Buyers prefer to wait on expectation of better bargains.
The market has seen 30 per cent fall in demand in the last two months. In tandem, property prices, especially the residential ones, have fallen by 15-20 per cent across the board in the last two months. Rentals for offices too have fallen, with companies averse to shift to new offices in a bid to check costs. In case of retail malls, ector experts said, all leasing activity had come to a standstill, with no retailer willing to open a shop.
Banks are busy advertising attractive deposit rates that are on offer, lining up roadshows and door-to-door campaigns. Some of them are even offering incentives to their employees to woo depositors. As a result, they expect to mop up more than 20 per cent of what they usually do during November. Banks have also stepped up the deposit-mobilisation drive because they will be reducing interest rates from December.
In spite of the government's efforts to help cooperative banks post the farm loan relief scheme, through the liquidity support fund, the banks are facing huge cash deficits.
Sources in the West Bengal government's finance department said the state had made budgetary provisions that would run into several hundred crores every year for 20 to 30 years to attract Tata Motors' Nano project to Singur.
The West Bengal government's new compensation package for 'unwilling' farmers in Singur, 40km from Kolkata, might have been praised by Tata Motors, but those involved in land transactions in the area find the offer inadequate.
The surprisingly strong opposition to land acquisition in Singur and earlier events at Nandigram, where local protests forced the government to scrap plans for a chemical hub, have induced investors keen on acquiring land in West Bengal to come up with compensation packages that can only be described as extravagant.
"My life has been full of interesting people", Rama Prasad Goenka tells Business Standard when asked about memories of an era when the open Indian economy was converted into a closed one based on the licence raj by the person whom he openly idolises, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Even as Tata Motors is racing against time to get its new Singur plant near Kolkata ready for commercial roll-out of the Nano by October 2008, the company may need an out-of-the-box solution to overcome some delays in the integrated plant and component park structure proposed for the vehicle.
Spiralling prices of foodgrains and edible oil and low jute prices in the last couple of months have prompted a large number of jute farmers to shift to paddy and oilseed cultivation in the eastern part of the country. With jute farmers anticipating lower prices for their produce, many of them have opted for paddy and oilseeds in the next cropping season
The dissent against the Tata Motors Rs 1 lakh car project at Singur appears to be finally ebbing with the disputed land being reduced to 120 acres vis--vis the earlier level of 330 acres.
It is no coincidence that most of the willing land sellers are non-tribals who own plots to the south-west of Torpa on the road leading to the town of Simdega, where the highway crosses the Koel and Karo rivers.
Torpa is looking for a second chance to migrate from a poor village to a modern urban cluster but tension is building between those who want development and those against it. For two decades, National Hydel Power Corporation (NHPC) proposed, and some local tribal groups opposed, the setting up of the Koel-Karo hydro-electric project there, and it was finally abandoned last year.
It's clear why Nayachara is the place now being favoured by the West Bengal government. Besides being sparsely populated (700-odd according to the highest government estimates), this is a community that is not "supposed to be here" and, therefore, presumably easy to shift out.
Days after two of the Reliance's ready-to-be launched stores were damaged by diverse political groups, one of the outlets at the Uttarpara area of the Hooghly district was covered with Trinamool flags and posters, with no signs of police protection.
According to Sanjeev Chopra, secretary of the horticulture and food processing department of West Bengal, steps were being taken so that exporters from the state could sell overseas at least 1 per cent of the total state produce through the AEZs.
Kolkata Port Trust, the second largest port authority in the country, would be going in for a complete revamp of its operations in its drive to raise productivity.
In 2003 when the West Bengal government initiated public sector units restructuring programme, it was believed that off loading government's stake in PSUs would deliver effective social welfare programme in the state.
Students of the Vinod Gupta School of Management of IIT Kharagpur learnt the six-Sigma dabbawallah doctrine.
Logistics infrastructure in India is poor, hindering the 3PL industry's progress.
© 2025 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances