Raw sugar imports not needed

A move by sugar mills in Maharashtra, India’s biggest producer, to import at least
1million tonnes (mt) of raw sugar to tide over domestic demand has sharply
divided the industry.India has sufficient stocks of sugar and does not need to
import the sweetener either in raw or white form this crop year, a leading body
said on Friday.

"There is more than sufficient availability of sugar, far beyond the domestic
requirement with sizeable carry forward stocks to the next year," Indian Sugar
Mills Association president Ranjit Puri said in a statement.

Inflation continuously falling down

Inflation came down to 8% this is 7-month low on the back of softening

food prices,strengthening the case for further interest rate cuts to shore
up the slowing economy. The wholesale price index (WPI) for the week
ended November 29 dropped to 8% from 8.4% in the previous week.
Prices of food related items came down during the week following a 1.9%
fall in the prices of fruits and vegetables. The prices of fuel and
manufactured items remained unchanged over the week.

Economists expect inflation, which peaked at 12.91% in August, to fall at
a faster pace following the recent cut in fuel prices and a 4% cut in excise
duty, so inflation may come down further it seems.

BHEL plans to invest Rs 10,000 cr

Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd(BHEL) would invest about Rs 10,000 cr
for new ventures in the coming years.Managing director K Ravi Kumar
said BHEL was expecting to expand its power generation capacity to
15,000 MW from the present 10,000 MW before December 2009 and to
2000 MW by December 2011.To achieve this target, its production units
at Tiruchi, Bhopal,Haridwar, Jhansi and Hyderabad were in the process
of modernisation and expansion, he said. He said that BHEL was in talks
with General Electronics for the manufacture of advanced gas turbine at
Bhopal with an outlay of Rs 1000 crore.

On constructing nuclear reactors with the guidance of Atomic Energy
Commission and Nuclear Power Corporation of India ltd, Ravi Kumar
said talks were on with global majors in this sector. He said talks were
on with Alstom and Siemens for the manufacture of high speed electric
locomotives.

SEBI's new entry rules for MF industry

Market regulator Sebi will look at increasing the net-worth needed for
a firm to operate as an asset management company.The heavy
redemption pressure seen by the mutual fund industry during the
October crisis has put the market regulator on guard. We have learnt
that Sebi may go in for an upward revision in net-worth requirement
for asset management companies. Sources say the requirement may
be hiked to Rs 50 crore from Rs 10 crore.
The Sebi MF Panel also wants money-market mutual fund schemes to
be valued realistically and wants the valuation based on the day's net-
asset value (NAV) instead of the historical NAV.

The Sebi MF panel also discussed a few other issues like sectoral caps
for mutual funds — it has been noted that some MFs have invested as
much as much as 74%–97% in the banking financial services industry .

They have discussed one more thing the issue of the mismatch between
indicative yield and actual yield of fixed maturity plans (FMPs) was also
discussed. The panel also felt that there is a need for transparency in the
transaction of MFs. It feels the distribution commission which is deducted
from total investments from MFs should be taken as a separate cheque from
the investors.