The Capital to City Airport Terminals (CATs) will enable fast transit to the airport – complete with baggage check-in, issue of boarding pass, and a high-speed train to the airport.

Pic: Delhi metro

The Delhi Metro Airport Express Line – modelled on London’s Heathrow Express and Hong Kong’s Metro Airport Link – will have only 6 halts on way to the airport and will cover the distance in 20 minutes. As the 2010 Commonwealth Games approach, the Airport Express will be critical in the transportation of athletes and equipment from the Airport to their accommodation and stadiums. Also, the metro line will ensure that the Airport’s pre-paid taxi cab mafia cannot exploit the visitors.

For air travellers, airline and baggage check-in counters will be available at the NDLS, Dhaula Kuan Metro, Shivaji Terminus stations. According to officials, these railway stations will function like mini-versions of airport terminals.

In all, 8 trains having 6 coaches each will be pressed into service.

The trains that run on the Airport Express Line will be different from those on the other metro lines in that the Airport Express Line trains will have a cruising speed of 135 kmph. That will make the Delhi Metro’s Airport Express the fastest way to get to the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

In addition, the Airport Express Line trains offer state-of-the-art facilities, for which the passengers have to pay much less than taxi fares, since Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has decided to keep the train fare at a maximum of Rs 150 till Indira Gandhi International Airport, and an extra Rs 30 to Dwarka.

These trains have cushioned seats with arm-rests for all passengers. For the airport-bound passengers, the Airport Express Line trains offer specially designed overhead compartment to keep hand-baggage as also additional space under seats. Unlike the normal Delhi Metro train coaches, these would have front or rear facing seats . The normal coaches have very few seats to ensure there is enough space for people to stand during rush hours.

All passengers on board the trains will have access to real-time, updated flight information on display boards.

Each coach carries 2 concealed cameras aimed at extra security.

The baggage will be secured in containers and loaded onto the trains at the CATs.

After being offloaded at the Indira Gandhi International Airport Metro station, the baggage will be routed through dedicated tunnel using conveyor belts to the airport terminal’s common baggage-hold area.

Each station on the Capital to City Airport Terminals (CATs) line will have fully-automated access for passengers from the ground to the trains, with bigger lifts and wider escalators.

The CATs will provide for the commuters to park their cars in parking lots and then take a train to the airport.

The Delhi Metro Airport Express trains, which will initially run at a frequency of 10 minutes, are to take longer halts at stations to allow passengers to load their baggage.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has projected that about 42,000 people will use the Airport Express Line service daily.

The metro station at Indira Gandhi International Airport will be built close to the airport’s Terminal 3 and Terminal 4, which are intended to handle domestic as well as international air traffic in 2010.

Direct transit to the terminal’s lobby will be through a tunnel link.

The Airport Express Line is the first such rail line being built on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis.

According to the agreement between Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and the concessionaire, which is a joint venture between Reliance Energy and CAS, a Spanish company, the concessionaire will be responsible for the design and construction of all stations, electrification, telecom, signaling, as well as procurement of rolling stock.

The Spanish firm also will construct a depot near the Dwarka station.

The total cost of the Airport Express Line, which comes to Rs 3,800 crore, will be shared, with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation undertaking the civil construction work.

According to the new plan, mobile services are available at a cost of 1 paise per second for local calls and STD calls within the BSNL network.

Calls to networks other than BSNL will cost 1.2 paise per second.

This move by the BSNL follows announcement of similar plans by private telecom operators such as Tata Docomo, Vodafone Essar, Bharti Airtel, and Reliance Communications.

For those BSNL subscribers who wish to remain on the minute-based tariff scheme, the company has announced a 49-paise-per-minute plan for all local calls and STD calls. SMS costs 49 paise in this plan.

BSNL’s is the cheapest tariff offered by any telecom operator on a per-minute basis. (RCom and Airtel and recently had reduced their charges to 50 paise a minute.)

In addition, BSNL has announced that it will offer a 30-paise-per-minute plan to subscribers availing of a 3G connection.

At present, telecom operators are charging prices ranging from 90 paise a minute to Rs 1.20 a minute for voice calls on 3G pre-paid cards.

BSNL is the only telecom operator that offers 3G services across India.

According to Kuldeep Goyal, chairman and managing director of BSNL, so far the company has failed to attract sufficient number of subscribers on its 3G platform.

