To compete with local and foreign heavy vehicle rivals, Ashok Leyland, India's second giant heavy vehicle manufacturer announced that it is working on developing an all-new full range truck platform for global markets.

The proposed new truck platform named Unitruck, will not only meet all safety and emission norms for developed markets, but it will also create variants to meet different geographies, road and load conditions, different applications and legislative requirement.

The Reserve bank of India is expected to announce new monetary policy on Thursday. It can take various fiscal measures to curb inflation rate. Though international prices of crude oil are decreasing, the rate of inflation is not showing positive signs. The inflation rate in India is 11.89 percent at present, which is far away from the RBI’s forecast of 5-5.5 percent by the end of the year.

Reliance Infrastructure, led by Anil Ambani will soon enter in a joint venture with Chinese firm Shanghai Electric Corporation to build an Rs 12,000-crore power equipment plant.

The JV is expected to be completed by 2010 and will have an initial capacity of 10,000mw. The project undertaken by the two companies is expected to be bigger than state-run Bharat Heavy Engineering (Bhel) in terms of capacity.

For the proposed plant, this 50:50 JV will raise around Rs 9,500 crore as debt. The majority of fund will be provided by the foreign banks.

India’s largest banking institution State Bank of India (SBI) registered a steady growth in its standalone net profit for the three month period ended June 30, 2008.

The performance of the bank got a fillip on write-back of bad loans and from strong interest income.
 
During the quarter, the bank has posted an increase of 15.08% in its profit, which stood at Rs 16,407.90 million, as against Rs 14,258.10 million during the corresponding period quarter of the previous year.

A poll of analysts had estimated earnings of Rs 15,961.50 million in June 2008 quarter.

To strengthen its oldest popular model Maruti 800 (M800), India’s giant car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki is proposing to roll out ‘Maruti 800 Uniq’ in the Indian market.

The new Maruti 800 `Uniq` is an advanced version, which comes equipped with a range of new features including body graphics, all new beige upholstery, trendy door trims with fabric patch, smart lower console box, rear package tray, stylish dome decal to draw young consumers.

Philips Carbon Black Ltd (PCBL), a subsidiary of $3.5 billion RPG Group of companies, has announced that it is proposing to invest Rs 160 crore to expand the capacity of its Kochi plant in Kerala.

Under the expansion plan, the annual production capacity of the plant will be increased from 40,000 to 90,000 tonnes, out of which 50,000 tonnes of soft carbon would be produced to tackle its high demand of black carbon.