In the hope to cut costs, automobile major Chrysler LLC plans to pep up its finances by making partnerships with Tata Motors.

The source close to the company say, “Chrysler LLC is scrambling to slash costs and line up partnerships with foreign auto makers to shore up its finances amid a painful downturn in sales and a deteriorating outlook for the company.”

The reports are also that Chrysler had discussions with Tata Motors about sell and possibly assemble jeeps in India. The company might also have had talks about leasing one of its US plants to produce cars for Italy's Fiat SpA.

Oil PSUs hiked the prices of jet fuels by 3% on Thursdat, and consequently the domestic airlines Jet and Kingfisher-Deccan decided to increase their basic fares from Friday. The hike in the air fare has been on constant increase from past some time now, due to basic reason of rise in the crude oil prices.

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), a well known Global automobile giant, will soon be introducing its newly designed compact car in the Indian market, for which it laid the foundation stone for a Rs 14,00 crore new factory near Bangalore on Thursday. The top company officials reported that the compact new car is expected to hit the Indian roads by the mid-2010 and is currently being developed by Toyota engineers with inputs from Indian engineers.

The Karnataka Chief Minister, B S Yeddyurappa laid the foundation stone at Bidadi, in the presence of Akira Okabe, Senior Managing Director, TMC, Ryoichi Sasaki, Chairman, Vikram Kirloskar, Vice Chairman and Hiroshi Nakagawa, managing director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd.

India’s giant car maker Maruti Suzuki India has posted marginal growth of 1.09% in its monthly sales of vehicles for July 2008.

Maruti sold 58,543 vehicles in July 2008, as compared to 57,909 vehicles sold during the corresponding period of the last year (July 2007).

In July 2008, the A3 segment, where Maruti Suzuki achieved leadership position during the last year, continued to show healthier growth, the A2 segment sales held ground regardless of the adverse macro economic situation.

Two of the largest private banks, HDFC and ICICI, hiked interest rates from August 1.

The rate of interest for fixed deposits has been increased by 75 to 100 basis points. Floating reference rates (FRR) for consumer’s loans were also hiked by 75 basis points. The new FCC will be 14.25 percent. ICICI has stated in a press release that existing customers will not be covered under new interest rates.

The nation’s largest fuel retailer, Indian Oil Corp (IOC), reported a 71% dip in its net profit in the first quarter on Wednesday. The reason behind the drop was the poor good refinery margins, which could not make up for the revenue loss on fuel sales.

The chairman of IOC, Sarthak Behuria reported, that net profit in April-June was up to Rs 415.13 crore from Rs 1,468.41 crore in the year ago period.

For the processing every barrel of crude oil, the company earned $16.81, up from $10.70 per barrel last year. However, it was not good enough to make up for the Rs 413 crore losses it incurred per day on sale of petrol, diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene.