal would benefit consumers and advertisers, Google and ***** have been planning to start the partnership in time to take advantage of the marketing blitz that occurs in the months leading up to holiday shopping season.

But a regulatory challenge could delay the advertising partnership well into next year. Google had to wait 11 months before getting the government's green light to complete its USD 3.2 billion acquisition of online ad service DoubleClick Inc. this year.

Combined, Google and ***** control more than 80 percent of the US search advertising market — a concentration that makes their partnership "a hard sell," Kessler said.

"It's a difficult argument to make that this business agreement will promote greater choice, greater competition and a healthier advertising environment," Kessler said.

Indeed, several major advertisers said Sunday they had written the Justice Department in opposition to the deal. The group includes Coca-Cola Co., Procter & Gamble Co., and General Motors Corp.

But if regulators blocked the Google deal, it still could have the perverse effect of diminishing competition by depriving ***** of an opportunity to make more money than it could invest in its own technology, said Outsell Inc. analyst Ned May.

A spokesman for Microsoft, which has strongly opposed the deal in testimony before Congress, declined to comment.

 

[rakeshmalik]

SERIAL BLASTS IN DELHI; SEVERAL INJURED

New Delhi, Sept 13: A series of explosions have rocked Delhi one after the other on Saturday evening. The first explosion was reported in Karol Bagh’s famous Gaffar Market’s MCD market. A second blast has been reported in Central Park of Connaught Place near Pallika Bazaar. This was followed by a third in GK-I’s M-Block market and twin blasts on Barakhamba Road.

According to eyewitnesses in Karol Bagh, nearly 30 people have been injured; of these at least 8 seriously.

The blast in Karol Bagh took place in a CNG auto-rickshaw and was followed by a blast in the cylinder kept on a scooter right behind it.

According to eyewitness accounts, the impact of the blast such that the auto rickshaw was tossed up in the air at least 12 feet.

Ambulances rushed to the spot as soon as the incident was reported. The injured have been rushed to nearby nursing homes and Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.

The first blast took place at 6:20 pm. All other blasts went off within 30 seconds of each other.

The MCD market is located in a very congested area of Karol Bagh and has several mobile phone shops.

The blast in CP took place at Gopaldas Bhawan’s parking lot. Three people have been reported injured have been rushed to the hospital.

The twin blasts on Barkhamba Road went off near the Metro Station.

All the affected sites have been cordoned off and traffic diverted.

The blasts clearly point a finger at terror involvement. The blasts come close on the heels of similar attacks in Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

There had been some intelligence inputs that a major city may be targetted during Ganesh Chaturthi festival.

 

[rakeshmalik]

RBI asks banks to display services charges, rates on websites

Mumbai, Sept 12: In order to make banking services more customer-friendly and transparent, RBI on Friday asked banks to display all information regarding interest rates, service charges for credit cards and loan schemes among other things in a format that can be easily understood by customers.

"We have devised a format for display of information which would enable the customer to obtain the desired information at a quick glance," RBI said in a notification today.

Among other things, the banks would have to display locker charges, credit card fees, fixed and floating interest rate for housing loans for different maturities, personal loans, vehicle loans for new as well as old cars and education loans on their websites.

In addition, the banks would be required to show the interest rates for various fixed deposit schemes for residents as well as non-residents.

The RBI further said banks could modify the format to suit their requirements without impairing the basic structure or curtailing the scope of disclosures.

 

[rakeshmalik]

Delhi serial blasts: Investigations on, police claim `vital clues`

New Delhi, Sept 14: The Delhi Police on Sunday claimed that it had gathered “vital clues” into yesterday’s deadly serial blasts which claimed at least 24 lives and injured over 100.

Investigations into the blasts meanwhile continued today with the Delhi Police’s Special Cell, which is leading the probe, continuing to pick up forensic evidence at the five blasts sites in Connaught Place, Karol Bagh and Greater Kailash I.

Investigators believe the attackers had packed the bombs with ammonium nitrate besides shrapnels and ball bearings for maximum impact. But while the bombs killed people in Connaught Place and Karol Bagh, no one died in South Delhi's upmarket Greater Kailash-I M Block market.

The Delhi Police is also preparing sketches of the suspects with the help of a rag picker boy and a security guard. The boy named Rahul had seen two men dump a black polythene bag into a dustbin at Barakhamba Road in Connaught Place, just before it exploded, police sources said. The guard at the Regal Cinema in the same area had caught a suspect.

Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Tajinder Khanna presided over the meeting of security agencies including key officers from Delhi Police and the Intelligence Bureau.

The Delhi Police conducted raids across the city and nearby areas through the night. "Seven or eight people" were detained last night and are being interrogated by sleuths of the Special Cell and the Intelligence Bureau, a police official said.

Simultaneously, police teams searched hotels and guest houses in the Walled City and Karol Bagh areas in a desperate hunt for the elusive bombers who some believe could have been from outside Delhi.

