Economy News Notes

Currency volatility and inflation have been an issue for the corporate world, and concerns over these issues were expressed during the annual chief financial officers' (CFOs) conference
He also felt that the demand for changing accounting standards was also wrong since it could bail out people, who have not done the right thing.
“Currency fluctuation has always been an area of concern, and we cannot predict the currency value.”
He said the rupee, which was trading at 44 against the dollar, was now hovering at 51.
The annual CFO conference with a theme on “The changing dynamics of the CFO” had been organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and covered various issues on risk management, fund raising strategies, managing business expansion and responsibilities among key stakeholders.

B. Muthuraman, CII President, said that the rejection rate of L-1 visas had jumped to its current level from 7-8 per cent.
Mr. Muthuraman further said that in the U.S. also there was a certain amount of protectionism. The recent “Stop Outsourcing and Create American Jobs 2011 Act” is a bit of a knee-jerk reaction
Mr. Muthuraman admitted that several major corruption scandals had slowed down decision making in several key economic policy areas. Yet he said that he was enthused by the fact that in the last three months a number of important bills had been tabled, including the Land Acquisition Bill and the Mining Bill. Also, there were numerous discussions underway in other areas such as getting FDI into multi-brand retail
If India can grow at 7.5 per cent with lots of problems on infrastructure and governance and all these reforms not taking place, with all this [improving] that 7.5 per cent can easily become 9-9.5 per cent

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday indicated that he was not contemplating any downward revision in the disinvestment target of Rs.40,000 crore set for the current fiscal, as of now.
Till date, the government has been able to mop up a mere Rs.1,145 crore through the sole equity sell-off in the Power Finance Corporation (PFC).
Stock markets have remained either very volatile or in a tailspin in the wake of the global economic uncertainties such as the slowdown in the U.S. and the ongoing eurozone sovereign debt crisis.
As a result, all public offerings of public sector undertakings (PSUs) lined up for stake sale in 2011-12 have been kept in abeyance.
PSUs that were initially lined up for stake sale were SAIL and Hindustan Copper (HCL), ONGC, BHEL, RINL, Hindustan Aeronautics and NBCC, among others.
Mr. Mukherjee maintained that the government would retain at least 51 per cent shareholding in PSUs to keep them in the public sector fold while pointing out that a higher stake unnecessarily locked up capital which could otherwise be deployed in social sector development.
Mr. Mukherjee said there were 50 listed Central PSUs now which accounted for 22.25 per cent share of the total market capitalisation on the Bombay Stock Exchange.