BPCL's impending privatisation and RIL's stake sale to Saudi Aramco raise questions about the future of the West Coast Refinery, once touted as the world's largest.
Railways to hive off all production units and workshops into new govt-owned company; may invite bids from private players to run passenger trains in next 15 days, with ownership vesting with the government.
The new board will have a leaner structure on functional lines headed by the chairman and four members - covering infrastructure, operations and business development, rolling stock, and finance.
Indian Railways is in talks with Reliance Jio Infocomm to allow the Mukesh Ambani-led telecom major's use of its towers. The aim is seamless mobile and internet connectivity for passengers along the 67,368-km of tracks. The Railway Board has entrusted its RailTel Corporation arm to work on the modalities with Jio. The Jio tie-up is expected to bring down its telecom bill by at least 35 per cent from this financial year.
Recently listed companies scored 54, compared to 58 for the BSE100 firms and 61 for entities in the Sensex pack. The report noted that issues remain in IPO companies in which there seems to be a need to institutionalise governance practices.
Ghost beneficiaries aren't the only kind of issue companies face during a period of unprecedented CSR spending, touching nearly Rs 12,000 crore in 2018-19. Frauds related to procurement, construction, and end-use of funds have had companies engaging forensic auditors to keep tabs on how money is spent, revealed conversations with those involved in such investigations. Firms are also increasingly strengthening their own capabilities to better implement their programmes.
The biggest spend (Rs 4,406 crore) was for Schedule VII (II), which involves "promoting education, including special education and employment enhancing vocation skills, especially among children, women, elderly and the differently abled and livelihood enhancement projects". The FY19 spend was 17.2 per cent higher than Rs 1,0128.3 crore spent during the previous year.
Indian funds did better than Asian ones in only four of the 10 months -- till October. Despite much market optimism, presumably around policy interventions and guided by buoyant flows, India's macro backdrop may be turning for the worse.
Only 48.3 per cent of the rural households used LPG, while the figures were much higher in urban areas at 86.6 per cent, according to a NSO report.
Lower cost and easier termination may well be among the reasons that companies seek to have employees on contract. The share of employees on contract has increased to 57.3 per cent of the total workforce this year as compared to 53.7 per cent in the previous year.
The lack of a strong diversity policy on the part of companies, a limited pool of women candidates as well as socio-cultural factors contribute to their low numbers.
To prevent rise in air pollution levels, oil marketing companies and thermal power units were planning to procure stubble from farmers to make bioethanol and promote the central government's 'Agricultural Mechanization' for crop residue management. But both have seen minimal success.
While Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is up 14.9% during the year to Rs 12,381 cr, Ashish Dhawan is up 68.4% to Rs 810 cr, Ashish Kacholia is down 23.4% to Rs 515 cr, Rajiv and Dolly Khanna are down 74.6% to Rs 116 cr and Vijay Kedia is down 6.2% to Rs 294 cr.
The biggest spender was Tata Motors, with Rs 4,224.6 crore assigned under the R&D head.
A major reason for the decline in the consumption of kerosene was an increase in the number of LPG consumers in rural India after the government launched the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. in 2016.
Session-wise data indicates small investors have taken money off the table in more sessions than they have pumped in additional capital.
Around 41 per cent of these companies saw such instances, compared to the global average of 29 per cent. India's number is higher than other countries such as the United States (26 per cent), the United Kingdom (32 per cent) and Japan (27 per cent). It is also worse than other emerging markets. China had 39 per cent of firms affected by data theft. It was 19 per cent and 16 per cent for Brazil and Russia, respectively.
A shortfall in LPG supply from Aramco has led to huge booking backlog across states. To meet the backlog, India has asked Abu Dhabi National Oil Company for two additional cargos of LPG, but that may take another 10 days to reach.
Majority of PLL's long-term deals are linked to crude, which faces price challenge from other fuels. Spot LNG is moving away from this linkage, which puts a question mark on crude linked contracts.
This is despite the private sector companies outperforming their public sector counterparts, reports Sachin P Mampatta.
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