BSNL has allowed changeover from 2G to 3G almost free of charge.

The company also has entered into a tie-up with Dell and Olive Telecommunication (the parent company of Haier Mobile) to introduce embedded 3G Netbooks with high-speed internet access.

These measures, Kuldeep Goyal added, are expected to boost BSNL’s 3G customer base further.

Meanwhile, BSNL said it is not planning to call new bids for a 93-million-line order for GSM.

However, Kuldeep Goyal confirmed that the company has ordered 8 million 2G GSM lines from Huawei, a Chinese firm, which will be installed up in the southern states of the country.

Ericsson has been short-listed to provide lines in the country’s northern and eastern states.

Goyal said that BSNL is likely to open direct negotiations for a stake in Zain, of Kuwait, in case its exclusive talks as a part of a consortium fail.

Both BSNL and MTNL are part of a group led by Vavasi, a little-known Indian firm, which aims to take a 46% holding in the Kuwaiti firm from shareholders, including the Kharafi Group.

The decision to issue multiple-entry visas to traders was taken at a meeting of the Indo-Saudi Joint Commission held in at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.

The meeting was attended by India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Saudi Arabia’s Minister for Commerce and Industry Abdullah Zainal Alireza.

A 10-member delegation of businessmen from India, which accompanied Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, also held discussions with senior officials of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce, on taking the trade between Indian and Saudi Arabia “to the next level.”

Reacting to the bilateral decision on multiple-entry visas to businessmen, Sharad Nandurdikar, of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said that a major hurdle has been removed. Indian business who wanted to come to Saudi Arabia to do business had to face visa-related issues every time, and businessmen from Saudi Arabia had similar complaints, Nandurdikar added.

Nandurdikar said that an important meeting will be held in New Delhi in early 2010 in order to address specific issues related to “processes and procedures” that affect two-way trade.

Adnan A Al-Nueim, secretary-general of Asharqia Chamber, of Saudi Arabia, said his country’s trade will certainly get a boost with the reciprocal visits.

According to Adnan A Al-Nueim, over 200 ‘Amerindic’ companies are at present active in Saudi Arabia.

The new tax code is to be put into operation from April 1, 2011.

The new DTC will lead to actual taxation only when the money is finally withdrawn for consumption or when money is switched to some other type of investment.

According to experts, with the widespread use of computers, PAN numbers and central information repositories, the accounting should not pose any major problem.

In fact, the concept already exists in one form or the other in many countries. In fact, India’s New Pension System (NPS) follows the same system.

Members of the New Pension System can now switch between different asset mixes and investment managers that are provided by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), and this switch is not treated as a withdrawal. If such a system becomes applicable to for non-pension savings as well, the new Direct Tax Code will not turn out to be a hurdle to one’s investments.

Even as all the changes proposed are meant to usher in a change for the better, experts say, the new Code curbs the mobility of one’s investments by rendering them not only less manageable but also less profitable. In other words, in the new scheme of things, these savings will continue to be represented as individual investments and not as an investment account.

Meanwhile, a section of the senior officers of the revenue service have opposed the draft of the Direct Taxes Code, alleging that it is an attempt at making the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) “toothless.”

According to reports, these revenue officers – a majority of them from the Income Tax Department in Mumbai – are of the opinion that the DTC has recommended that CBDT’s powers to issue circulars or notifications or even make amendments be taken away.

Also, these officers – who included Chief Commissioners and Commissioners of the Income Tax Department – reportedly charged those who drafted the new Direct Taxes Code with having “ulterior motives” in diluting the powers of the Central Board of Direct Taxes. Besides, these officers are sore that the CBDT, which has been responsible for dealing with direct-tax revenue, was not involved in the task of preparing the new Direct Taxes Code.

The proposals in the Direct Taxes Code for Personal Taxation and Income from House Property are as follows:

PERSONAL TAXATION

Moderation of tax rates and increase in tax slabs proposed; new beneficial tax slabs are to be introduced (which will reduce the tax burden for individuals); and peak rate of 30% applicable on income exceeding Rs 25 lakh.

Definition of residency and scope of income

The definition of residence is to be changed. A separate category of ‘Not Ordinarily Resident’ and additional condition of 729 days to ascertain residency will be abolished. There will be only 2 categories of taxpayers proposed, namely, ‘Residents’ and ‘Non-residents.’ Residents are to be taxed only on India-sourced income for an initial period of 2 two years, provided they qualify as a ‘non-resident’ in the preceding 9 financial years.

