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| Updated Daily at 1200 hrs (IST) |
Saturday,
24 March 2001
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Yesterday's
Edition
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Share prices, led by software stocks, suffered a fresh setback on renewed selling pressure, triggered by the Nasdaq downslide and rumours of payment crisis at the Calcutta Stock Exchange (CSE), pulling down the Bombay Sensitive Exchange sensitive index by over 77 points. According to market-men, the continuous fall in Nasdaq and the Dow Jones, CSE payment crisis and the ongoing political crisis - all dampened the market sentiment badly at the local bourses. The adjournment of the parliament on the seventh consecutive sessions on Thursday and rumours of CSE payment crisis disappointed the local operators who resorted heavy selling. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs), too remained inactive, they added. Reflecting the bearish trend, the Sensex opened on a weak note at 3785.96 points, rose to the high to 3818.03 points, fell sharply over 100 points to the touch the low of 3708.80, before closing at 3713.97 points, showing a net lose of 77.10 points from 3791.07 points of the previous day. 
The Government has once again begun its year-end exercise of mailing its cash cows, the oil companies. This time round the cash-rich companies will bring a whopping Rs 1,317.3 crore into the Government's kitty by buying into the stand-alone refineries - Kochi, Numaligargh, Chennai and Bongaigaon. This cash inflow along with that from Balco would make good at least a fraction of the grandiose divestment target set by the Government early in the year. The selloff target for the current fiscal was slashed from Rs 10,000 crore to a modest Rs 2,500 crore last month. The government had been planning to restructure the stand-alone refining companies and make them subsidiaries of oil biggies IOC, HPCL and BPCL. While BPCL paid Rs 659.1 crore to the Petroleum Ministry for acquiring 55.04 per cent stake in stand alone Kochi Refinery Ltd, IOC would pay Rs 658.2 crore on March 29 for buying out government stake in Chennai Petroleum and Bongaigaon Refinery, Union Petroleum Minister Ram Naik said on Wednesday.
The newly launched Hindi news channel Aaj Tak could not have hoped for a better time to launch, and Star News claims its total audience has risen by 500 per cent. In the competition among news channels, Zee News still is at the helm but Aaj Tak is threatening to upset the apple cart of both Zee and Star News. For the week beginning 22 January in which the Gujarat earthquake struck, the time spent per viewer for the six news channels (BBC, CNBC, CNN, Zee News, Star News and Sun News) went up sharply from 59.4 minutes to 76.2. In the subsequent week beginning 29 January it continued to rise with an average of 81 minutes, but the tapered off to an average of around 55 minutes for the subsequent for weeks. (Intam-7 cities, Male SEC A 25+C&S, All TV). Significantly though, the gain of the local news channels is the loss of international ones like BBC and CNN. The time-spent-per-viewer per week on both Zee and Star goes up from 42 minutes in the week beginning 15 January to around 57 minutes for the week beginning 22 January (the earthquake week), and then again up to 65 and 59 minutes per viewer for Zee and Star, respectively for the week beginning 29 January. On the other hand, the time spent per viewer for BBC and CNN fell from 22 minutes to 20 minutes in the case of BBC for the week beginning January 15 to the week beginning January 22, while for CNN the fall was from 42 minutes to 27 minutes. As far as audience share of those watching news channels, Zee News has clearly been ahead with as much as 51 per cent of the share through January and the first half of February. However, after the launch of Aaj Tak by the Living Media Group, the audience share began falling from the week beginning 26 February. The latest figures for the week 5-12 March shows Aaj Tak with an audience share of 31 per cent compared to Zee's 28 and Star News' 18 per cent. (Intam - 5 cities, Male 25+SEC ABC, C&S).
According to a proposal approved by the Commerce & Industry Minister, the export permission is subject to minimum export price and payment of refundable deposit. The order was issued on 12 March and the quota is valid till 31 March.
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