"Our suspicion is about SIMI," an officer said, referring to the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India, which has been increasingly linked to terror attacks in Indian cities.

Terror group Indian Mujahideen, believed to be the frontal organisation of SIMI, has claimed responsibility for the blasts.

A team of policemen is expected to visit Gujarat to talk to Abu Bashir, who the Gujarat Police arrested after calling him the mastermind of the Ahmedabad blasts in July that killed 56 people.

Government officials said security had been beefed up in busy markets, cinema halls, hospitals and Delhi Metro stations. An alert has also been sounded across the country, including in the financial capital Mumbai and other metros.

Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil also chaired a high-level meeting at his residence this morning to review countrywide security. The meeting was attended by top officials, including Cabinet Secretary Chandrashekhar, Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta, Intelligence Bureau Director P Haldar, Delhi Police Commissioner Y S Dadwal.








Normalcy in Delhi

The blasts, however, failed to dampen the spirits of Delhiites, who continued with normal life today. Major markets, however, attracted fewer people. Traffic on the city's roads was sparse.

City hospitals like RML, Jasaram, Lady Hardinge, Ganga Ram and LNJP, where the injured were admitted, saw a hectic activity overnight and in the morning as relatives of the victims came to visit them. Some people at RML and LNJP hospitals were seen worried as they were not able to trace their relatives since the blasts last night.

A police control room official said there have been no reports of disturbance from any part of the city. Vehicles were seen plying on all city routes, he added.

The serial blasts took place at popular markets in Karol Bagh, Greater Kailash-I and at Connaught Place, the heart of Delhi.

The first bomb exploded near a parking lot at Karol Bagh's Gaffar Market at about 6.15 pm, causing the worst carnage and killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 40.

Two bombs exploded in quick succession in nearby Connaught Place, at Barakhamba Road and Central Park, killing at least seven people. Two more bombs went off at the upscale M-Block market in Greater Kailash-I in South Delhi, but they caused no death.

The police also found and defused four bombs – one each in Central Park and near Regal Cinema, in Connaught Place; one near India Gate, a capital landmark whose expansive lawns serve as a popular evening retreat for families; and one at Parliament Street.

E-mail trail

Terror group Indian Mujahideen, the camouflaged SIMI, claimed responsibility for the blasts in an e-mail sent to various media house minutes before the bombings.

The Mumbai anti-terror squad (ATS) has traced the email to an electrical components manufacturing company in a northeast Mumbai suburb, Chembur, but have yet to make a breakthrough.

A team of police and ATS helped by cyber crime experts were engaged in checking all the computers in the company premises – located at flat no 201 and 202 in Erick House, 16th Road, Cheetah Camp, Chembur – to trace the machine from which the IM email could have been sent.

"Investigations are in progress and it is too early to reach any conclusion now," ATS chief Hemant Karkare said.

Since the site is located in a commercial-cum-industrial area, many of the units are not fully operation on Sunday, while many others had given an off on account of Ganesh visarjan (immersion of Ganesh idols).

The Indian Mujahideen terror outfit had also claimed responsibility for the recent serial blasts in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Jaipur.

This is the second time in less than six weeks that emails have been sent by the outfit using Internet Protocol addresses that have been traced in Mumbai.

In July, a few minutes before the Ahmedabad serial blasts, the terror outfit had sent emails hacking the email address of US national Kenneth Haywood, living and working in Navi Mumbai.

Incidentally, Navi Mumbai and Chembur are barely 15 km apart, the former located on the mainland, while the latter is on Mumbai island.

The Delhi government has announced a compensation of Rs 5,00,000 for the kin of the dead, while those injured would receive Rs 50,000 and free treatment. The Centre has also announced an additional compensation of Rs 3,00,000 for the kin of the dead.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi said that he had alerted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the possibility of terror strikes in New Delhi.

Delhi was last rocked by a terror attack in 2005 when multiple blasts in Sarojini Nagar and Paharganj markets killed 51 people on the eve of the Diwali festival.

 

[rakeshmalik]

US, China to hold top-level trade talks Tuesday

Washington, Sept 14: The United States and China hold cabinet-level trade talks in California this week amid tensions over China's massive export surplus and worries about the slowing global economy.

The talks come in the sunset of George W Bush's Republican presidency that has seen trade disputes with China over a host of issues, ranging from copyright infringement, automobile parts and investment barriers to toxic toys and pet food.

The latest attempt to get the World Trade Organization's Doha Round of negotiations off the ground foundered in July, leaving the world's largest economy and Asia's superpower squared off in their corners.

US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez and US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, the lead negotiator at the July Doha talks in Geneva, will host Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan for the one-day meeting Tuesday.

Gutierrez and Schwab will co-chair the talks with Wang, who is responsible for Chinese economic and trade matters. US Secretary of Agriculture Edward Schafer will also participate in the session.

The talks will focus on three main issues -- "market access, intellectual property rights and transparency," Commerce Department spokeswoman Ann Marie Hauser said late Friday.

