Big guns bid for rights to retail CNG in seven cities
27 June 2009;business-standard.com:New Delhi: Eight companies including Reliance Gas Ltd, GAIL Gas and the joint venture of Indian Oil and Adani Energy have bid for the rights to retail CNG in seven cities. Reliance Gas, a unit of Reliance Industries, bid for three cities of Rajahmundry, Shahdol and Yanam, officials in the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board said. GAIL Gas Ltd, a subsidy of state-run GAIL India Ltd, did not bid in the cities Reliance had opted for, but did so very aggressively in Allahabad, Chandigarh, Ghaziabad and Jhansi. While GAIL avoided being pitted against Reliance, it had no such hesitation in putting a bid against Indraprastha Gas Ltd in Ghaziabad. IGL is a joint venture of GAIL and Bharat Petroleum supplying CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households in Delhi. The joint venture of Indian Oil and Adani Energy bid for Allahabad, Chandigarh, Ghaziabad and Rajahmundry while Hindustan Petroleum and Gujarat government-owned GSPC Gas Ltd bid for Chandigarh and Ghaziabad. Little-known Siti Energy also is in the fray for Ghaziabad. The official said Jhansi (GAIL Gas), Shahdol and Yanam (Reliance) received single bids and so the PNGRB has extended the bid submission by one month. In Allahabad, the IOC-Adani joint venture is in direct fight with GAIL while Chandigarh has a four-cornered contest among IOC-Adani, HPCL, GAIL Gas and GSPC Gas. Ghaziabad witnesses the fiercest competition, with IOC-Adani, HPCL, GAIL Gas, IGL, Siti Energy and GSPC Gas in the fray. Rajahmundry has IOC-Adani, Reliance Gas and Bhagyanagar Gas Ltd contesting, he added.
Re 1 cess per litre on petrol, diesel on the cards
27 June 2009;deccanherald.com:Ajith Athrady:New Delhi: The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has suggested imposing a cess of Re 1 per litre on petrol and diesel to the government, with a view to garner more funds for highway development projects. Making the recommendations, Transport Minister Kamal Nath has also suggested the creation of a separate Road Finance Corporation (RFC) to extend credits to NHAI, state governments, public sector agencies, private constructors to pave national and state highways. Fully owned by the centre, the company will have an authorised share capital of Rs 10,000 crore with the cess collected through fuel acting as additional income. The minister also recommended service tax exemption for maintenance of highways and for certain works like resurfacing, renovation, strengthening, relaying and filling of potholes to attract more companies for road building activities. Currently, service tax exemption is given only to some of the maintenance works such as widening, laying of new roads and changing road surface. The Ministry also urged the Finance Ministry to provide customs duty exemption for import of road construction equipments. The minister set the agenda for laying of 7,000 km of highways every year and promised to overhaul the organisational structure of his ministry. He has also plans to increase the target for road construction from the present rate of 4 kilometres per day to 15 kilometres per day. Constructions of new highways under build operate and transfer basis was stalling as companies did not participate in the bidding process. Liquidity crunch due to the economic slowdown and increase in construction cost are thought to have contributed to the delay. The situation showed no sign of improvement, despite the government’s promise of providing viability gap funding.
25 June 2009;business-standard.com:Swaraj Baggonkar:Mumbai: Sales of the Palio, a compact car from Italian car maker Fiat Auto, have suffered as production has been halved at the company’s sole manufacturing facility in Ranjangaon, Maharashtra. Fiat India Automobiles (FIAPL), a 50:50 industrial joint venture between Fiat Group Automobiles and Tata Motors, makes the Palio Stile, Fiat’s oldest hatchback in the country, priced at Rs 3.45 lakh (ex-showroom, Mumbai). Data available with the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam), the apex automobile body in the country, shows production of the Palio was 667 units during January-April, compared with 1,452 units in the corresponding period last year. Sales nosedived to just 388 units in the period, compared with 1,404 units last year, a dip of 72 per cent. “Production was hurt because of the paint shop. We now have our own paint shop and hopefully the production will be restored to its original level,” said Ravi Bhatia, vice-president, (commercial), FIAPL. The Palio, being the lowest-priced car in the Fiat stable, remains the largest selling one, more than 43 per cent of total sales in the last financial year. The Italian car company sold 8,087 units in the domestic market last year. Despite the car having a petrol and diesel engine option, the Palio has failed to create much impact in the compact car segment, even though the company gave it a face-lift in March 2008. Experts say strong competition from other car makers in the same segment like Maruti Suzuki, General Motors, Hyundai Motors and SkodaAuto has dented the target market. Around 3,500 Palios were sold last year. That many units of Maruti’s Wagon R and Hyundai’s Santro are sold in a month.
Tata Motors selects over 1.55 lakh customers for 'Nano'
23 June 2009;business-standard.com:New Delhi: Auto major Tata Motors today said it has selected over 1.55 lakh customers for its small-car Nano — touted as the world's cheapest — which the company will start delivering from next month. The company would deliver the first 1 lakh cars by March 2010, while the handing over of the Nanos in the next phase to 55,021 customers would start thereafter. "Tata Motors is pleased to announce that it has completed the process to select the first 1,00,000 owners of the Tata Nano from among 2,06,703 final list of applicants, who had booked the car," the company said in a statement. The company has also completed the selection process for the second phase by alloting slots to 55,021 customers. The entire selection process was done through a computerised lottery, it added. "Tata Motors reconfirms that the first 1 lakh owners are price-protected, and will get their Tata Nano at the ex- showroom prices, announced at launch on March 23," it said. "All efforts will be made to deliver earlier, by ramping up production at the already operational Pantnagar plant and the fast upcoming Sanand plant," Tata Motors said. Of the total booking, about 67 per cent of the applicants (1,37,867 people) had intended to retain their bookings in case they are not selected in the first draw. "The booking amounts of the unsuccessful applicants, who had not exercised this option (to retain the bookings), are being returned," Tata Motors said. The booking amount was Rs 95,000 for the base model, Rs 1.2 lakh for the mid-range model and Rs 1.4 lakh for the top- end car across the country. The company said the retainees would be offered 8.5 per cent interest on the booking amount if the car is delivered within two years from the date of allotment and 8.75 per cent if the car is delivered after two years from the date. "The interest will be paid directly to the retainees by Tata Motors," it added. Tata Motors has offered the unsuccessful applicants some schemes for its hatchback 'Indica' range, which would be additional to the existing schemes on the cars. Conceived in 2003, Tata Motors had launched the much-hyped Rs 1-lakh car on March 23 this year. It has cost over Rs 2,000 crore. The booking for the 623-cc rear-engine car, boasting a fuel economy of over 23 km per litre, had opened on April 9 and closed on April 25. Nano would have a price range of Rs 1.23 lakh to Rs 1.72 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) for the three different variants. The company would roll out the Nanos from its Pantnagar facility, which has an annual capacity of 50,000 units. The car would also be produced from the company's Sanand unit in Gujarat once its goes on stream.
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