Jun. 2 – Short Eats – a roundup of small tasty bites of Indian news straight from the nation’s dailies.
India sailing against recessionary wind
India is showing an economic growth of 6.7 percent in this year of down turn (2008-09). Moreover the growth and the rise in the value of the rupee against the dollar has set India in the row of trillion dollar economy resulting in the growth of per capita monthly income of an average Indian crossing Rs 3,000 for the first time giving a clear indication that India might be one of those country to first come out from the financial meltdown and economic down turn.
India Ranked Second for CDMA Market
In past few years India’s Telecom sector has grown rapidly with increase in number of mobile phone subscribers aggregating to higher figure of millions and billions year by year. With such a rapid growth in mobile phone subscriptions, India now stands next to United Sates with higher number of CDMA mobile phone subscribers. At present, India is the second country in the world having more than 100 million CDMA – based mobile phone subscribers. Reliance Communication which is one of the leading CDMA service providers is now in competition with United States Verizon Wireless and Tata Tele services stands on fourth position in comparison with the top global service providers. After the introduction of CDMA technology in India in year 2002 it took six and half year and cut throat competition with GSM technology service providers to achieve this gigantic number of subscribers for CDMA technology based mobile phone service providers.
Standard chartered Bank to provide bridge loan to Bharati Airtel
Standard Chartered, the UK-based bank has agreed to facilitate a bridge loan of US$4 billion for the purpose of financing the merger deal between Bharati Airtel and MTN, a South Africa based telecom Company. Standard Charactered is willing to underwrite Bharati’s net acquisition cost but the issue of setting syndicate finance is still not clear in this purposed deal. However, Standard Chartered may or may not be setting up a syndicate of banks and is ready to take a call on this closer to the implementation of the deal coming closer in few months.
No future for Sugar
The Government of India has now put a stop on the future trading in sugar. The decision was taken on this Tuesday by the Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs and no new sugar contracts would be launched and no fresh position will be taken in running contract. Mr. Anupam Mishra who is Future Market Commission director further asserted that this ban will continue till December, 2009. The government has taken this step for the purpose of controlling the rising price of sugar over last two months. India’s sugar output is pegged at 15 million tons in the current season as compared to 26.4 million tons in the previous season.