The meeting will mark the 25th anniversary of the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), a bilateral dialogue the Commerce Department bills as an effort "to resolve bilateral trade issues to expand trade opportunities."

The silver anniversary venue fittingly is the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda in southern California.

In 1972, Nixon was the first US President to visit China since the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. The Republican President sought greater dialogue with the Communist nation, and that included trade.

The bilateral trade talks come amid longstanding US concerns about China's currency, the yuan, which critics say is kept undervalued, and its bulging trade surplus.

US officials repeatedly have raised the issue of the value of the yuan, which some say is artificially low and thus a factor in the massive trade imbalance between the two countries.

The United States is saddled with a ballooning trade deficit with China, which hit a record USD 256.2 billion last year.

The yuan has appreciated by around 20 percent against the dollar since China delinked its currency from the greenback in July 2005.

Critics say China maintains its yuan currency undervalued to bolster exports, and US lawmakers blame outsourcing to China for the loss of thousands of jobs.

The US has lost four million manufacturing jobs in the past eight years, most of them in Bush's first term in office, Lloyd Wood of the American Manufacturing Trade Coalition (AMTAC) said Friday.

"We want China to play by the rules," Wood said, citing the yuan and US trade complaints against China filed at the WTO.

Wood recalled with amazement that after the Republican-led Congress "got fired" two years ago, no legislation sanctioning China over its currency has been voted on.

"There's lots of blame to share on the issue," he added. "Our government is not doing anything."

Erin Ennis, vice president of the US-China Business Council, downplayed expectations for the JCCT talks, saying its jurisdiction "is fairly narrow."

"We're not expecting any major breakthroughs at this meeting," she said in a phone interview.

Asked about the political implications on US trade policy of a new president, either the Democrats' Barack Obama or the Republicans' John McCain, in the White House in January, Ennis took a long view.

The council does not expect a shift in the US approach to trade with China because it has been on a "steady footing for 30 years," she said.

 

[rakeshmalik]

India, China showing economic cooling`

Washington, Sept 13: Developing countries, including India and China, are showing signs of economic cooling, as the effects of the downturn that started in the United States continue to spread around the globe, says an expert.

"Basically, what you've got is the emerging world now slowing at the same time as the developed world. Though the magnitude of their slowdown is a lot more modest, it is negative for the global economy. The question now, obviously, is how much will they slow down,” a newspaper quoted Michael Hartnett, chief emerging markets strategist for Merrill Lynch, as saying.

The fears that booming emerging markets are getting caught up in a global slowdown have helped send the dollar soaring this week.

But according to Hartnett, the developing world has remained relatively resilient against global turbulence -- particularly given the pummelling many countries suffered during the Asian and Latin American financial crises of the 1990s and the early 2000s.

He, however, said that while they are still growing at envious rates, the signs of a shift in fortunes are sprouting up from Shanghai to New Delhi to Sao Paulo.

According to the paper, the high-tech and outsourcing sectors in India are softening as they absorb cutbacks from US corporate clients.

In China, diminished export expansion is cooling the economy from a growth rate of 12 percent last year to an estimated 9-10 percent this year, while the stock market in Shanghai has fallen more than 60 percent since its peak in October. In Brazil, exports slipped last month after surging for months.

For the United States, there are pros and cons to the developing world's decelerating growth.

On one hand, it is already contributing to falling commodity prices, driven up for years by the insatiable demand in emerging markets. On the other hand, emerging market cooling is adding to the overall drop in global growth, which is set to slide at least to 4.1 percent this year from 5 percent in 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund.

That is likely to spell trouble for US exports, which propped up the economy in the last quarter.

 

[rakeshmalik]

No clearance for ADAG, Kotak comex if interests conflict: FMC

New Delhi, Sept 14: Forward Markets Commission on Sunday said corporate like Anil Ambani-led Reliance and Kotak will have to wait before entering the commodity bourse arena, as it is still working on preventing conflict of interest that may arise from brokers turning exchange promoters.

"I do not want this market to be a gambling place," FMC Chairman B C Khatua told a news agency in an interview, adding that the guidelines on conflict of interest may take a month or two or more to be finalised.

He said the regulator was well aware of the danger of conflict of interest and clearances would not be given to Reliance and Kotak till there was clarity on the issue.

"We must clearly understand the legitimate role of speculation in futures market... the legitimate speculators are a well regulated risk-taker, a risk transferor and then a transferee, without whom market cannot function... But, risk transferors can not transfer risk to themselves," he noted.

Khatua said that there was nothing to worry about a big corporate house owning an exchange "except that there should not be conflict of interest between its role as the owner and its other roles, if any."

It would be deemed as conflict of interest if an owner also has a broking bouse and it holds direct position in the market and owns the exchange, he explained.

Reliance and Kotak are the only two applications that FMC is currently holding for approval, Khatua said.

Khatua said that FMC has made it clear that in the new guidelines, any firm that is promoting an exchange and also has direct or indirect relationship with a broking firm would not be allowed to trade on the exchange.