"The cost of failure is inevitably bigger for the elephants, which benefit from the system and I think India is now among them"
Pascal Lamy, Director General, WTO, in Mint

"It's not a switch I can turn off and on"
P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister, on inflation, in Business Standard

"If you have to build a road in China, just a handful of people need to make a decision. If you want to build a road in India, it'll take 10 years of discussion before you get a decision"
Daniel Vasella, Chief Executive, Novartis, in BusinessWeek

"India is a launching pad for our global growth, a platform to expand and serve customers in other key markets such as the Middle East and East Asia"
Alex Urquhart, President and Chief Executive, GE Energy Financial Services, in BusinessWeek

"It's a growing market (match-making websites)... 64 per cent of India is below 30"
Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder, BharatMatrimony.com, which also has 63 walk-in centres, mostly in South India, in Fortune

"It is time to take on and conquer the world. Indian businessmen can go global, whether they live in India or not. It's a small world now"
L.N. Mittal, CEO, Arcelor Mittal, in The Times of India

"America's immigration policies are driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most"
Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft, in PTI

"If our infrastructure gets delayed...Our economic agenda gets delayed-if not derailed"
N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chief Mentor, Infosys, in BusinessWeek

NOTED

ANNOUNCED: By the government, a bonus of Rs 100 per quintal over the minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 750 a quintal for the current wheat procurement season. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar's decision is expected to lead to an outgo of over Rs 350 crore in support price for the 150.5 lakh tonne of wheat that the Centre is targeting to procure this season.

RECORDED: By Indian industry, a growth in output of 10.9 per cent in January 2007, compared to 8.5 per cent in the corresponding month last year. The growth in IIP is fuelled mainly by a robust growth in the manufacturing sector and a recovery in mining and electricity.

SURGED: To 6.46 per cent, India's inflation rate, for the week ended March 3, against 6.10 per cent a week ago and 3.86 per cent during the corresponding week of the previous year. Prices of maize, oil cakes, flour, fuel items, branded oil and insulated cables moved up, while those of fruits, tea, poultry chicken, urad, spices and condiments, polyester yarn and sugar fell.

DISCOVERED: By the Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries, two new natural gas fields off the Andhra Pradesh and Orissa coasts. The company struck gas at one site in the Krishna-Godavari Basin and at another one in the Mahanadi Basin. It plans to invest over Rs 12,000 crore on its gas fields over the next four years.

DEFERRED: By the government, its plan to disinvest its 10.27 per cent residual stake in Maruti Udyog (MUL) due to high volatility in the secondary market. The MUL disinvestment, which was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, is now expected to take place in the next financial year.

SHIPPED: By Nokia India, 20 million handsets from its manufacturing hub at Chennai during the unit's 11-month existence. The company has announced an investment of $150 million (Rs 660 crore) over the next few years for the expansion of this unit. Besides the domestic market, Nokia also services parts of its South East Asian market from this factory.

INDIA NOW A PUBLISHING HUB

There's a new trend in outsourcing. Big name foreign publishers are increasingly outsourcing key functions like design, page layout and high-level extraction work to their Indian affiliates and other companies. "We need to move up the value chain as many of the services we earlier provided (in word processing, office presentations, desktop publishing, scanning and document production) get commoditised," says Rajiv Beri, MD, Macmillan India, which does a lot of work for its German parent. Then, companies like Thomson Digital, Techbooks, Integra and Newgen Imaging all service international customers from India. "The cost advantage of outsourcing publishing work to India is huge. I guess the clients get comfort from the fact that we are tech-savvy, and give consistent results," says Vinay K. Singh, CEO, Thomson Digital.

-Pallavi Srivastava

INDIAN IRON ORE EXPORTS TO DROP

The domestic steel industry is happy. Exporters are not. India exports 100 million tonnes of iron ore each year and the proposed export duty of Rs 300 per tonne is expected to generate Rs 3,000 crore in revenues. But this target may not be achieved. "Iron ore exports may drop 50 per cent as a result of this duty. China, which accounts for 50 per cent of India's exports, may now move away to Brazil. This duty has come as a shock for us," says Rahul N. Baldota, Vice President of the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries. MMTC, NMDC, Kudremukh Iron Ore Co and Sesa Goa are the leading exporters.

The steel industry says the new duty is necessary as it ramps up its production to upwards of 100 million tonnes per annum over the next 3-5 years. In fact, MoUs have been signed for more than 200 million tonnes of additional capacity, but not all of these will result in capacities on the ground. The new duty, they say, will help India conserve nearly 50 million tonnes of iron ores every year. The country has 23 billion tonnes of iron ore reserves. Ores exports are mostly routed through the Chennai, Visakhapatnam and Paradip ports; so, a reduction in exports will hit these ports hard. The country has earned Rs 1,393 crore from iron ore exports so far this year.

-Ritwik Mukherjee