The country's leading steel producers have devised a new strategy to pass on rising raw material costs to the end users without raising prices. Companies are now levying raw material surcharges while keeping the base price unchanged.
The mandatory 10 per cent ethanol blending in petrol may not happen for the existing 101 million vehicles on the Indian roads without introducing technical changes in them. The central government plans to make 10 per cent blending compulsory from October from the current 5 per cent. Existing vehicles are not capable of running on 10 per cent ethanol-blended petrol as ethanol releases more heat and can corrode vehicle engines, experts say. It will lead to a 3% drop in mileage.
On Tuesday, in the midst of the government's multi-pronged crackdown on inflation, the cement producers had announced a rise in prices. The export ban will augment domestic availability while the cheap imports from Pakistan will soften prices.
The price rise in individual key food commodities over the last one year is significantly higher than what is conveyed by the wholesale price index. While the latest government data show inflation at 6.68 per cent for the week ended March 15, the price change in most food items is in double digits.
DCM Shriram Industries , too, is issuing 700,000 warrants to its promoters, Tilak Dhar and his brothers, which will raise their shareholding from 32.54 per cent to 42 per cent, though this has been challenged in the courts by shareholder Harish Bhasin, who has mounted a takeover bid on the company.
The government has put a spanner in the plans of oil companies like Reliance Industries Limited and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited to make ethanol directly from sugarcane, without producing sugar.
Gems and jewellery exports may have risen over 20 per cent so far this fiscal, but the rising rupee has cost 150,000 diamond workers their jobs in the last one year, the head of the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, Sanjay Kothari, said.
Reliance Industries, Tata Chemicals, Bharti Enterprises' Fieldfresh and Indian Oil are among several large companies that have evinced interest in leasing closed sugar mills that the Bihar government is offering, mainly to exploit opportunities to make ethanol to meet mandatory petrol blending norms that were introduced this year.
Last week, when Harish Bhasin, the Delhi-based stock broker, made an open offer for DCM Shriram Industries Ltd, he was back in news after almost 25 years.
Cement shipments from Pakistan will hit the Indian markets by the end of the month at prices that are up to a third lower than domestic prices.
Organised retail in India's rural hinterland is a very different ball game from what it is in urban centres.
The MEP has been raised from $225 a tonne in May to $495 a tonne in October. Despite this, domestic onion prices have risen sharply. They are currently available at Rs 24 -28 per kg at the retail level, compared with Rs 8-10 a kg in May.
The Indian Sugar Mills' Association, the industry lobby group, will take the proposal to Food & Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar soon, sources close to the development said.
Groaning under the burden of huge arrears to sugarcane farmers and rising losses, leading sugar producers of Uttar Pradesh have begun filing cases against a December 2006 directive of the state government on sugarcane prices.
National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation, the central government's procurement agency for non-cereal crops, is in talks with leading retail companies to serve as a back-end supply chain in agri-commodities.
When the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission shot off notices to 14 cement producers on July 25 for allegedly colluding to raise prices, it was New Delhi's latest flank against the industry.
Large retail chains like Reliance Fresh, Subhiksha and Spencer's have not been able to do sourcing of their entire farm products directly from the farmers.
Kartaar Singh, a farmer of Mokha village in Punjab's Kapurthala district, used to travel about 50 km on his scooter to Jalandhar's new sabzi mandi, or wholesale vegetable market, to sell his vegetables every day.
Bail-out package for loss-making industry awaits Cabinet clearance.
Calling the bluff of the country's sugar barons, the Centre has scrapped 98 per cent of the industrial entrepreneur memorandums obtained by them for setting up new production units.
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