Cheer for savers in December

Public provident fund (PPF), small deposits and post office schemes will fetch a higher rate of return from December.

The government today notified an increase in interest rates on PPF to 8.6 per cent from 8 per cent, and raised the ceiling on annual contributions to the fund to Rs 1 lakh from Rs 70,000.

Interest rates on savings accounts in post offices will go up to 4 per cent from 3.5 per cent. Rates on deposits of other maturities, too, will be raised from next month.

The sale of Kisan Vikas Patras (KVP) will be discontinued from November 30.

The maturity period of monthly investment schemes (MIS) and National Savings Certificates will be reduced to five from six years.

MIS will earn an interest of 8.2 per cent, but accounts opened on/after December 1 will not be entitled for bonus.

Further, every Rs 100 invested in an NSC will fetch Rs 150.90 at the end of five years.

Besides, loans taken from PPFs will attract an interest of 2 per cent per annum from December.

The government has done away with the commission paid to the agents for opening PPF accounts and Senior Citizens Savings Schemes, while the commission for Mahila Pradhan Kshetriya Bachat Yojana has been fixed at 4 per cent. The commission for all other schemes has been halved to 0.5 per cent.

The Centre has also notified an increase in the interest rate on recurring deposit schemes of post office. According to the calculation, a recurring deposit of Rs 10 every month will fetch Rs 738.62 after five years.

Insurance ruling

An insured person can be denied a claim if he has concealed relevant facts such as existing ailments, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has ruled.

The commission gave the ruling while setting aside a judgment of the Kerala consumer commission that had directed the LIC to pay Rs 50,000 as insurance claim to Shakuntala Devi, wife of a policy holder who died of tuberculosis in 2001.

The panel said there was credible evidence that the policy holder was suffering from tuberculosis and he had concealed it from the company, thus entitling the company to deny him the claim.

“Since, an insurance is a contract entered between the parties in utmost good faith, suppression of any material facts by the insuree, as was done in this case, entitled the insurance company to repudiate the claim,” the bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhan said.

Mukesh Ambani richest Indian, Anil biggest loser

India’s richest are getting poorer, according to Forbes, as falling stock prices, corruption scandals in Asia's third-largest economy and a global slowdown wiped 20 percent off the total value of the country's 100 wealthiest in the last year.

Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries, India's most valuable company, retained the top spot with a value of $22.6 billion, despite seeing his net worth drop by $4.4 billion.

In the same period, Ambani completed construction of a 27-storey house in Mumbai, costing an estimated $1 billion.

The biggest loser in the list was Ambani's younger brother, Anil, whose net worth stood at $5.9 billion, down from $13.3 billion. His Reliance Group companies have been some of the worst performers on the Mumbai bourse this year.

A major drag for Ambani has been telecom firm Reliance Communications, which has $7.5 billion in debt and has so far failed in efforts to ease debt and raise money.

The combined wealth of India's richest 100 people fell to $241 billion in 2011, according to the Forbes India Rich List, which includes 57 dollar billionaires, a dozen less than a year earlier.

"This has been a turbulent year for India's richest," Naazneen Karmali, India Editor of Forbes Asia, said in a statement.

"Despite the economy growing at close to 8 percent, a spate of corruption scandals and rising inflation have taken a toll."

The world's second-fastest growing major economy after China grew only 7.7 percent in the three months to June, its weakest in 18 months, and Mumbai's benchmark stock index is down 16 percent since January.

India has raised its interest rates 13 times in 19 months, hurting demand for big-ticket items and making it more expensive for businesses to raise capital.

Of the 85 alumni from last year's list, 66 saw their worth drop this year. A net worth of $370 million was enough to make the 2011 list, down from $500 million a year ago.

BIG TEN

Mukesh Ambani led a top ten dominated by industrial tycoons, including ArcelorMittal chairman Lakshmi Mittal, who came in second with a net worth of $19.2 billion.

Energy and metal barons Shashi and Ravi Ruia lie fourth with a combined worth of $10.2 billion.

Kumar Birla, head of the fabrics-to-cement Aditya Birla conglomerate, Adi Godrej of the Godrej Group and construction tycoon Pallonji Mistry -- the largest individual shareholder of the Tata Group and father-in-law to Noel Tata, touted as a likely successor to Ratan Tata -- are also in the top ten.

Many of those companies are benefiting from India's plans to spend $1 trillion in the five years to 2017 to overhaul its creaking infrastructure, seen as a barrier to continued economic growth.

Only one name from India's showpiece IT sector made the top ten: Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, India's No. 3 software services provider, ranked third with a net worth of $13 billion.

