Industrial growth for April-Feb.2004-05 at 8.1 per cent
New Delhi: Industrial growth has slipped to 4.9 per cent in February this year, nearly half of 8.3 per cent growth recorded in the same month previous year, with the slide being mainly due to negative growth in mining and electricity.

The latest Index for Industrial Production (IIP) release has put the growth in April-February 2004-05 at 8.1 per cent as against 6.9 per cent in the same period of previous fiscal.

In February 2005, the mining sector has shown a negative growth of 2.3 per cent as compared to a robust growth of 10.7 per cent in the same month of 2004.

While the electricity sector showed a negative growth of 0.9 per cent in February 05 as against 12.9 per cent growth in the same month of 04, the manufacturing growth slowed down to 6.2 per cent from 7.6 per cent last year. However, except mining, other two sectors taken into account for the IIP showed a much better year-on-year growth in April-February 2004-05.

While the growth of mining sector in first 11 months of 2004-05 slowed down to 4.0 per cent from 5.3 per cent last year, in manufacturing the growth was 8.7 per cent in the same period of this fiscal as against 7.3 per cent in pervious year.

Electricity sector also grew 5.3 per cent in April-February 2004-05 as compared to 4.5 per cent in the same period last fiscal.
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I&B clears twenty per cent FDI in FM radio sector
New Delhi: The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has cleared 20 per cent FDI for the FM radio sector but has stuck to the ban on news and current affairs programmes. While FII investment up to 20 per cent of the equity capital is allowed in any private FM radio company FDI is not permissible.

Information and Broadcasting minister S Jaipal Reddy said that the ministry had decided to limit the FDI level at the existing FII cap and they hoped to go to the Cabinet on the matter soon.
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Corporation tax collections touch Rs83,311 crore
New Delhi: Corporation tax collections of the Centre for the year 2004-05 has touched Rs83,311 crore, according to the latest estimates available with the Revenue Department. The revised estimate for corporation tax for the year 2004-05 was pegged at Rs83,000 crore, which was lower than the Budget estimate of Rs88,436 crore.

On the personal income-tax front, the collections have so far touched Rs46,840 crore. This performance, however, was lower than the revised estimate of Rs50,929 crore that had been fixed for 2004-05.

While the Budget estimate for corporation tax for the year 2005-06 has been pegged at Rs1,10,573 crore, for personal income-tax, the estimate has been pegged at Rs66,239 crore.
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BARC to set up desalination plant in Lakshadweep
Visakhapatnam: The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is building a 50,000-litre-a-day barge-mounted seawater desalination plant in Lakshadweep that will be ready for deployment by December.

BARC officials said that the barge-mounted desalination plants would be useful in the rural areas of Rann of Kutch, Lakshadweep and other water-starved coastal areas. He said several desalination plants had been set up by BARC in rural Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, producing 30,000 litres a day.

BARC recently installed some desalination plants (5,000 litres a day) in the tsunami-affected areas of Tamil Nadu, such as Nagapattinam and Sadras.

Officials said that on the basis of R&D experience on multi-stage flash (MSF) and reverse osmosis (RO) plants at Trombay, a hybrid technology had been developed by the institute. A nuclear desalination demonstration project (NDDP) was being set up at Kalpakkam based on the hybrid technology. The reverse osmosis plant had been functioning since 2002.
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