The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, today approved the launch of Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) with components (i) to separate agriculture and non agriculture feeders facilitating judicious rostering of supply to agricultural and non-agricultural consumers in rural areas and (ii) strengthening and augmentation of sub transmission and distribution infrastructure in rural areas, including metering of distribution transformers/feeders/consumers.
The estimated cost of the scheme for above two components is Rs.43,033 crore which includes the requirement of budgetary support of Rs.33,453 crore from Government of India over the entire implementation period.
The Cabinet further approved, that the balance work relating to rural electrification as per CCEA’s approval in August, 2013 with the norms of the ongoing scheme of RGGVY in 12th and 13th Plans will get subsumed in DDUGJY as a distinct component for rural electrification, for which CCEA has already approved the scheme cost of Rs.39,275 crore including budgetary support of Rs.35,447 crore. This outlay will be carried forward to the new scheme of DDUGJY in addition to the outlay of Rs.43,033 crore.
The scheme would help in:
(i) Improvement in hours of power supply in rural areas,
(ii) Reduction in peak load,
(iii) Improvement in billed energy based on metered consumption and
(iv) Providing access to electricity to rural households.The process of sanction of projects shall commence immediately. After sanction of projects, contracts for execution of projects will be awarded by States Discoms / Power Departments. The projects shall be completed within 24 months from date of award.
Category: Excerpts
(Disclosure:I am market making in the shares of Bombay Stock Exchange)Will BSE Ltd’s plan to enter the commodity segment bear much fruit?Taking up such challenges isn’t new to the exchange. About three years ago, when BSE started competing in the equity derivatives space, it had started from scratch. Its traded volumes in this segment are far more healthy now, although this is aided by market making incentives to trading members.Similarly, it has managed decent volumes in the currency derivatives segment, despite a rather late launch. Again, it helped that it didn’t charge for transactions for quite a few months since its launch. While transaction charges are expected to commence from next month, they will be at a fraction of what its competitors charge. In sum, BSE has done well in garnering volumes in two market segments by lowering costs for traders. Of course, it remains to be seen if volumes will be sustainable once it starts charging fees at cost-plus rates.
But pursuing a similar strategy in the commodities space may entail some additional challenges. To start with, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) currently doesn’t permit market making. Even if it does allow it in the future, BSE might find the regulator’s ownership guidelines to be a constraint. New shareholding guidelines for commodity exchanges limit the maximum ownership of one entity at 15%. Even if BSE manages to gather other investors to buy an 85% stake in the new venture, it will need a buy-in from this set of investors to invest a reasonably high sum for market making purposes. Like the equity segment, commodities trading now includes a transaction tax, which means that market making schemes should at least offset a large part of this cost for trading members to consider the new platform.
On the positive side, lately, BSE’s faster trading technology, sourced from Deutsche Borse, has generated interest from the trading community. And compared to MCX’s other competitors in the commodities space, BSE is far more aggressive and has better relationships with the trading community. While these factors should help, many others need to fall in place for traders to be open to shifting loyalties.
-from Mint
(Disclosure: I am market making in the shares of Bombay Stock Exchange)
Equity derivative turnover at BSE has grown substantially to over Rs 116 lakh crore so far in the current fiscal, from year-ago levels, as the exchange has put in place new measures including technology systems for faster trades.
The exchange had recorded trades amounting to about Rs 50 lakh crore, during the April-October period in fiscal 2013-14.
In the last six months itself, the orders per day at BSE has grown nearly three times from 15 crore per day to 45 crore per day, helped by a faster technology.
In terms of volumes, the trades on the exchange also surged to nearly 30 crore in the first seven months of current fiscal as against 16.80 crore in the year-ago period.
BSE, a top exchange globally for the number of listed companies, had upgraded its technology platform to Bolt Plus for all its segments earlier this year.
Following this, the equity derivative segment value on the bourse has stood at Rs 19-24 lakh crore on a monthly basis, as against Rs 5 lakh crore in April.
Number of derivative contracts also surged from 1.5 crore in April to more than 5 crore in the subsequent months.
“BSE implemented new technology in April 2014 which provides response time of 200 micro-seconds with a capacity of 500,000 orders per second.
“It is faster than any exchange by ten times or more in India giving significant advantage to the investors who trade on BSE vis-a-vis other exchanges,” BSE CEO Ashish Chauhan told PTI.
Noting that it had been only six months since the new system was implemented, Chauhan said: “Even within this short period of six months, number of orders per day on BSE has gone up from 15 crore per day to 45 crore per day”.
According to Chauhan, many Indian members and even foreign brokerages who were not trading on BSE earlier have started connecting to the new system.
“We believe even now many exchange technology vendors have not changed their technology to interact with high speed and scale system like the one BSE has implemented at 200 micro seconds.
“We believe it will take some more time for old technology vendors to change to the new faster technology… Only 20 per cent vendors seem to have changed their systems yet. Once the balance 80 per cent technology vendors change their system to become faster to match BSE system, it will perhaps see more than 200 or 300 crore orders per day on routine basis,” he added.-from BS
17 Indian Companies have been recognized by the World Economic Forum as Global Growth Companies.
The companies are:
- 4G Identity Solutions
- ANI Technologies
- Avesthagen
- Bandhan Financial Services
- Centum Electronics
- Finolex
- Flipkart
- Forbes Marshall
- InterGlobe Enterprises
- Justdial
- MakeMyTrip
- Nash Industries
- Persistent Systems
- Radikal Foods
- RBL Bank
- Sobha
- Transasia Bio-Medicals.
(Source:World Economic Forum)
(Disclosure:I am market making in the shares of RBL Bank)
RBL Bank, formerly known as Ratnakar Bank, plans to raise funds through an initial public offer which will hit the market in the next 8-9 months.
“We are preparing ourselves for the IPO and it may hit market in 8-9 months. It would not happen this fiscal but next calender year,” RBL Bank Managing Director Vishwavir Ahuja told PTI.
The quantum of offer has not been finalised by the board of the bank, he said, adding that the decision will be taken in the next few months after taking into account various factors including Basel III requirement.
The bank has been able to build scale and size in the last four years so that it gets right valuation, he said.
The capital is required for the next phase of operation as the bank has already done with transformation stage, he said, adding it has got high technology and risk management system.The bank services more than 6 lakh customers and has a total business size of over Rs 26,000 crore. As of September total deposits were Rs 12,000 crore while advances stood at Rs 14,000 crore.
The bank posted a net profit of Rs 87 crore for six months ended September 2014, while for the entire 2013-14 the profit stood at Rs 93 crore.
“So we have almost matched the net profit of the last fiscal in the first two quarters of the current financial year,” he said.-from ET