Savitri Jindal, head of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, was India's richest woman, sitting fifth on the list with a net worth of $9.5 billion. Jindal was one of only five women on the list of one hundred.

A $39 billion telecom scandal, likely India's largest ever graft scam, made its mark on the list, with two accused in the case, Vinod Goenka and Shahid Balwa, falling out of the top 100. Both deny any wrongdoing.

Debutants on the annual list include Kapil Bhatia and his son Rahul, founders of budget airline IndiGo, and V.G. Siddhartha, whose coffee shop chain Cafe Coffee Day gave him a net worth of $595 million.

India's biggest gainer in percentage terms was Brijmohan Lall Munjal, head of two-wheeler HeroMoto Corp, whose net worth rose to $2.7 billion in the year his firm ended a 26-year partnership with Japan 's Honda Motor .

India's auto industry has seen car sales declining on high interest rates while families of four continue to buy two-wheelers, most of which can be bought without relying on loans.

http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/Forbes-list-Mukesh-Ambani-reuters-1288442712.html

LIC’s tobacco stain shows

The Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) invested more than Rs 3,600 crore last year in the tobacco industry, anti-tobacco activists and cancer specialists said today, describing the investments as ironical and unethical.

Figures obtained through the right to information route by a consortium of activists and doctors show that in 2010-11, LIC had invested in shares of ITC and VST Industries and in debentures of Dharampal Satyapal Ltd, which makes chewable tobacco products.

The LIC investment in ITC had a book value of more than Rs 3,561 crore, while its investment in VST Industries was about Rs 15 lakh, according to information released by the company. It also invested Rs 50 crore in Dharampal Satyapal.

“It’s ironic that LIC is investing in an industry that contributes to ill-health and death, and an industry that some arms of the government are trying to discourage,” said Pankaj Chaturvedi, associate professor at the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.

“The public should know where LIC is investing its funds,” Chaturvedi told The Telegraph. “The government has enforced the ban on public smoking and it has also outlined steps to phase out tobacco cultivation in the coming years.”

The RTI application had been filed by a consortium called Voice of Tobacco Victims, mainly representing patients with cancer. LIC officials were not immediately available to explain its policy of investing in the tobacco industry.

The number of shares held by LIC in ITC jumped from about 522,089,903 on March 31, 2010, to 995,891,658 on March 31, 2011, according to the company’s response to the RTI query.

Tata Memorial doctors said the RTI response from LIC suggested it was not charging extra premium on all tobacco users. “It is ridiculous.… LIC invests in tobacco, it doesn’t charge higher premium from addicts, but they may reject the claims of addicts,” Surendra Shastri, head of preventive oncology at Tata Memorial, said in a statement.

In response to the RTI query on LIC’s policy on insurance for tobacco users, the company said the risk assessment for consumption of tobacco would take into consideration multiple health factors ranging from quantity and type of tobacco to health conditions of the applicant.

“The adverse health effects of tobacco consumption is dependent on (the) quantity of consumption, type of tobacco consumed, duration of consumption and any other associated health condition of the insurance applicant,” LIC said. “Depending on these factors, while large numbers of customers are accepted without any extra premium, some of the applicants may be charged higher premium.”

Public health specialists campaigning against tobacco said the investment was unethical because it was against the principle that governments should not invest in tobacco, enshrined in an international convention to which India is a signatory.

“On the one hand, India incurs a cost of nearly Rs 10,000 crore each year from tobacco-related health expenses, on the other, LIC invests Rs 3,600 crore in tobacco,” Prakash Gupta, director of the Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health, Mumbai, said in a statement.

Courtesy: http://telegraphindia.com/1111013/jsp/frontpage/story_14618444.jsp

Steve Jobs at Stanford University Commencement on June 12, 2005

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college.

This is the closest I have ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.

That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.

She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?"

They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers.

She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later, I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.

So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed.

Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.

It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography.

If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.

How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well.

But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.

So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.

I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.

I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was.

The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die.

It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.

I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.

 And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.

 It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras.

It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age.

On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the visionary who transformed the worlds of personal computing, finally lost his years-long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Six years ago, Jobs had talked about how a sense of his mortality was a major driver behind that vision.

It truly takes real courage to swim against the current and smile even when you are writhing in pain.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," Jobs said during a Stanford commencement ceremony in 2005.

"Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Cash remittance from Gulf

Indians working abroad, particularly in the Gulf countries, are rushing to send money home to take. advantage of a depreciating rupee. In the last couple of months, inward remittances from Gulf countries have increased more than 30 per cent over the same period last year. At present, remittances from Gulf countries account for more than 30 per cent of the total money transfers to India. There were significant increases in NRI remittances from the Gulf region, Europe and Africa whereas those from North America and East Asia declined. For example, one could hardly get more than Rs 120 in exchange of one Oman rial. With the Indian rupee now trading at Rs 128 a rial, it means my family will get nearly 7 per cent more in rupee terms on the same amount of rial transfer. Remittances from the Gulf region have been steadily increasing since 2008-09. The trend has spiked since August after the rupee started weakening against the greenback. Remittances to India from Gulf countries have grown more than 30 per cent in the July-September quarter compared with the previous quarter.  Large-ticket money transfers have increased, particularly in the last couple of weeks. These people send money for investments rather than domestic commitments. According to money exchangers, the increase in the volume of money remitted has been more than the number of transactions, suggesting that high-income expatriates are taking advantage of the depreciating rupee. The UAE’s dirham and Kuwait’s dinar have all gained against the rupee. Banks in India such as the SBI, Bank of Baroda (BoB) and HSBC, which have money transfer network in these Gulf countries, are witnessing a heavy inflow of remittance.

Happy Durgapuja

                     Wish all the readers a Happy Durga Puja'2012. May the Holy mother bless all of us.

2G scare for Anil Ambani

Stock prices of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) companies plumbed new depths on Friday after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said it was investigating the role of the group chairman in the 2G telecom scam.

The federal investigators spooked the markets even more after raising the prospect that three ADAG executives currently being held in Tihar jail could turn approvers in the case.

The Reliance Communications and Reliance Power (RPower) scrips hit new lows, falling 8 per cent to Rs 71.75 and 4 per cent to Rs 76.80, respectively, at Friday’s close on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Reliance Capital, the group’s financial arm, dropped as much as 12 per cent to Rs 315.20, while Reliance Infrastructure fell 7 per cent to Rs 373.55 and Reliance Mediaworks by 6 per cent to Rs 90.95.

The 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex fell 244 points to 16453 points on Friday.

ADAG stocks have been battered in the stock markets this year and have lost nearly half of their market capitalisation.

The Anil Ambani group scrambled to limit the damage. In a statement, the ADAG group denied its involvement in the 2G telecom scam but that did not stop investors from selling the stocks.

The statement said none of the ADAG companies, including Reliance Telecom, had illegally benefited from the sale of the 2G licences in 2008.

ADAG also denied that the three arrested executives — group managing director Gautam Doshi and senior vice-presidents Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair — had expressed any intention to turn app rovers.

“The CBI is now raising (these) new issues to oppose bail to the three Reliance executives,’ the statement said.

The three Reliance executives have been accused of breaking rules by using Swan Telecom as a front company to bag additional licences and spectrum from Reliance Telecom.

However, it was not all bad news for the Anil Ambani group on Friday.

The RBI gave its approval for RPower to raise $2.2 billion, or Rs 11,000 crore, from the US Exim Bank and Chinese banks that will go towards funding the company’s 3,960MW Sasan power project in Madhya Pradesh.

Fraud credit card of Kumar Mangalam Birla

Once again, a cloned credit card made its rounds in Bangalore shopping arcades. This time, the victim is none other than Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the $35-billion Aditya Birla Group.

Fraudsters cloned the Standard Chartered Platinum credit card of the high-profile industrialist and went on a six-day shopping spree — from September 15 to 20 — in malls across the city. They splurged Rs 2.86 lakh on jewellery and electronic gadgets. All this while, Birla was in Mumbai and the original credit card was with him.

A complaint was lodged at the Worli police station, Mumbai, September 24 by an executive of the Aditya Birla Group. The fraud came to light on September 23, when the bank sent a statement to Birla’s office detailing the credit card transactions made in Bangalore.

One of the finance wing executives was the first to detect the anomaly. “How could our boss go on a shopping spree in Bangalore when he has been in Mumbai,” he asked. Cross-checking with Birla, his staff found that the original credit card had been with him throughout.

The Worli police registered an FIR (crime number 298/11) under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code and other provisions of the Information Technology Act. Inspector Sudhir Mahadik, who confirmed receipt of the complaint on behalf of Birla, told Bangalore Mirror, “Preliminary investigations have revealed that fraudsters have used Birla’s credit card for shopping in Bangalore. We have formed a special team to probe the matter, and have alerted our counterparts in Bangalore.” According to the police, the fraudsters swiped Birla’s card around 10 times in six days.

G K Tulsiyani, a representative of the Birla Group, said, “Kumar Man-galam Birla had not been to Bang-alore during the time the purchases using his card were made. It seems his card has been cloned as he has the original card with him. The cops are probing the matter.”

