Bhopal smart city corporators give thumbs down to e-tendering
Cutting across party lines, Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) corporators are opposing e-tendering, a move that could save the civic body crores and go a long way in making tender process transparent. On Thursday, BJP-led BMC corporators, who pride themselves on the smart city tag, met BMC commissioner Chhavi Bhardwaj challenging the order which makes mandatory e-tendering of all projects above Rs 1 lakh. The BMC commissioner’s directive has plugged loopholes in tendering system itself. Any tender will have to be sanctioned by city engineer and zone officer wherein breaking a project into various parts to avoid e-tendering would not be possible. Each corporator gets a fund of Rs 18 lakh per year. “E-tendering ensures competitive rate as compared to manual schedule of rate (SoR) format. The system is efficient and transparent and will benefit civic body,” said Bhardwaj. Sources said the new format for tendering was approved by BJP mayor Alok Sharma. However, BJP corporator Keval Mishra said, “The mayor has not approved the move. Some 35 corporators have opposed change in tendering norms. It is an arbitrary decision.” Mishra claimed SoR method works best for development. “In many cases through e-tendering the quote is so low that contractor does not complete his task. It hinders development,” Mishra and delegation to BMC officials. In her reply, Bhardwaj asked BMC officials to blacklist contractors that back off from projects. Mishra claimed that some 35% of projects through e-tendering have not been completed to date, an allegation refuted by BMC officials. Kevin Connauton Jersey
PM Narendra Modi to launch work on Smart City projects on June 25: Venkaiah Naidu
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would inaugurate work on Smart City projects from Pune on June 25, Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said today. The works would start simultaneously in 20 cities across the country, Naidu said, adding that development of some cities as ‘smart cities’ would motivate others also to work for progress. “It is like a light house. If there is a light house, everybody would look at that. If some smart cities are developed, there will be competition among others also, municipalities will increase their revenue and things will improve,” he said here. The Smart City mission, one of the flagship programmes of the NDA government, was announced on June 25 last year. He said Modi is leading the country on the path of progress with innovative thinking and out of the box ideas and cited examples like supplying neem-coated urea and massive construction of highways. The Union minister stressed that “reform, perform and transform” is the motto of the NDA government and Modi. “We can proudly say that it is Narendra Modi who is the reformer, performer and transformer of the country,” he said. Referring to Congress’ dig at him for praising the Prime Minister, Naidu, who has in the past described Modi as “God’s gift to India” and “messiah of the poor”, wondered why it could not be done for good work and asked if only “one family”, after whom roads, airports and even canals are named in the country, should be praised all the time. Naidu was speaking at a reception organised on his visit to the Telangana BJP headquarters in the city after his election to the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan. BJP has emerged as the true pan-India party with its footprint seen all over the country, he said, adding Modi would “bring more revolutionary changes in the country in the coming days”. “We do not have full majority (in Rajya Sabha). Otherwise, the vehicle would have moved with even greater speed. The Rajya Sabha obstacle is likely to lessen in the coming days. Congress party is weakening,” the Parliamentary Affairs minister said. BJP is the only party to nominate two minority leaders (Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and MJ Akbar) in the election to fill 57 vacancies in Rajya Sabha, he said. “No political party has given even single seat to minorities out of the 57 Rajya Sabha vacancies,” he said. Stating that Modi is the biggest communicator for BJP, he asked partymen to strengthen the party in Telangana. Travis Wood Womens Jersey
Airbus Helicopters sees greater focus on military business
Airbus’s helicopter business expects to increase its focus on military aviation in the coming years, its boss said at the International Aerospace Exhibition (ILA) in Berlin on Wednesday. The business made 6.8 billion euros ($7.6 billion) in revenues in 2015, split fairly evenly between its civilian and military sides, according to its annual report. “We will become a little more military,” Airbus Helicopters Chief Executive Guillaume Faury told reporters. He said the shift was likely to take place within the next three to five years, and was simply a development he observed, not something Airbus Helicopters actively pursued. Faury said demand from the oil and gas sector had nearly halted, hit by oil companies seeking to reduce costs following a slump in the price of crude. In contrast, interest in military helicopters had risen amid heightened global security concerns and clients were increasingly looking into helicopters to quickly respond to threats, he said. Randy Bullock Jersey
India must transform its unorganised food system: Report
India’s food system is largely unorganised and highly fragmented, a report by an American think-tank said, underlining that the country must reform government procurement, tariff and tax policies affecting urban food delivery to feed its growing cities. The prestigious Chicago Council on Global Affairs in its report said that substantial public investments are needed to expand and increase the quality of storage, handling and transportation infrastructure. It said that India’s food system is largely unorganised and highly fragmented, inhibiting large-scale procurement, distribution, and retail sales. Authored by Andrea Durkin, the report ‘Investing to Nourish India’s Cities’ recommended that India should reform government procurement, tariff and tax policies affecting urban food delivery. It also recommends ways to reduce regulatory complexity and enhance food testing capacity. To improve the supply system, the paper further identifies areas of improvement in transit, warehousing, cold chains, retail and processing