Food inflation accelerated from the previous week’s annual rise of 10.05 percent and fuel inflation was at 12.57 percent in the previous week. The primary articles price index was up 15.19 percent, compared with week-ago’s reading of 14.75 percent.

The wholesale price index, the most closely watched inflation gauge in India, rose 9.97 percent in July from a year earlier after remaining above 10 percent for five months until June.

Source : http://tinyurl.com/33wl8qp

At Thursday’s closing price for the stocks, the company would raise 67.8 billion reais ($39.2 billion) from the sale of common shares and another 43.8 billion reais ($25.4 billion) from the preferred shares, making it one of the world’s largest- ever stock offerings.

Petrobras expects to begin bookbuilding Sept. 3, and price the share sale on Sept. 23.

The plan has become the financial cornerstone of the company’s $224 billion five-year investment plan meant to turn Brazil into a major oil exporter by tapping oil buried deep

under the ocean floor in a region known as the subsalt.

The company faces skepticism by investors who have questioned the high price for the oil reserves to be used in the state-backed oil-for-shares swap arrangement, which has

sparked fears Petrobras may be overpaying for the assets and diluting shares.

Under the terms of the $43 billion oil-for-shares swap, Petrobras said on Wednesday it agreed to exchange part of the stock to be issued for development rights to 5 billion barrels of offshore oil at a price of $8.51 per barrel — far above the $5 to $6 per barrel that markets saw as fair.

The swap will endow Petrobras’ assets with valuable oil reserves.

The segment of the share sale outside the oil-for-share swap is primarily targeted at non-government and minority shareholders, who will provide the only cash in the operation.

Their participation will be crucial for Petrobras to shore up its balance sheet, which has been stretched by heavy borrowing to finance its ambitious offshore plans.

Government leaders have also said they plan to boost the state’s participation in the company’s capital to around 40 per cent current levels near 30 per cent, which has left some investors nervous about greater state sway in the company.

Analysts said the large size of the share swap with respect to the entire operation — authorized by shareholders for up to $85 billion — shows the government expects it will be able to pick up a considerable number of shares not subscribed by private investors.

Petrobras’ preferred shares, its most widely traded class of stock, closed at 27.60 reais on Thursday while common shares closed at 31.24 reais.

INVESTOR INTERESTBut some investors say those concerns have already been priced into the…

Source : http://tinyurl.com/3x5lcev

I was in Beijing a couple of months ago and right from landing at the swish Norman Foster-designed airport—built for the Olympics—it had me marvelling about China’s ability to put up spectacular buildings and enormous infrastructure networks with the ease of a child playing with Lego. As I drove to my hotel—on multi-lane, tree-lined, First World highways—the other part of my brain couldn’t help but compare and cringe about our inability to construct competently. Pictures of half-finished, debris-strewn Commonwealth Games sites and the dug out, tangled up roads went through my head.

Corruption is the game spoiler in India—that’s the broad tune we have been humming collectively as a nation, as we watch overpriced treadmills and toilet paper turn into mascots of greed gone berserk. But I have been wondering how China, which too has record levels of corruption, manages to host a magnificent Olympic Games, and in the process build iconic structures such as the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. China and India are neck and neck on corruption measures—Transparency International ranks China at No. 79 and India at No. 84, with a Corruption Perception Index score of 3.6 and 3.4 respectively. Chinese politicians and bureaucrats are up to the same hanky-panky as ours, and evidently to the same shameful extent.

Also Read Radha’s previous Lounge columns

Taking corruption out of the running will be a blessing—and a much-needed moral victory—but that in itself won’t deliver a dazzler of a show. China is a winner, despite endemic corruption, because it has three essential enablers that we don’t—it aims higher, it implements faster, and it plays stronger.

Aims higher

China has “satellite vision” whereas we tend to have “in the well” vision. China scans the world to see what is “best” and then sets out to better it. Take the high-speed train network that it is putting in place—when it is finished in 2020 it will be the world’s largest, fastest, and most technologically sophisticated. I had a taste of it: I took the train from Beijing to Tianjin (something like Mumbai to Pune)—also built ahead of the Olympics—and sat in wonder as the speed reached 300-plus kmph, zipping through the 117km distance in half an hour flat. What was equally compelling was the ease with which huge numbers of passengers were processed—it felt like an enormous airport, run so efficiently that even without speaking a word of Chinese I had an incredibly smooth experience right from buying the ticket in Beijing to getting into a taxi at the other end in Tianjin.