In similar cases reported a couple of months ago, the Bangalore Police arrested two people who went on a shopping spree at the UB City mall with some cloned credit cards.

The tip-off had come after Crime Branch sleuths of the Mumbai Police arrested Suhail, Afsar and Nadeem, both Bangalore residents, and Bhaskar, from Kalyan near Mumbai, on charges of cloning credit cards and allegedly using them for shopping.

Moving into action, the Bangalore Police arrested Jayakumar Samuel of Bangalore and Harish Steven of Mysore, recovering 205 cloned cards from them.

The Mumbai Police too had recovered 77 fake credit cards.

CCTV grabs had showed the culprits, led by Suhail, visiting several showrooms of leading mercantile brands at UB City, Indiranagar, Brigade Road, buying goods worth more than Rs 25 lakh.

Courtesy- http://www.bangaloremirror.com

Calculate your ULIP NAV

As stipulated by IRDA, the Net Asset Value (NAV) computation formula for Linked Funds stands modified effective August 18, 2011

I wish to intimate all readers that pursuant to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority circular dated 29th July 2011 the formula for computation of the Net Asset Value Per Unit (NAV) for Linked funds stands modified as under: Old Formula: (As prescribed by IRDA and as Stated in the policy document) The basis used for calculation of NAV would be the Appropriation Price and Expropriation Price. The Appropriation Price shall apply in a situation when the company is required to purchase the assets to allocate the units at the valuation date The Expropriation Price shall apply in a situation when the company is required to sell assets to redeem the units at the valuation date. The NAV per unit of each Investment Fund will be calculated as per the prevailing IRDA guidelines mentioned below When Appropriation Price is applied: The NAV shall be computed as: (Market Value of Investments held by the fund + The Expenses incurred in Purchase of the Assets + Value of Any Current Assets + Any Accrued Income Net of Fund Management Charges - Value of any Current Liabilities - provisions, if any) Divided by the number of units existing at valuation date (before any new units are allocated) When Expropriation Price is applied: The NAV shall be computed as: (Market Value of Investments held by the fund - The Expenses incurred in Sale of the Assets + Value of Any Current Assets + Any Accrued Income Net of Fund Management Charges - Value of any Current Liabilities - provisions, if any) Divided by the number of units existing at valuation date (before any new units are allocated) Modified Formula: (As stipulated by IRDA effective August 18, 2011) (Market Value of Investments held by the fund + Value of Any Current Assets - Value of any Current Liabilities & Provisions, if any) Divided by the number of units existing at valuation date (before creation or redemption of any units) Please note that the above change is effective 18th August 2011 and all the policy contracts issued by us (linked funds) stands modified to the above extent.

Two sides of a coin

The sharp fall in the rupee is likely to hit oil imports and add to inflationary pressures, but exporters hope to benefit from the weakening of the Indian currency when they enter into fresh contracts.

The rupee has depreciated nearly 10 per cent in the last two months.

State-owned oil firms are worried as the country imports 80 per cent of its crude requirement. For every rupee depreciation, the under-recovery increases by around Rs 9,000 crore. This will put pressure on the finances of oil firms.

In the first quarter of this fiscal, the country imported fuel worth $46.15 billion. High oil import bill is a major cause of worry.

The country will not be able to take advantage of the fall in global crude prices because of the rupee depreciation. The oil burden will affect inflation.

A weak rupee would provide competitive advantage to exporters to the newer markets such as Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia when they entered into new contracts.

Importers cowered in fear as the rupee slumped to a 28-month low at 49.58 against the dollar, which rose to a seven-month high against major currencies as an aversion to risk swept across the world’s financial markets. Importers are rushing in to buy dollars, the rupee were under pressure throughout the session. The rupee had been at its weakest at 49.78 on May 14, 2009. It had registered the biggest fall of 152 paisa, or over 3 per cent, on May 18, 2009. .

The rupee went into a free fall as importers scrambled to scoop up dollars and the RBI made a less than half-hearted intervention attempt to prop up the tumbling currency.The rupee’s close marks a steep fall of 124 paisa from Wednesday’s close. This is the biggest single-session fall in nearly two years.Wary forex experts aver that if the current global uncertainty continues (igniting a further dollar rally) and there is more demand for the greenback from importers, the rupee could easily breach the 50-mark. Few pessimists are pointing out that the unit may cross the 53-mark as well.Dealing room circles said with risk aversion sweeping across markets because of worries over the global economy, investors were betting in safe haven assets such as the dollar.With equities witnessing savage cuts and foreign institutional investors selling, dollar supplies dried up.This resulted in the rupee resuming sharply lower at 48.79 a dollar from the overnight close of 48.34.