Oil production increase
Opec heavyweight Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers are likely to increase production if the price of US Benchmark crude WTI stays at or above $25 a barrel, a senior Opec delegate said on Wednesday. "The general trend among Saudi Arabia and other producers is that if prices stay high at $25 or above for (West Texas Intermediate) and there is a growth in demand and inventories are down, then the tendency would be an increase in production," he said. On Tuesday, WTI crude in the US spot market traded at around $24.90. But the delegate said the producers would not rush to ease supply restraints unless WTI was at $25 or more on a sustained basis, reflecting supply-demand fundamentals and not the result of speculation.

Gem, jewellery exports up
The country's gem and jewellery exports rose 21 per cent to $3.50 billion in the first-half of 1999-2000 (April-March) from $2.89 billion in the year-ago period, the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council said In Mumbai. "With an increased demand for Indian goods in the United States, coupled with the festive season being round the corner, some revival in the South-East Asian markets and the bottoming out of the downward trend in Japan, we can look forward to further increases in our growth rate," chairman of the trade body Praveen Shankar Pandya told a news conference. The gem and jewellery exports include cut and polished diamonds, gold jewellery and coloured gemstones. The council is an apex body of the Indian exporters. Export of cut and polished diamonds rose 22 per cent to $2.89 billion in the first half of 1999-2000 from $2.36 billion in the year-ago period. Gold jewellery exports were up 12 per cent to $438.4 million in the first-half from $391.3 million in the same period of last year, the Councilsaid. Gem and jewellery constitutes about 20 per cent of export.

Plea to hike duty on palm oil
The Karnataka Government has urged the union government to increase the duty on import of palm oil to save the local farmers. Talking to newsmen in Bangalore, minister of state for horticulture Allama Veerabhadrappa said the import duty had been reduced to 15 per cent from 65 per cent over the years. He said the government was planning to bring in legislation making it compulsory for processing units to buy palm fruits from the growers. A meeting would be held on Thursday with Oswal Oil Mill owners on resuming the work. The minister said the government was considering a proposal to constitute farmers bazaars as had been done in Andhra Pradesh. The farmers could come directly to such bazaars and sell their produce. The government has identified some places for the purpose.

No hike in onion support price
The Karnataka government on Wednesday indicated that it might not increase the support price for onion even as the farmers continued their protests demanding remunerative price for their produce. Karnataka agriculture minister TB Jayachandra, who met union agriculture minister Nitish Kumar in Delhi on Tuesday, told newsmen in Bangalore that cost of production had been taken into consideration while fixing Rs three per kg. He claimed that the market intervention scheme announced by the government had helped to stabilise prices. He said Karnataka along with Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra had succeeded in convincing the centre on the need for lifting the ban on export on onions. To a question, he said the cabinet sub-committee constituted to go into the crop insurance scheme would also study the possibility of compensating the onion crop loss in Dharwad district. As per the rules, Rs 500 could be paid per hectare.