that could improve urban food security in India. “The scale of food and nutrition needed to sustain that is hard to fathom and India’s food system is already failing to deliver food security for all,” said Alesha Black, director of the Council’s Global Food and Agriculture Programme. “Now imagine when that population doubles in the next 40 years. India has to transform its food system to feed that urban growth,” he said. The report argues that the food system in India must transform to feed its growing cities. Increasing urban employment and rising incomes portend significant growth for India’s $360 billion food market. Yet substantial public and private investments, as well as key regulatory reforms, are needed to update India’s unorganised, fragmented food system, it said. “There is no more fundamental measure of the well-being of a population than its food and nutrition security,” Durkin said. “India must make targeted public investments and create a path for the private sector to improve the state of urban nutrition and meet growing demand for food in India’s cities,” said the report. Kevin White Authentic Jersey
GST will be no game-changer: Subramanian Swamy
BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy today said passage of the bill facilitating the Goods and Services Tax (GST), being hailed as the biggest indirect taxation reform, will “not benefit” the economy significantly. “I don’t think GST is going to be a game-changer. If it comes, it is ok. If it doesn’t come also it is ok,” he said, speaking at the industry lobby Indian Merchant Chamber (IMC) here. “GST…it is not big deal for the Indian economy. There is a feeling that it will simplify the tax system, I have no objection to it,” he said. It can be noted that the industry has been pegging an increase of upto 2 percentage points in the GDP growth just by the passage of this legislation which is stuck for many years now under two Union governments. Swamy also noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had objected to the GST when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, and now the Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalitha is objecting to it. “At one stage, when Mr Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister, he took objections and wrote a letter to the government,” he said. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said earlier this week that most of the states barring Tamil Nadu have come on board on the long-pending Goods and Services Tax bill and expressed hope of pushing the legislation in the upcoming Monsoon Session. John Randle Womens Jersey
Old aussie oil fields spurned in cheap crude age
They’re among the oldest oil fields in Australia still in production. Now they are proving superfluous to some of the world’s biggest producers that are purging high-cost assets to weather crude’s collapse. While the dozen or so depleted fields in the Gippsland Basin in southeast Australia are hardly any company’s crown jewels — combined they produce 19,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day — they once put Australia on the map for energy investors and still include the country’s largest single find, according to Exxon Mobil, which is now interested in selling them with its joint venture partner, BHP Billiton. Energy giants are shutting or selling aging fields from the North Sea to China as investing to maintain them makes less sense nearly two years into the biggest oil crash in a generation, with prices still more than 50% below the level of June 2014. The bust was exacerbated by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ Saudi Arabia-led strategy of trying to win market share from highercost producers. “Australia is a mature basin with a limited reserve base. This means high cost,” Amrita Sen, chief oil economist for Energy Aspects in London, said by e-mail. “In the current oil price environment with everyone focused on cost cutting, it makes sense for majors to divest while PE companies may pick it up for the short term.” Kingfish Field Among the fields being considered for sale is Kingfish, discovered in 1967 and still the largest find in the country’s history, according to Exxon’s Esso Australia unit. Esso and BHP are looking for parties with experience to capture the remaining potential of the assets, Esso said in a statement. BHP and Esso, which both have a 50% stake in the venture, drilled the first well in the region in 1965. Since then it has produced more than 4 billion barrels of oil and 8 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to Esso. The oil production amounts to about 44% of all of Australia’s oil production since 1965, according to data from BP. The country’s output has fallen by more than half since peaking in 2000. The operation “put Australia on the map for global oil and gas industry investors,” Exxon said in a presentation on the Australian Institute of Energy’s website. As of 2007, Gippsland fields had produced 90% of their initial oil reserves, according to a report on an Australian government website. Selling aging energy assets fits with BHP’s strategy to divest “non-core, late life assets,” the producer said in a statement. North Sea Royal Dutch Shell is in talks with potential buyers for some North Sea assets, people familiar with the matter said in May. Sinopec Shengli Oilfield Co., one of China’s major producers, said it would shut four of its least profitable fields to save as much as 130 million yuan ($19.9 million) in operating costs, according to a statement on its Weibo account this year. Joe Berger Jersey
Indian Oil Corp likely to bag 37.5% stake in proposed JV to manage ATF at airports
