Market News

Economy
lIndia's industrial production declined by 1.2% in February 2009 as compared
to a 0.4% rise in January 2009. The government revised upwards the
January 2009 industrial production to 0.4% from a provisional fall of 0.5%.
lInflation declined to 0.26 per cent, the lowest ever in more than three
decades, for the week ended March 28 mainly on account of food items and
mineral products, fuelling expectations of rate cuts by the Reserve Bank.
The wholesale price-based index declined by 0.05 percentage points
against 0.31 per cent in the previous week.

Telecom
lRcom has announced the launch of its high-speed CDMA wireless broadband
service, Reliance Netconnect Broadband Plus, in Madhya Pradesh.
lAditya Birla group telecom service provider Idea Cellular has launched GSM
services in Orissa, making its foray into the eastern coast of the country.
This also expands the company's presence into 16 circles in the country.

Automobile
lTata Motors will set up a heavy truck manufacturing facility in Myanmar
with a capacity of 1,500 units a year. The plant is being set up following an
agreement between Indian and Myanmar governments.

Capital Goods
lL&T bagged order worth Rs 605 crore from the Water and Steel sectors in the
last quarter of FY09. It secured three orders aggregating Rs 416 crore from the
Water sector and another order worth Rs 189 crore from the steel sector.

Cement
lCement major ACC said it would invest around Rs 2,900 crore in the next
one year to increase that capacity to over 30 million tonnes per annum
(mtpa) from the present 22.63 mtpa. ACC is increasing its Bargarh plant
capacity to 2.3 mtpa and is also commissioning a 30-Mw power plant there.
It is also setting up two greenfield grinding plants in Karnataka which would
go on steam by the end of the year.

Metal
lJindal Stainless (JSL), the country's largest stainless steel producer, said it
will raise up to Rs 500 crore to part fund the second phase of its Rs 5,700-
crore Orissa project. The company is mulling over different fund raising
instruments such as rights issue, FCCBs/ global depository receipts (GDRs)/
American Depository Receipts (ADRs) to fund the likely deficit, though it
maintained the financial closure for the project has been achieved.
lNalco, the country's second largest aluminium producer, reported a 20 per
cent decline in the export of the metal in 2008-09 amid slackening demand
in the wake of the industrial downturn. The company's exports fell to
82,000 tonnes as against 1.02 lakh tonnes in the year-ago period.

Pharmaceutical
lAurobindo Pharma Ltd, a Hyderabad-based manufacturer of generic
pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), has
received its first approval from Swissmedic for the license of Finasteride
APL tablets in 5mg strength.
lWockhardt Ltd, India's sixth largest drug maker, is planning to hive off its
biotechnology products division into a separate company and rope in a
global pharmaceutical major as a strategic investor.
lStrides Arcolab has announced that the company has secured a tentative
approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the US for a new drug
application with a combination drug containing Lamivudine and Stavudine.

Consumer Durable
lGodrej Appliances, has earmarked a Rs 100-crore investment in FY 10 to
expand the capacity of its five manufacturing plants in the country.

Textile
lAbhishek Industries Limited, the flagship company of the Rs 2,500 crore
Trident Group, has commenced commercial production of its fifth yarn
spinning unit and has also laid the foundation stone for its sixth unit at
Budni in Madhya Pradesh.