INCOME FROM HOUSE PROPERTY

Gross rent is proposed to be calculated as higher of contractual rent or a presumptive rate of 6% of ratable value/construction/acquisition cost.

Deduction towards interest on housing loan on self-occupied property is not available. Deduction for repairs and maintenance is to be reduced to 20% of the gross rent.

Service tax deductible on payment basis

Exempt-Exempt-Tax (EET) regime proposed for savings scheme. All long-term retrial savings schemes are to be moved to the EET regime. Contributions (both by employee and employer) of up to Rs 3 lakh to any account with permitted savings intermediaries are proposed to be deductible. Accretion of income will take place till withdrawal is exempt. Any withdrawal made under any circumstances is taxable. Withdrawals pertaining to approved Employee Provident Fund-accumulated balance as on March 31, 2011, and accretions thereon are not taxable.

Savings from one eligible savings scheme to another are not to be treated as a withdrawal. Permitted savings intermediaries will include approved Provident and Superannuation funds, life insurer and New Pension System Trust.

Other deductions

Aggregate deductions for the long-term eligible savings referred above, along with tuition fees paid, are to be raised from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh. No further investments are eligible.

The first Duronto train, between Sealdah in Kolkota and New Delhi, was flagged off the other day.

The inaugural run of Southern Railway’s Chennai-Delhi Duronto Express – which covers a distance of 2,177 kilometres – was flagged off by at Chennai Central by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram.

The Duronto Express departs from Chennai Central 6.40 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays and arrives at Hazrat Nizamuddin at 10.35 a.m. the next day (on Tuesdays and Fridays.) In the return direction, the express will leave Nizamuddin at 4 p.m. on Tuesdays and reach Chennai at 8.10 p.m. on Wednesdays (the next day. The other day of departure from Hazrat Nizamuddin is yet to be unannounced.

The Chennai-Delhi one-way trip on Duronto Express costs Rs 2,530 for the air-conditioned 2-tier coach – as against Rs 2,625 on the Rajdhani Express and Rs 1,960 on Tamil Nadu Express and Grand Trunk Express.

On both the Duronto Express and the Rajdhani Express, the fare includes the cost of food.  In air-conditioned 3-tier coach, the Chennai-Delhi fare is Rs 1,925 for Duronto Express, Rs 2,005 for Rajdhani Express, and Rs 1,429 for Tamil Nadu Express and Grand Trunk Express.

The Duronto Express has a speed of 130/kmph since its coaches are made with  upgraded stainless steel, which makes the coaches lighter by about 2 tonnes each, compared to conventional coaches.

However, the Duronto takes nearly 28 hours (27 hours and 55 minutes) to cover the 2,177-kilometre distance between Chennai and Delhi. The running time is 28 hours and 10 minutes for Rajdhani Express, 33 hours for Tamil Nadu Express, and 35 hours for Grand Trunk Express.

A journey in the sleeper-class of Duronto Express costs an extra Rs 760, compared to Rs 528 in Tamil Nadu Express and Grand Trunk Express.

The coaches in Duronto Express are longer than the conventional coaches. There are 72 berths in the air-conditioned 3-tier coach, and 78 berths in the sleeper-class. The Duronto’s additional safety features include auto-closing vestibule doors (which means, each coach gets sealed in the event of a fire) as well as better thermal insulation and sound insulation.

According to M S Jayanth, general manager of Southern Railway, the special design enables the coaches to run at a speed of 130/kmph, compared to 110/kmph that is allowed to conventional express and mail trains.

The speed of the Duronto Express will be raised once the Chennai-New Delhi rail track is upgraded, resulting in further saving of about 2 more hours, Jayanth  said.

The introduction of the Duronto Express takes the number of trains running between Chennai Central and Delhi to 7. This is in addition to the 2 trains operating between Chennai Egmore and Delhi.

Of these North-bound trains, only the Chennai-New Delhi Tamil Nadu Express and the Chennai-New Delhi Grand Trunk Express trains are operated daily. While the Chennai-Jammu Tawi Express runs 3 days a week, the Chennai- Hazrat Nizamuddin Rajdhani Express and the Gharib Rath runs 2 days a week, and the Chennai-Dehradun Express, once a week.

