Tag: India

India Post fights to retain marketshare in small savings

Posted by | Feb 2, 2008 | |

minimum of seven lakh small accounts during the April-October 2007 period to commercial banks.

This has been primarily due to the postal department’s inability to offer market-related interest rates and the withdrawal of 10pct bonus on monthly income scheme (MIS).
This declining trend is, however, expected to change now.

The government has reintroduced the bonus on MIS from December 2007, albeit at a lower 5pct rate, and is going to make the five-year postal term deposits and senior citizen savings scheme eligible for tax rebate under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act from April 2008.

Small post office savings schemes include MIS (at 8pct interest rate), term deposits and recurring deposits (7.5pct interest), senior citizen savings scheme (9pct interest) and savings bank account (3.5pct interest).

Till November 2007, the fall in number of accounts is significant, especially in MIS and senior citizen savings scheme. MIS collection received the first blow in February 2006 when the government withdrew the 10pct bonus on maturity.

The postal term deposits and senior citizen savings had also failed to compete with commercial banks during the period under review as banks were offering significantly higher interest rate on deposits. For instance, the State Bank of India (SBI) was offering a 9.5pct annual rate for 4-5 years deposits while the postal term deposits offer just about 7.5pct per annum.

According to latest available statistics as of October 2007, the number of live savings accounts with the postal department’s West Bengal circle stood at 1.78 crore. This is compared to 1.85 crore live accounts as of March 31, 2007.

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World Courier Expands Storage Capabilities in India as Clinical Trials Boom

Posted by | Jan 28, 2008 | |

In response to increasing demand from global pharmaceutical companies that conduct clinical trials in India, World Courier will almost triple the capacity of its ISO-certified, GMP-compliant investigational storage facility in Bangalore during 2008. The expansion will be undertaken in two phases, with the first phase being completed by the end of January and the second phase set to get under way in April. The facility will remain open for business throughout the construction period.

The delivery of this expanded state-of-the-art temperature-controlled structure to the international research community follows ground-breaking 2004 patent legislation governing the molecular composition of new and existing drugs. Since then, the progressive legislation – combined with the country’s widely varied and densely populated demographics – has attracted growing numbers of the pharmaceutical community to a local clinical trial market that is expected to exceed USD 1.5 billion (U.S.) in investment by 2010.

World Courier currently maintains a network of seven investigational drug storage facilities worldwide, with installations in Buenos Aires (Argentina), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Santiago (Chile), Mexico City (Mexico), Lima (Peru), Moscow (Russia) and Bangalore (India). Five new global locations are planned to come online in strategic and developing markets during 2008, increasing World Courier’s network of temperature-controlled biopharm facilities to 12 worldwide.

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Over 875 Million Consumers Have Shopped Online – the Number of Internet Shoppers up 40pct in Two Years

Posted by | Jan 28, 2008 | |

More than 85 percent of the world’s online population has used the Internet to make a purchase — increasing the market for online shopping by 40 percent in the past two years — according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on Internet shopping habits. Globally, more than half of Internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month, according to Nielsen.
Among Internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with Internet access have used it to shop, followed by the UK (97pct), Germany (97pct), Japan (97pct) with the U.S. eighth, at 94 percent. Additionally, in South Korea, 79 percent of these Internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the UK (76pct) and Switzerland (67pct) with the U.S. at 57 percent.
Globally, the most popular and purchased items over the Internet are Books (41pct purchased in the past three months), Clothing/Accessories/Shoes (36pct), Videos / DVDs / Games (24pct), Airline Tickets (24pct) and Electronic Equipment (23pct).
Credit cards are by far the most common method of payment for online purchases — 60 percent of global online consumers used their credit card for a recent online purchase, while one in four online consumers chose PayPal. Of those paying with a credit card, more than half (53pct) used Visa.
According to Nielsen, online shoppers tend to stick to the shopping sites they are familiar with, with 60 percent saying they buy mostly from the same site. “This shows the importance of capturing the tens of millions of new online shoppers as they make their first purchases on the Internet. If shopping sites can capture them early, and create a positive shopping experience, they will likely capture their loyalty and their money,” said Paul.

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Postal dept launches Project Arrow

Posted by | Jan 25, 2008 | |

Kamlesh Chand, Deputy Director General (personnel), launched the second phase of `Project Arrow’ here on Saturday. Three post offices (Kanpur GPO, Nawabganj and Cantt) were selected for modernisation and computerisation.

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Q-Post hit by a huge rise in inflation rate

Posted by | Jan 22, 2008 | |

Rising inflation badly hit the country’s postal sector last year, said Q-Post chairman Ali Mohamed al-Ali yesterday.

The chairman said the country’s postal corporation suffered heavily in 2007 because of the unprecedented inflation witnessed by Qatar.

Al-Ali said premises that the Q-Post used to acquire for as low as Q R1,500 a month for its operations in the city or suburbs was now costing at least five times more.
“As a result, our overheads on various fronts have increased considerably.”

The chairman also informed that the pay rise the Q-Post gave to its staff, both nationals and expatriates, in December 2006 too had taken a heavy toll on the corporation’s operations.

Al-Ali said the annual salary bills of the staff alone amounted to QR65mn.

Answering another query, the chairman said the postal corporation used to receive a financial support of QR52mn a year from the government until a few years ago. “That is no longer there. The absence of such financial support from the government had hit our operations hard.”

The implementation of e-cash in government transactions has also hit the corporation badly as revenues from the sales of tax and other revenue stamps that it used to receive had started going directly to the government, said al-Ali.

Despite all these, the corporation is making efforts to be self-reliant through the diversification of its businesses in a highly competitive environment, said al-Ali.
The chairman pointed out that in all large countries where the postal sector is still active; the governments had provided at least 80 pct budgetary support to their operations.

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