Indian Oil Corp (IOC) is likely to take the largest 37.5% stake in the proposed joint venture to manage fuelling facilities at all airports controlled by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. Airports Authority of India is likely to have a quarter stake while Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL) will have 18.75% each in the joint venture that has been negotiated for long with the AAI and IndianOil locked in a keen contest for the larger stake. he idea of a common fuelling facility with joint ownership is to allow open access to all fuel suppliers for a fee without having to erect their own separate facilities. Reliance Industries (RIL) has also written to the government seeking equity in the venture and is awaiting a decision, sources said. In its communication, Reliance Industries has claimed that the oil ministry had earlier said private players would also have a role. Reliance Industries, Indian Oil Corp, HPCL and BPCL declined to comment on the matter. The proposed joint venture will oversee about one-third of aviation fuel business in India. The rest is at Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, where either private airports solely or in separate joint ventures with state oil firms manage the fuelling facilities. Indian aviation market is poised to be the third-largest in the world by 2026. Domestic airlines, aided by low fuel prices that account for about 40% of their operating cost, carried nearly a quarter more passengers in the first four months of 2016 from a year ago. Domestic aviation turbine fuel (ATF) sales rose 9% to 6.2 million tonnes in 2015-16, encouraging oil giant BP to obtain permission to market jet fuel in India. Indian Oil Corp has long dominated the ATF business with storage and fuelling facility at all major airports. Its refineries located across the country offer it the flexibility needed to place fuels at airports easily and cheaply while its longstanding relationships with clients give it an edge in the market. It has more than 60% market share while private players such as RIL and Essar Oil account for about 5%. It is this dominance that made IndianOil a little reluctant to agree to the idea of a common infrastructure and led to long-drawn negotiations with AAI, which also wanted the largest share in the joint venture, according to sources. Ross Stripling Womens Jersey
Russia’s Gazprom, Dharmendra Pradhan discuss LNG supplies to GAIL
Russia’s Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller and India’s Energy Minister Dharmendra Pradhan discussed on Thursday liquefied natural gas supplies to India’s GAIL company, Gazprom said in a statement. The supplies were discussed in the context of an existing contract between Gazprom and GAIL, Gazprom said in the statement. Brett Favre Authentic Jersey
Capping air fares on regional routes negative for airlines: Crisil
The new civil aviation policy has an integrated approach to take flying to the masses, but the move to cap fares for one-hour flights on unserved regional routes at Rs 2,500 is likely to be a negative for airline companies, says a report. Crisil Research also said the 5/20 rule that barred new airlines from flying abroad has been replaced with the 0/20 norm that “levels the field”. As per the 5/20 rule, only domestic airlines with at least five years of operational experience and a minimum of 20 planes were allowed to fly overseas. Unveiled by the government on Wednesday, the policy provides measures to boost regional connectivity, including imposing a small levy on domestic tickets, initiatives to develop new airports, separate regulations for helicopters and steps to boost skill development in the aviation sector. In a report, brokerage firm Motilal Oswal said the policy takes an integrated approach to take flying to masses and has set an ambitious target of 300 million domestic passengers by 2022 from 85 million in 2015-16. Under the regional connectivity scheme, which will be in place in the next quarter, fares for a one-hour flight will be capped at Rs 2,500. “… this would cap ticket prices on regional routes, which is a negative for airline companies, given the government’s intervention and price control,” Crisil Research said in its report. According to the report, further clarity is awaited in terms of whether a fare of Rs 2,500 per hour would be capped even for last-minute bookings under the regional connectivity scheme, among other factors. “The levy proposed to be charged on air tickets for regional connectivity fund would marginally increase cost. However, we expect air fares to marginally decline y-o-y in 2016-17 owing to an expected reduction in fuel prices,” Crisil Research noted. Furthermore, it said the policy does not dwell on the long-pending structural issue of high sales tax on aviation turbine fuel (ATF), which diminishes the attractiveness of the sector. Meanwhile, ICICI Securities, in a report, said the domestic aviation industry is likely to see a strong growth period with air traffic estimated to grow at 14 per cent, helped by a positive outlook for crude prices. The projection is on a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) basis for 2016-17 to 2019-20. Kevin Durant Womens Jersey
Aviation sector to see strong growth; air traffic to rise 14%: Report
Domestic aviation industry is likely to see a strong growth period with air traffic estimated to grow at 14 per cent helped by a positive outlook for crude prices, says a report. However, the report by ICICI Securities noticed that the growth rate of 14 per cent is low considering that the average annual growth rate of passenger-traffic in India has been more than 18-20 per cent since 2000. “India’s aviation sector is set to undergo a strong growth period, which should benefit all incumbent players, particularly on a benign crude price outlook,” the report said. “Our supply-demand model for domestic air traffic implies 14 per cent growth in passengers as evidenced from firm aircraft orders and latest delivery schedules,” it said. Further, the report noted that air fare corrections on account of lower crude prices have already played out with up to 15 per cent dip in fares in 2015-16. “As such, we believe that the fares are likely to stabilise with increasing oil outlook,” the report said. “In the near term, there is still sufficient room left among the metro cities of (about 45 million excess capacity remain) within the top airports which share 90 per cent of the cumulative traffic among themselves,” it said. The report noted that barring three events, the average annual growth rate of passenger-traffic in India has been more than 18-20 per cent since 2000. These events were in 2001-02 in the wake of terrorist attacks in the US (9/11) and the subsequent global crisis, the great 2009 financial recession, and in 2012 when Kingfisher Airlines went bankrupt. With an exception of IndiGo which has a strong balance sheet, the report noted “that the other airlines have missed the plot thus far is a given, but the current growth phase of domestic aviation and low crude price outlook provide opportunity for them to shore up their balance sheet”. Marty Mcsorley Womens Jersey