Chittaranjan Pradhan, chairman and managing director of the National Aluminium Company, told reporters that a power plant is being built at Jharsuguda. A smelter plant in Iran is on the cards. In addition, NALCO proposes to build coal-based power plant in Indonesia.

According to A K Sharma, NALCO’s director for production, setting up a nuclear power plant is “an additional business line” which will help the company earn money by being an independent producer of power.

However, both Pradhan and Sharma declined to divulge the amount of money that NALCO would invest in the planned nuclear power plant.

National Aluminium Company, the third largest aluminium-manufacturer in India, produced 361,262 tonnes of aluminium in the fiscal 2008-09 ending March. The company has a 960-megawatt thermal-power plant in Angul in Orissa which feeds its aluminium smelter plant in Orissa.

According to Chittaranjan Pradhan, the NALCO administration’s commitment as well as the joint efforts made by the residents and the company’s authorities have brought about development and made the people self-reliant in the villages adjoining the company’s project in Damanjodi.

He said the company’s machinery at the Damanjodi had been upgraded “to match the best in the industry.” However, the input still cost stays high – with 21% of the total costs accounting for human resource management.

Pradhan stressed that there is a need to come up with better results with minimum inputs, more so at a time when the aluminum-making sector is facing hard times because of the global economic depression.

NALCO, he added, is planning huge expansion both in India as well as overseas by maximum utilisation of its human resource. High-grade bauxite reserves of the mines at Pottangi would support the third-phase expansion of the plant. The process for acquiring the mines is in its final stage.

The deals to acquiring mining areas at Gudem and K R Konda mining sites at Chintapalli in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh and some other places in the Godavari region of the state would be finalised soon.

Mongolia, which is supposed to have plentiful reserves of uranium, is the 6th country with which India has entered into a civilian nuclear agreement after the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) revoked the 34-year-old ban on India. The NSG ban had prevented India from trading in the areas of radioactive substances and nuclear energy with other countries.

Mongolia is believed to have about 6% of the total uranium reserves in the world.

India already has civilian nuclear agreements in place with the United States, France, Russia, Namibia and Kazakhstan.

The new agreement – called the ‘Memorandum of Understanding on Development of Cooperation in the field of Peaceful Use of Radioactive Minerals and Nuclear Energy’ – will enable India to seek uranium from Mongolia.

The accord on nuclear power plus four other agreements were signed after detailed discussions held between India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mongolia’s President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj in New Delhi.

After signing the pacts, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told reporters that both India and Mongolia have also agreed to cooperate strongly the fields of mining, agriculture, health, statistical affairs, and cultural exchange.

Besides, the two nations also agreed upon bilateral investment protection and on ways to avoid double taxation, and on boosting cooperation, including the issue of terrorism and UN reforms.

India promised Mongolia a stabilisation fund worth US $25 million in order to ease the ill-effects of the worldwide economic recession on Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia and the country’s biggest city.

Mongolia’s President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj said his country is “grateful to India for having provided stabilisation funds for the resurgence of its staggering economy.”

The visit to New Delhi is Elbegdorj’s first official visit overseas after he became President of Mongolia in June 2009.

President Elbegdorj is accompanied by a high-level delegation consisting of officials and businessmen, including the Minister for Education, Science and Culture; the Minister for Foreign Affairs; the Minister for Trade; and senior parliamentarians.
The Foreign Investment and Foreign Trade Agency of Mongolia (FIFTA) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at strengthening cooperation between India and Mongolia in the fields of trade and investment.

Bloomberg TV is a worldwide leader in business news, while UTVi, the business news channel from UTV is a laggard in the Indian business news channel space with about 10% market share.

Bloomberg was earlier reported to be in talks with NDTV Profit, another business news channel in India. A press release issued by Bloomberg said that Bloomberg UTV will provide what it called “unsurpassed real-time business, economic and political news to households across India.”

Bloomberg and UTV did not specify whether Bloomberg UTV will be merely a content and distribution sharing partnership, or whether the news channel deal has an investment angle too. According to rules regarding foreign news companies, joint venture news companies – both print and television – can have a maximum of 24% equity holding by the foreign company. The balance 76% stake must remain with Indian promoters.

Bloomberg TV is owned by Bloomberg LP, the New York-based business news conglomerate. Apart from providing business data through its twin-screen Bloomberg terminals, Bloomberg also operates a news wire service, and publishes Bloomberg Markets. The company is owned by Michael Bloomberg, currently the mayor of New York City.

