Direct flights between Hong kong and Chennai shortly

Hong kong Airport

The long pending air traffic issue between India and Hong kong came to an end with both sides agreed to add new air services on the India-Hong kong route. According to this new agreement, the Indian carriers can be able to connect Hong kong with any city in India while those of Hong kong can be able to connect Hong kong with Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkata directly. Chennai had been newly added on this list of cities. This agreement allows the Indian carriers to operate flights from Indian cities to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver through Hong kong. And the Hong kong carrier can operate flights to European cities through India. Hence the Indian passengers can fly directly to Hong kong without transiting Singapore or Bangkok.

Chennai Metro Rail project to get approval soon

The Union minster for Urban Development, Jaipal Reddy said that central government will give its final approval for the Rs 13,000 crore Chennai Metro Rail project next year. Apart from that, the Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) get registered recently and its corporate office will be in the Ascendas Tech Park, Taramani. Since the TN government is not interested in Public-Private-Partnership model, it wants the project's cost to be shared with central government's aid and the remaining amount will be borrowed from the Japan Bank as loan. The project consists of two corridors of totally 50 km with 40 stations and most of the elevated track will be along the Anna salai. The project will be complemented in 4 years.

DLF BUILDS IT PARK 'TIDEL II' IN CHENNAI

The TN government has cleared the construction major DLF's bid to build the TIDEL Park II near the existing TIDEL Park in Taramani. In a tender put up by the TIDCO (Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation) for the leasing of 26.63 acre land to set up an IT & ITES SEZ, DLF emerged as the highest bidder. It had bid for Rs 26.07 crore, an acre and totally Rs 660 crore for the entire land on a 99-year lease. DLF will develop this 2.5 million sq. ft. facility in joint venture with TIDCO. This will be the second IT park developed by DLF in Chennai, the first one is at Ambattur.

Will Chennai adopt the CNG fuel System?

A CNG propelled Auto rickshaw plying on New Delhi road

The Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) fuel system which was implemented strictly in the National Capital Region (NCR) in 2004 after the Supreme Court's order was a great success. The implemented CNG Fuel system helps greatly in decreasing the pollution level in the NCR region. All the public transport vehicles like buses, auto rickshaws etc... plying in NCR roads had adopted the CNG system. Due to this success, the CNG system has become a role model for other cities which are struggling to control air pollution. Now a question arises that when will other Indian metros will shift to CNG system. Especially Chennai which is facing high air pollution problems mainly due to motor vehicles.Though the cost required for the shifting is higher, CNG costs RS.25 per kg when compared to petrol of Rs.50 per kg.

ASHOK LEYLAND EXPANDS CHENNAI PLANT

The Tamil Nadu government has given green signal for the Ashok Leyland's expansion plan to manufacture medium and heavy vehicles. The plant will come up at Pillaipakkam near Ennore, north of Chennai. The expansion plan will increase the number of production from 84,000 units to 100,000 units a year once the plant starts its production.

TWO INDIAN TOWNS AMONG WORLD'S MOST POLLUTED PLACES

Forbes, the US Business magazine released the list of the World's 10 most polluted places. In that, two Indian Towns - Sukinda in Orissa and Vapi in Gujarat occupied the first two places. In Sukinda, large swathes of the surface water and the drinking water contain very high levels of covalent chromium , which affects 2.6 million people. Sukinda is home to nearly all of India's chromite ore deposits and the second largest industrial area in Asia. In Vapi, the chemicals and heavy metals from industrial estates affects almost 70,000 people. The Mercury level in the groundwater here is 96 times higher than the WHO (World health Organisation) standards. Local produce contains 60 times more heavy metals like chromium, copper, cadmium and zinc than the non-contaminated produce in control groups.

INDIA - 4TH LARGEST FOREIGN CURRENCY HOLDER

According to the Taiwan's central bank, India ranks fourth among the global economic powers in holding the foreign currencies. In its press release, Taiwan's central bank said that Taiwan has been replaced by India as the fourth largest foreign currency holder.

