| Rarely will you see such an ensemble of power and the glamour it brings in its trail. More than that, the awards are a recognition of cutting edge entrepreneurship in an environment that is turning more challenging by the day. |
| What made this year's function more memorable was that it coincided with the 30th anniversary of the newspaper. The last three decades, more so the last 15 years, have seen monumental changes in the Indian economy. |
| From being inward looking and tightly controlled by the government, it is now free and fully integrated with the world economy. Indian business now thinks globally and also acts globally. Business Standard has truthfully reported every twist and turn of these interesting years. |
| There couldn't have been a better chief guest for the function than the architect of the country's economic reforms, the man who unshackled the Indian economy from the licence-permit-quota Raj and put it on the path to globalisation as India's finance minister in the early 1990s "" Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. |
| The creme de la creme of the corporate world had assembled at The Taj Palace InterContinental for the function: Sunil Bharti Mittal with his brother Rakesh, investment bankers Uday Kotak and Hemendra Kothari, B V R Subbu of Hyundai India, O P Lohia of Indo Rama, Raghupati Singhania of JK Industries, Harsh Pati Singhania of JK Paper, Ajay Shriram of DSCL Ltd, Sidharth Shriram of Mawana Sugars, Rajeev Memani of Ernst & Young, R S Lodha of Lodha & Co, Shobhana Bhartia of Hindustan Times, and V S Jain of SAIL, to name a few. |
| The function began with a welcome address from Business Standard Chairman T Thomas, who described Prime Minister Singh as the most capable head of government in the world. In his brief observation, Olivier Fleurot, chief executive officer of the Financial Times and FT.com, spoke about his newspaper's growing relationship with Business Standard. |
| It was now the turn for Prime Minister Singh to give away the awards. The Business Standard CEO of the Year went to Bharat Forge chairman and managing director Baba N Kalyani. The award was given in recognition of his efforts to transform Bharat Forge into a globally competitive manufacturer of automobile components. |
| Oil and Natural Gas Corporation received the Star Company (Public Sector) award, not merely for being the most profitable company in India, but also for its global efforts and its success in turning around Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. |
| Hyundai Motors bagged the Star Company (Unlisted Firms) award for its success in becoming India's second largest car maker and the largest exporter of passenger cars in a short time. |
| Mercator Lines was chosen as the Star Company for the SME sector, with a 100 per cent compounded annual growth rate of net profit in the last three years. |
| B D Narang, chairman and managing director of the Oriental Bank of Commerce, received the Banker of the Year award. The Fund Manager of the Year (Equities) award went to Madhusudan Kela, head of equities at Reliance Mutual Fund, while the Fund Manager of the Year (Debt) award was bagged by Rajiv Anand, head of investments, Standard Chartered Mutual Fund. |
| In his address, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he favoured more foreign participation in the Indian media and that the time had come for local media houses to invest overseas. "I welcome greater foreign participation in our media because India is fundamentally an open society with an open economy," he said, adding: "I hope we will soon see more outward investment in media, both electronic and print, to reach out to wider global audiences." |
| At the moment, India permits foreign direct investment up to 26 per cent in news publications and up to 74 per cent in non-news publications. In the electronic media, foreign direct investment (FDI) is capped at 26 per cent in news channels, though there is no cap in the case of entertainment channels. |
| Prime Minister Singh said the country would attain a growth rate of 7-8 per cent in 2005-06. "These extra 1-2 percentage points in growth rates, which seems minuscule at a glance, are substantial over a period of time. In 20 years, a growth rate of 8 per cent will deliver twice as much growth as a rate of 5 per cent," he said, adding that his government would accord priority to the country's energy security and improvement of the social and physical infrastructure, while focusing on employment generation and balanced regional growth. |
| Prime Minister Singh also voiced his concern over the loss of "implicit consensus" between political parties on the introduction of value added tax (VAT) from April 1. "An empowered committee of state finance ministers, which included many major political parties, worked painstakingly to provide a blueprint and a roadmap (for VAT). Almost all state governments, and even the major political formations "" across the spectrum "" were on board. Yet, today, it is saddening to see this political consensus weakening," Singh said. |
| Without naming the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has declared that the five states ruled by it will not implement VAT from the deadline set by the empowered committee, Singh said: "We need to introspect and see if we are not placing ourselves in the unenviable position of talking in different voices to suit the occasion." |
| When in power, the BJP had favoured the introduction of VAT. Now, the BJP-ruled states "" Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh "" have cited the lack of clarity on the future of central sales tax as the reason for opting out of VAT. |
| "The political consensus that has been the bedrock of the reforms process since 1991 has been implicit rather than explicit... Many of the major issues of reform, ranging from tax and tariff cuts to changes in FDI ceilings, have been the subject of discreet consensus. Such consensus is rarely stated in public, but has often been displayed in the execution of policy," Singh said. |
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