A Bloomberg press release in PR Newswire attributed “remarkable breadth and depth of reporting for the Indian market” for UTV. However, UTVi commands barely 10% share of the all-India business news channel market. ET Now, promoted by Bennett, Coleman and CO Ltd (Which also publishes Times of India and Economic Times) has 11%, while NDTV Profit has 22%. The market leader of the business news channel segment is CNBC TV18 which has 58%.

BCCL already has a content tie-up with Reuters for Times Now and ET Now. TV-18 partners CNBC, while UTVi already has a a financial investor in Walt Disney Co. NDTV Profit doesnt have any similar content partnership. It is not clear if Bloomberg will buy an equity stake in UTV, since it already has a financial partnership with UTVi, the business channel from UTV was started by Ronnie Screwvalla, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur.

Bloomberg TV has an international audience of about 200 million households. With its content now coming to UTVi, the audience expands by 30 million Indian viewers.

Business channel mindscape in India has been dominated for long by CNBC-TV18, the news channel from Raghav Bahl’s TV-18. It was joined by NDTV Profit, which has failed to make a major dent. A couple of years back, UTVi was launched. This year, the latest aspirant ET Now has entered the scene.

It is estimated that in India, 15 million televisions are added every year, which makes business channel space in India an attractive proposition for Bloomberg.

Bloomberg seems to be in an overdrive to expand. The company hired Andy Lack to look after its multimedia business in June. As recently as yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company is bidding to buy Business Week, the weekly business news magazine published by McGraw Hill group.

Said Andy Lack, CEO of Bloomberg’s Multimedia group. “By working with UTV to realize our shared vision for business and financial television, Bloomberg renews its commitment to delivering business, economic and political news and analysis to viewers in India, and at the same time to delivering news about one of the world’s most dynamic economies to investors across the globe.”

The deal, say reports, will be finalized by the last three months of 2009.

Skype, which eBay had bought for $2.6 billion in 2005, is to be majority-owned by a group of private investors, including Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture-capital company headed by Marc Andreessen, Index Ventures, as well as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and private equity firm Silver Lake.

The new investors are to pay $1.9 billion in cash. A note for $125-million will be given to eBay, promising to pay the amount on demand or at an agreed time.

Earlier in 2009, eBay had said that it was planning to spin off Skype and list its shares in the first half of 2010 – which indicated that Skype was for sale.

eBay had paid over $3 billion for Skype, including payouts to Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, who founded Skype in 2003.

A year after it was bought, ebay wrote down the value of Skype to $1.2 billion.

The software of Skype allows users of computers and mobile phones to talk to each other free of charge as well as make cut-price calls to landlines and mobiles.

While traditional mobile calls are transmitted over a cellular network, Skype turns voice into data and then sends it over the internet.

Since eBay bought Skype, the number of registered Skype users went up to 405 million from 53 million.

According to some reports, eBay had negotiated with Google over buying Skype, but Google opted to abandon a deal fearing that prolonged litigation could lead to paying huge amounts in damages.

Rs 451 crore has been allocated by the government as non-recurring expenditure for setting up the new IIMs and Rs 118 crore has been allocated as recurring expenditure for the first phase.

The four cities are Trichurapally (Tiruchi / Trichy) in Tamil Nadu, Ranchi in Jharkand, Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Rohtak in Haryana. Initially, the new IIMs would all operate from temporary premises. Classes would begin in the academic year of 2010-11.

IIMs are also approved for the states of Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan.

We have always found the debate over reservations for institutions like AIIMS, IIT and IIM ridiculous. There is such a high demand for high quality education institutions that the solution is to increase the size of the pie, not to divide the pie into even smaller pieces, leading to a mad scramble and raised tempers for a seat.

Admissions to the new IIMs would be through a common entrance test. In the initial phase, 140 students would be admitted, and that would be raised to 560 in the second phase.

Hopefully, the new IIMs would help students in more states to have access to the high quality education in IIMs.

The governments of Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh and Haryana, where the new IIMs would be coming up in the first phase have already identified the land.

Media has reported that Chhattisgarh government has already identified 200 acres for the Raipur IIM campus, while the Haryana government has marked 170 acres for its Rohtak IIM campus.

For the IIM at Tiruchirapaly, the Tamil Nadu government has identified 192.35 acres  and 214 acres of land for the Raipur IIM in Jharkhand has also been finalised.