The foreign currency reserves of the global powers at the end of January 2008 are:

1. China - $1.5 trillion
2. Japan - $948 billion
3. Russia - $479.4 billion
4. India - $279.5 billion
5. Taiwan - $272.8 billion
6. South Korea - $261.8 billion
7. Singapore - $163.6 billion
8. Brazil- $163.5 billion
9. Hong Kong - $146.9 billion

IPTV TO TAKE OFF SOON IN INDIA

The IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) system which had not launched in India is waiting for the Central Government's approval for its take off. Both Mobile phones and Computers can opt for this technology which gives you the option of pausing the Live TV and often Time shifted TV, which enables you to watch morning news at noon. The IPTV can offer more than 300 films at a time to choose. It is expected that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry will clear all the hurdles by this April and afterwards all the telecom as well as the cable TV operators can provide this IPTV tecnology.

WAL-MART TO OPEN STORES IN INDIA

It is now official that the Bharti Wal-Mart Joint venture planned to open its first Indian store in April 2008. But there will be no branding of Wal-Mart as well as Bharti in its retail stores when they come up round the corner in India. Michael T Duke, Vice Chairman of Wal-Mart said, "We have 52 different brands across the world and only 25 percent of the stores use the Wal-Mart brand name and we will repeat the same model in India". He added, "We are confident of a pan India presence besides stiff opposition from the states of Kerala, West Bengal, UP and Orissa, and also looking for Indian IT companies for providing IT solutions globally''.

Secondary Cross Runway in Chennai Airport

Google Earth's view of Chennai Airport

The Chennai airport, the 3rd busiest airport in India has opened its secondary cross runway for take-offs. In 2006-07, 5.9 million international passengers travelled through this airport and it handled an average of 329 aircraft movements per day with 21 international and 10 domestic airlines. Due to increase in air traffic, the AAI decided to bifurcate the Area control centre into two sectors - east and west. The new 2,085 metre long runway intersects the existing 3,658 metre long main runway. Now the airport will handle 40% of the traffic in east sector and the remaining in the west sector. The east sector will handle Chennai-Bangalore-Kolkata route and the west sector will handle the routes from Thiruvanthapuram to Mumbai. Till now it took 3 minutes for a take-off. But hereafter the airport can achieve two take-offs in just two minutes so that the aircraft movement per hour, both arrivals and departures will increase from 25 to 32.

DIRECT FLIGHTS FROM CHENNAI TO PAK AND BANGLADESH

India's third busiest airport, Chennai International Airport will soon get connected with cities in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Recently India and Pakistan reached an agreement to increase the frequency of air services from the present 12 to 28 a week. They also decided to add one more destination on both sides, Chennai and Islamabad respectively apart from the present destinations, Mumbai, Delhi, Karachi and Lahore.

Bangladesh based GMG airlines also planned to link Dhaka with Indian cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Dhaka. At present it operates flights on Delhi-Dhaka and Chittagong-Kolkata routes.

MUMBAI AND KOLKATA AMONG WORLD'S DENSEST CITIES

According to a survey made by the Forbes, the US Business magazine regarding the World's 20 densest urban areas, Mumbai and Kolkata occupied the first two places. Both cities consists of over 23,000 people per square kilometre. Pakistan's financial capital Karachi is at 3rd place. In that list, India's fourth largest metro Chennai is at No.8, the capital Delhi occupies the 13th position and the India's Silicon valley Bangalore is at No.19. China and India combine to have nine of the 20 slots, according to the 2007 statistics of citymayors.com.

MOSER BAER SETS UP FACILITY IN CHENNAI

Moser Baer, a global leader in the production of removal data storage has got the principal approval from the Tamil Nadu government to set up its production plant near Chennai, India. The facility will be developed by Moser Baer and its associate units in the Oragadam, Sipcot high tech industrial estate near Chennai to produce media players, silicon photovoltaic products, flash cards and thin films.

