India’s Mahindra Satyam shows fiscal year quarterly profit
India’s outsourcing firm Mahindra Satyam, recovering from the country’s biggest-ever corporate fraud, on Monday reported its first profits since the scandal erupted.
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Skilling youths biggest long-term challenge for economic growth
Skilling India’s young is the biggest long-term challenge to keep the economy growing fast, while the size of fiscal deficit and rate of inflation present short-term challenges to policy makers, a panel of industrialists and economists said
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Kochi airport plans expansion with rise in profits
Kerala’s Kochi airport, the fourth largest airport that handles international passengers in India, Saturday announced that its profit touched Rs.77 crore in fiscal 2009-10 and it will invest Rs.118 crore in expansion plans.
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With collaboration, both US, India stand to gain: Obama’s message
The broad message US President Barack Obama sought to deliver in the first leg of his four-day India visit is clear: the people of the two largest democracies will serve better if they shed old dogmas and realise they are indispensable partners in the 21st century.
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South Korea Pays Pirates $9 Million For Release Of Supertanker
Seoul, South Korea (AHN) – Somali pirates claim they have received $9.5 million in ransom from the owners of a South Korean supertanker they hijacked in April. The pirates have freed the ship together with its 24 crew members.
South Korea’s foreign ministry confirmed Sunday the release from Hobyo, Somalia, of the 300,000-ton Samho Dream the previous day but did not say how much ransom was paid.
A South Korean naval ship is escorting the Samho Dream, which is returning home.
In April, the supertanker was sailing from Iraq to the U.S. with 2 million barrels of oil valued at $170 million when it was seized by pirates in the Indian Ocean. The pirates demanded $20 million in exchange for releasing the ship and its five South Korean and 19 Filipino crew members.
Meanwhile, Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme, said the Singapore-registered petroleum and chemical tanker Golden Blessing was also released by Somali pirates.
The ship with 19 Chinese sailors on board was hijacked in June in the Gulf of Aden while sailing from India to Saudi Arabia. A Chinese naval ship escorted the ship away from Qandala, where it was anchored by pirates.
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Obama platter for India: High-tech exports, N-clubs, Kabul role
The US is set to convey its commitment to the easing of high-tech exports to India, support New Delhi’s membership of nuclear clubs and back a bigger role for the country in global affairs, when US the President holds talks with PM Manmohan Singh tomorrow.
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Obama urges India to look for peace
President calls for rebuilding of trust in wake of Mumbai terror attacks as US state visit notches up £6bn in trade deals
Barack Obama urged India today to strengthen peace efforts with Pakistan after relations dived following the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
“My hope is that over time, trust develops between the two countries, that dialogue begins, perhaps on less controversial issues, building up to more controversial issues,” Obama told a meeting of students at a college in Mumbai.
“There are more Pakistanis who’ve been killed by terrorists inside Pakistan than probably anywhere else.”
While Obama’s visit is mainly about boosting trade with India, the issue of regional stability in South Asia dominated the student meeting. Obama answered a range of questions at St Xavier College, a Jesuit institution.
When a young woman challenged him on US support of Pakistan, Obama said: “I must admit I expected [that question].”
India blames Pakistan for backing militants and claims that elements within Pakistan were behind the Mumbai attacks in 2008, when Pakistan-based gunmen killed 166 people.
Obama and his wife, Michelle , arrived yesterday in Mumbai on the first leg of a 10-day tour of Asia to boost American trade and to consolidate ties with key regional allies.
Obama yesterday paid tribute to those killed in the Mumbai attacks at the Taj Mahal hotel. “We will never forget,” Obama said at a memorial.
The Obamas stayed at the Taj Mahal hotel before flying to Delhi. An entire floor has been reserved for the couple and all 570 rooms booked for their security team and entourage, which includes investors and trade officials.
Around 10,000 Indian security personnel have been deployed for the visit.
Last night, the president addressed an audience of top Indian business people in Mumbai . The White House, keenly aware of the role that the fragile American economy played in last week’s poor midterm election results for the Democrats, has been keen to underline the economic gains the trip is expected to bring for America.
US firms will finalise deals worth around $10bn (£6bn) with India that will support 54,000 jobs back home, a senior White House aide, Michael Froman, told reporters.
Some 20 deals are in the pipeline, including an engine contract for General Electric and a $2.7bn commission for passenger aircraft from Boeing for one of India’s fast-expanding private airlines. However, the $4.5bn sale by Boeing of C-17 military transport planes is still being negotiated.
