Current Affairs : Business & Economy Current Affairs: July 21, 2009

July 10, 2009: Anil Ambani enters Hollywood production
Anil Ambani will invest initially Rs. 4000 crore in a JV with ace directors Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider. The partnership is a 50:50 venture between Ambani and Speilberg and Snider. Ambani has nominated his top lieutenant Amitabh Jhunjhunwala on the board.

July 11, 2009 : Bajaj decides to phase out Pulsar 200
Bajaj Auto has phased out the Pulsar 200 model to replace with new Pulsar 220. Pulsar 220 is a refurbished version of the earlier model launched in December 2006. The Pulsar 200 was launched in January 2007 and carried an ex-showroom price of about Rs 70,000. Pulsar 220 has a 220cc engine, which generates 21.04 bhp of peak power.

July 18, 2009: ICICI gets AAA rating from CRISIL
Crisil has reaffirmed its ‘AAA’ rating, which reflects the highest degree of safety with regard to timely payment of financial obligations, on the ICICI bank’s Upper Tier II bonds, Tier I Perpetual bonds and bonds/debentures. The reaffirmation factors in ICICI Bank’s healthy capitalisation and strong market position, and demonstrated capabilities of the bank’s management.

July 18, 2009 : Rs 1000 cr fund to support SMEs
To provide credit to businesses in the unorganised sector a cabinet note for setting up a fund,NAFUS (National Fund for Unorganised Sector) with initial corpus of Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion), has been prepared. This was confirmed by Secretary in the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Dinesh Rai in a CII function.

July 19, 2009 : India to introduce e-passports
The government of India is planning to roll out e-passports, that will carry biometric information in a chip. This is an effort to check forgeries and misuse of passports. At present, a passport contains facial imprint but the e-passport will have all the personal details, including finger-prints, of the person carrying it. The government had asked the national informatics centre (NIC) and IIT (Kanpur) to work on the E-passport project which has successfully developed it.

July 20, 2009 : India has issues with Iran on Price
Replaying to a question in the Rajya Sabha Union Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said there are some outstanding issues including finalisation of the gas price with Iran.