MINIMAL LAND ACQUISITIONS FOR CHENNAI METRO RAIL

For the proposed Chennai Metro Rail Project, a survey has been done recently to finalise the 46.5 km Metro line. According to the government sources, at some places the proposed elevated corridor has been changed to underground line to avoid the acquisition of households and other important buildings. They had concluded that only 45 households are going to be affected and the impacts due to the tunneling for underground line are not specified. However the government has decided to resist the construction of buildings within 50 m from the underground line.

The proposed corridors are

Corridor 1 : Washermenpet to Airport.
Corridor 2 : Fort to St.Thomas Mount.

MUMBAI AND NEW DELHI AMONG WORLD'S DIRTIEST CITIES

Mumbai and New Delhi are among the Dirtiest Cities in the World according to the US based business magazine, Forbes. Mumbai, the financial capital of India ranks 7th in the list and this magazine cites a private sector proposal, named 'Vision Mumbai' which needs $1 billion aid for the improvement of infrastructure and economic growth and for the pollution control. Though the capital New Delhi ranks at No. 24 in this list, it poses a severe threat to the marine life and the environment thereby increases the infant morbidity rate, as garbage and sewage wastes are flowing freely into the Yamuna river. Azerbaijan's capital, Baku and Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka occupied the first two places respectively while Mexico City ranks 5th in the list.

TATA BUILDS TIDEL PARK III IN CHENNAI

The approval for the construction of TIDEL Park III has been given by the Tamil Nadu government. Tata Realty and Infrastructure Limited was the lone bidder in a tender called by TIDCO for the construction this IT Park as well as an integrated international convention center. It had bid Rs 1,326.42 crore for leasing 25.27 acres of land near the American International school. It is estimated that the project will cost Rs 3,500 crore for the construction of IT Park and the Convention center as well other commercial space of 4-million sq ft.

PDP OPPOSES ELECTIONS IN J&K

The (PDP) People's Democratic Party said the party would oppose any move of conduct the Assembly elections in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. After meeting with the Chief Election Commissioner Gopalaswami, PDP’s general secretary Nizamuddin Bhat told the reporters that the current situation in the valley was not suitable to conduct the polls. He added that the people in the valley are very angry due to the incidents which happened after the controversial Amarnath land allotment order, which polarized the state on communal lines. So any move to conduct the polls will further worsen the situation, he added.

COGNIZANT TO ENTER MADURAI

Lakshmi Narayanan, Cognizant’s Vice-Chairman, said that the temple city 'Madurai' will be in its radar to expand the operations of the software firm. Mr.Narayanan who is also serving as the chairman of NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) came to Madurai to commence the competitions organised by the Thiagarajar College of Engineering for the school students. While replying for a question, he said that he will not comment on the name of the cities in which Cognizant is going to expand but it had shortlisted five cities for its future operations and Madurai is one of them.

Airtel got the Additional Spectrum

India's largest mobile service provider Bharti Airtel owned by Sunil Mittal said that it had got the additional spectrum to expand its mobile services in the five telecom circles of Gujarat, West Bengal, Assam, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh (West). Meantime it also reported a 42% increase in revenue at Rs.1,722 crore in third quarter of this financial year against Rs. 1,215 crore in the same quarter of last financial year .

THOUGHTWORKS OPENS DEVELOPMENT CENTRE IN CHENNAI

ThoughtWorks, a US based Multinational Information Technology service provider has expanded its operations in India by opening a new development centre in Chennai. Trevor Mather, CEO and Dharmarajan Sitaraman, Managing Director of ThoughtWorks said that the company was investing $600,000 at its Chennai facility and would employ over 75 persons in the next eight months, thereby increasing its Indian headcount to 350 by the end of 2008. At present, ThoughtWorks has 270 employees in India with two facilities at Bangalore and Pune.