Official monitoring of infrastructure projects has expanded sharply to include developments worth Rs 100 crore as states have begun to mirror the Centre’s efforts to track such projects and speed up their implementation.

As many as nine state governments will now monitor the progress of infrastructure projects worth Rs 100 crore and more to help remove bottlenecks and ensure their timely completion - and more states are expected to join soon.

The defence and road ministries are close to an agreement for speedy transfer of land parcels currently with the three armed forces to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) so that a host of large highway projects can take off. Some of these projects have been stuck for want of defence ministry clearances (for land transfer) for up to five years, taking a toll on highway construction, which is also reeling from the hit taken from the economic slowdown and low investor interest.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Friday said it was likely to witness a nominal decline in operating margins in Q1FY15, largely due to a forex impact and wage hikes. Moreover, the software major indicated the appreciation in rupee in the quarter was likely to impact the company's topline.

The price of domestic LPG cylinders will not be increased and the number of subsidised refills given to consumers would continue, Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Friday.

“LPG will be provided to the consumers at the same rate at which it is being made available now. No additional burden will be imposed on them. The subsidy and the number of subsidised cylinders that people are getting will be continued by our government,” Pradhan said in Patna.

Ban on iron ore mining and cancellation of coal block allocations besides a general slowdown in the economy had impacted the sales of Volvo trucks, according to VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV) chief executive officer, Vinod Aggarwal.

VECV is a 50:50 joint venture between the Volvo group of Sweden and India’s Eicher Motors Limited. It sells Volvo trucks in India mainly to the mining sector. Its plant in Bangalore has a capacity to assemble 2,000 trucks a year.

Escalating tensions in oil-rich Iraq took the wind out of the sails of Indian stocks and stalled the rupee's rise against the dollar on Friday.

Indian equities and the rupee, which have had a smooth run since a new government took charge at the Centre, posted their steepest single-day fall in about four months, after crude oil prices rose to nine-month highs, following Islamist militants seizing various cities in Iraq. Prices of Brent crude oil were trading at $113 a barrel.

L&T Shipbuilding has delivered its first export commercial vessel from the Kattupalli Shipyard near Chennai.

Halul 42 is the first in a series of six platform supply vessels (PSVs) to be delivered to Qatar-based Halul Offshore Services Company WLL (HOSC).

L&T Finance Holdings, through its subsidiary, has sold all its shares, worth Rs 183.4 crore, in City Union Bank (CUB).

CUB has its head office at Kumbakonam in east-central Tamil Nadu. L&T Vrindavan had 4.55 per cent stake in it, about 24.7 million shares. These were all sold, at Rs 74.25 a share.

It is quite a coincidence that Vishal Sikka took up the top job at Infosys. Sikka, a former executive board member at German software maker SAP AG, is said to have left the company over a power struggle with the management. Infosys, which had been battling succession planning issues for a couple of years now, has also seen high-voltage power struggles with several senior executives quitting the firm within a matter of months. Sikka’s appointment is expected to end such mass exodus in future.

Infosys’ 33rd annual general meeting (AGM) on Saturday seems the last with N R Narayana Murthy, founder of the Bangalore-based company, in the chair. This is also true for the rest of the co-founders, S Gopalakrishnan and S D Shibulal.

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