George W Bush, during the last visit by an American president in 2006, controversially blessed India’s civil nuclear power programme. Few expect the same kind of breakthrough this time. But no one predicts an upset either.
“At the end it will look good. The Indians understand they need to be seen to be helping the US with some decent economic deals. Obama understands he needs to reassure India that the momentum in relations generated by Bush is still there,” said C Raja Mohan, an Indian academic and foreign policy analyst.
The economic emphasis has disappointed some in Delhi. Indian diplomats are looking for signs of a new US strategic vision for South Asia that would give them a central role to counterbalance China.
American officials have restricted themselves to noting the “emergence” of India and its middle class, and observing that “regional dynamics will change fast” in coming years.
US diplomats last week restated their desire for measures ranging from reforms of ownership regulations to changes in intellectual property law, which would ease access to Indian markets for US firms.
Indian hopes for the waiving of restrictions on the transfer of US technology to government bodies working on space research or nuclear technology seem likely to be fulfilled.
The White House is also likely to support Indian membership of four key global nuclear nonproliferation regimes. “We will end up treating India similar to other close allies and partners other than as a country of concern,” Froman said.
But there is unlikely to be an explicit statement backing India’s bid for permanent membership of the UN security council.
In Delhi, as well as a visit to a Mughal-era Islamic tomb, an address to parliament and a state dinner, Obama will meet Manmohan Singh, the 78-year-old Indian prime minister, and Sonia Gandhi, the head of the Congress party.
Obama is visiting India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan in the longest trip of his presidency so far. Barack Obama US foreign policy Obama administration United States US politics India US economy Economics Jason Burke guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Trial to open over India’s ‘biggest corporate fraud’
HYDERABAD: The trial is set to open Tuesday of the former head of leading Indian outsourcing firm Satyam who is accused of staging the nation’s biggest corporate fraud in a case dubbed “India’s Enron”.
The declaration by Satyam founder and former chairman B. Ramalinga Raju in January 2009 that he had falsified profits plunged the Indian business world into turmoil.
“The court will likely issue summons to a list of witnesses to be heard,” Raju’s lawyer Bharat Kumar told AFP ahead of the opening of the trial in the southern city of Hyderabad.
Raju, who faces charges including conspiracy, cheating and forgery, declared in a letter of confession that he had overstated profits for years and inflated the company’s balance sheet by more than one billion dollars.
He later backed down from the confession, but police maintain the letter was a “voluntary disclosure of fraud”.
Raju was expected to be in court on Tuesday, his lawyer said.
The scandal at the Hyderabad-based firm is known as “India’s Enron” after the US energy giant that collapsed in 2001 in the wake of massive false-accounting revelations.
The Satyam trial opens after India’s Supreme Court last week revoked bail granted to Raju on health grounds in August, saying the gravity of the accusations meant the bail order “cannot be sustained”.
Raju has been undergoing treatment for hepatitis at a hospital in Hyderabad.
India’s federal investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), argued Raju’s bail should be cancelled because he might influence witnesses and tamper with evidence.
The Supreme Court also ordered the lower court to complete its trial of Raju by July 31 next year.
Satyam, ranked as India’s fourth-largest outsourcer by revenue before the scandal, acts as a back office for some of the world’s biggest companies including Nestle, General Electric and General Motors.
Satyam was taken over in April by mid-sized software outsourcer Tech Mahindra, a unit of the tractors-to-holidays conglomerate Mahindra and Mahindra, which paid nearly 600 million dollars for a majority share.
The company, rebranded Mahindra Satyam, in September announced a loss of 27.6 million dollars for the fiscal year to March as it reported its first results since the scandal.
“The patient has been revived and is convalescing. But it could be a year or two before the company will be healthy and running again,” Mahindra Satyam chairman Vineet Nayyar said at the time.
Analysts have been divided about Satyam’s future, with some saying the worst is over while others argue it could take a few quarters or even years of uphill struggle to fully emerge from the scandal.
Satyam’s stock plunged more than 90 per cent when the scandal broke but recovered when a government-appointed board took charge and later chose Tech Mahindra as the new owners through a bidding process. -AFP
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Obama calls India a job creator for U.S.
President Barack Obama on Saturday embraced India as a jobs-creating giant for hurting Americans, not a cheap-labor rival that outsources opportunity from the United States.
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Major players? China, India get more say in IMF
China and India received long-sought recognition as global economic heavyweights as the International Monetary Fund gave them and other emerging powers a significantly larger role in stabilizing the world economy.
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