Revamp of airports gains pace

New Delhi, July 20: The modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports gathered momentum today with leading Indian companies, including Reliance, Bharti and Videocon, joining the fray. The issue has created a political turmoil with Left parties and trade unions opposing any move by the UPA government to privatise these airports. As many as 10 expressions of interest were received by the Airports Authority of India for modernisation and restructuring of the two metro airports by the 1700-hours deadline.

Tea exports

New Delhi, July 20: Commerce minister Kamal Nath today assured the Tea Board that the government would take steps to reverse the declining trend of tea exports. The board is pinning hope on the promotion of organic tea as its output has almost doubled from 1.68 million kg in 1998 to 3.5 million kg in 2003.

LNG price meet

New Delhi, July 20: Ministers of oil, finance and fertiliser will meet tomorrow to discuss ways of bringing down the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is currently sold at almost twice the cost of domestic natural gas. Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia will chair the inter-ministerial group meet.

Trai missive

New Delhi, July 20: Telecom regulator Trai today warned bandwidth providers to either decrease the prices or face intervention.

Gold Cards

Mumbai, July 20: The Reserve Bank today asked banks not to fix a certain minimum annual turnover as an eligibility criterion for the gold-card scheme for exporters.