The stadiums built for the Olympics are another example of China’s better-than-the-best mindset. The Bird’s Nest isn’t just another stadium—it is a masterpiece on a global scale, utterly modern and unmistakably Chinese at the same time, an instant icon that always makes me smile. The Beijing Water Cube is another stunner. The best architects in the world put in their best effort for the Chinese Olympic structures—Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron won the prestigious Lubetkin award for the Bird’s Nest; Australian firm PTW Architects (for the Water Cube) and Foster and Partners (for the Beijing airport) were finalists for the same award. Contrast this to what we have made for the Commonwealth Games—even if you set aside the implementation snafus, the vision itself is limited, the aim being simply to have something better than what we had before. How can you dazzle when you aim so low?

Implements faster

This is probably our greatest pain point and China’s shining strength. While our Games preparation is in the hopeless scramble phase, the Chinese were so far ahead of schedule with their Olympic preparations that the International Olympic Committee had to urge them to take it easy. “We had to persuade the Chinese to slow down on their schedule,” Kevan Gosper, vice-chairman of the Olympic Coordination Commission, was quoted as saying in October 2006. Despite the slowdown, the Water Cube was delivered and tested with a national event in January 2008, a good six months before the Olympics start date. The Bird’s Nest was inaugurated in June 2008. All 31 games venues were finished in good time, even the polluted skies of Beijing were cleaned up, and the city itself was dressed up like a bride for her wedding.

Plays stronger

It is finally about the games, the performance of the players, that’s what gets a nation’s pulse racing. While we struggle to put an occasional athlete on the world map, China has steadfastly built its sporting prowess with remarkable results. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, China ranked 11th with 28 medals; four years later at Barcelona it pole-vaulted to No. 4 with 54 medals; at Sydney it was up to No. 3, bagging 58 medals, 28 of them gold; at Athens it advanced to No. 2, 63 medals in its kitty, 32 gold; and then it put on a breathtaking show on home turf: a haul of 51 gold medals, the highest in the Games, although its total medal tally of 100 was behind the US’ 110. China can clearly build more than physical infrastructure.

Is China perfect? Not by a long shot—the recent 10-day traffic jam near Beijing is a case in point. It struggles with developmental issues just like us, but by using the “aim higher, implement faster, play stronger” principle, it has managed to get streets ahead.

Closer home, the Indian Premier League is a vivid example of the aim-higher-implement-faster-play- stronger principle. Was the IPL a spectacular show? Yes. Was it clean? Doesn’t seem so.

Exactly my point—killing corruption is necessary, but not sufficient. Faster, higher, stronger—the Olympic motto—that’s what we really need to embrace. And build an India that we can truly be proud of.

Source : http://tinyurl.com/2we3mhs

The government had issued only two new securities in the June quarter, constituting 6% of total issuance in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2010/11.

New Delhi is scheduled to borrow a record Rs4.57 trillion ($97.9 billion) this year, out of which 2.87 trillion is to be raised in April-September.

“A larger share of re-issues reflect the continued focus on building up adequate volumes under existing securities (and) imparting greater liquidity in the secondary market,” the government said in a quarterly report on public debt management.

The focus was also to lengthen the average maturity and help spread out the repayments. “The relatively high average maturity of government bonds is the result of conscious debt strategy, demand pattern, and market development initiatives.

“It has also been a conscious policy to maintain issuance up to 30 years to develop a long-term and liquid yield curve,” the finance ministry said. However, the weighted average maturity of issuances in the June quarter was reduced to ensure success of the borrowing programme given the high issuance plan, it said.

The weighted average maturity fell to 10.45 years in the June quarter from 11.86 years in the same period a year earlier.

At the end of June, 28% of outstanding stock issued had a maturity of up to 5 years and 34% of more than 10 years.

Banks were the main buyers holding 51% of government bonds, followed by insurance and provident funds with 29%. Foreign investors held 0.6 percent, while the Reserve Bank of India had 12% for its monetary operations.

Sales of treasury bills, or short-term securities, fell short of repayments in April-June, although the government had said in its budget estimates they would be even.

The central bank had cut the treasury bill amounts in June and July following an outflow of nearly Rs1.2 trillion towards telecom spectrum auction and advance tax payments that caused a severe cash crunch.

Source : http://tinyurl.com/23q92a2

“More Indian companies made it to the list this year as the country is less open than many other Asian economies and was therefore less affected by the global downturn,” the influential US business magazine said announcing the list topped by China with 71 companies.

“Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said investment and savings rates in India’s economy make economic growth of 10 percent a year an achievable target in the medium term,” it said noting, “That would be gravy for the winners on our list, which averaged an 89 percent total return in the last year,”

China-Hong Kong companies predominate, with 71 on the list, though this is down from 78 last year despite the mainland’s $590 billion stimulus package.

Indian companies making it to the list include Jindal Drilling & Industries, Emami, Allied Digital Services, Exide Industries, Jubilant Organosys, Spice Mobility, Zydus Wellness, Amara Raja Industries, Compact Disc India, Everonn Education and Micro Technologies.

Among other Indian firms on the list are Ashiana Housing, Banco Products (India), Bliss GVS Pharma, Deep Industries, Glodyne Technoserve, Kaveri Seed, KNR Constructions, ELGI Equipments and ICSA (India).

Forbes Best Under a Billion list is chosen from nearly 13,000 publicly-listed Asia-Pacific companies with actively traded shares and having sales in the range of $5 million-$1 million. The selection of the best 200 companies is based on earnings growth, sales growth, and shareholders’ return on equity in the past 12 months and over three years.

According to Forbes, the latest list has 151 new entrants as compared to 136 last year. Information technology, health care and electronics companies accounted for nearly half of the 200 entities.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/39tvtvz

The report of the committee on slum statistics, headed by Pranob Sen, the principal adviser to the Planning Commission, was released by Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Kumari Selja here Friday.

Selja said the target of achieving a slum-free India in five years, as outlined by President Pratibha Patil in her speech to parliament in 2009, was ‘not unachievable’ unless states cooperate fully.

She said the committee’s first priority was to suggest suitable adjustments and create a reliable statistical model based on the data of 1,743 towns and cities enumerated in the 2001 census. The committee applied this model to estimate slum population in all 5,161 towns and cities in the country.

‘By this model, the estimated slum population of the country in 2001 comes to be 75.26 million and the projected slum population for 2011 is 93.06 million,’ she said.

The 2001 census had put the slum population at 52.4 million.

The committee has also suggested that an urban information management system on slums should be created and each state that gets funds from the ministry should indicate time-bound plans for addressing issues concerning slum clusters.

The committee was also tasked with suggesting an uniform definition of slum which can be adopted by the government for its Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) that seeks removal of slums and has recommended that contiguous area with 20-25 households having slum-like characteristics be taken as slum area.

It has recommended checklists for the purpose of identification of slums and said that households having roof material other than concrete, not having facility of drinking water, drainage and latrine should be treated as having slum characteristics.

Selja said there was problem of under-reporting by states as areas not notified as slums were not counted by them.

Noting her ministry was a bit hamstrung in the absence of complete data concerning the slums, she said that urban population was growing and there were many challenges in the task of making cities free of slums but funds would not be a constraint.

The committee has recommended that Registrar General of India, which is conducting the 2011 survey, should share lay out maps with the MHUPA as an aid for slum surveys.

The 2001 census had put the urban population at 286 million. Ministry officials said that 40 percent of the country’s population will be living in the urban areas in the next two decades.

Source : http://tinyurl.com/22mu3sv

Echoing concerns raised by several other countries, India has already said it wants the means to fully track and read BlackBerry’s secure email and access to internet data that officials fear could be misused by terrorists.

BlackBerry maker, Research In Motion, will give India access to secure BlackBerry data beginning 1 September, a government source said this week, leading New Delhi to put off a decision on whether to shut down the smartphone.

Union home secretary G K Pillai told reporters that similar demands will be made of Google and Skype and notices will be sent to them. He did not say when.

BlackBerry’s reputation is built on its system security and a compromise under pressure from governments could damage the device’s popularity with business professionals and politicians.

Apple Inc and Nokia, RIM’s two biggest smartphone rivals, may have the most to gain if India blocks BlackBerry services. Nokia said on Monday it will host an email server in India from 5 November.

Source : http://tinyurl.com/2wcn8av

Besides exemptions, there are several deductions permitted from gross total income. The result of such exemptions, deductions, and other incentives under the Act in the form of liberal rates of depreciation is the emergence of Zero tax companies which in spite of having high book profit are able to reduce their taxable income to nil.

Analysts said that special economic zone developers and units operating there are also included under the MAT regime.

Under DTC, all the corporate taxpayers will now be liable to MAT including those availing the investment-linked incentives and profit-linked incentives.

Source : http://tinyurl.com/34862wv