insurance saving products. The distinguishing feature of unit linked contract is that the investment benefts are defined by the number of units credited to the policyholder at the date of payment and the investment gains are shared out in proportion to the policyholder's share of the fund.

The EFU Managed Growth Fund was established on 24 March 1994 and has grown to this size within a short span of time with the trust of the clients in the performance of the Fund. With an ever increasing client base, the Fund is now expected to grow exponentially.

The Managed Growth Fund is managed by an investment advisory committee of experts. The Company is committed to provide the best return to its policyholders and this is evidenced by the performance of the Fund. Over the last year the Fund's bid price showed a remarkable increase of more than 20%.

EFU Life is the largest private sector life insurance company with 60% share of the individual life market.

PSO TO INTRODUCE NEW 4-STROKE MOTORCYCLE ENGINE OIL

Pakistan State Oil (PSO), the largest oil marketing company in the country, will soon introduce a new 4-stroke motorcycle engine oil, the Castrol Activ 4T.

The Castrol Activ 4T will be premium quality engine oil blended from highly refined base stocks and specially selected advanced additives.

Meeting the highest performance level of API-SG & JASO MA specifications, the new engine oil will offer specially formulated "Active Protection Molecules" that cling to the engine and transmission parts by leaving a protection film that provides a shielding effect even when the engine is turned off.

This will give continuous protection during starting and warm-up when other oils are not fully effective.

Castrol Activ 4T — initially being introduced in 1-liter cans — is fully compatible with the use of unleaded fuel currently in the market.

MINISTER FOR COMMERCE WANTS TEXTILE INDUSTRIALISTS TO BE AMONGST FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES

Mr. Abdul Razak Dawood, Minister for Commerce, Industries & Production addressed Members of the Textile Sector at Aptma House, Karachi on 8th October 2002. The Minister noted with satisfaction the significant investment of over $ 775 made by the Textile Industry during the last two years in upgradation of textile production facilities. The Minister assured the industrialists that the government will continue to support the free trade mechanism and will try to provide all necessary facilitation to the Textile Industry and its exports. The Minister appealed to the textile industrialists to, wholeheartedly support the cleaner cotton program and, in particular, buy cotton newly developed in the provinces of Balochistan and NWFP.

The Minister also advised the textile industrialists to prepare and implement a strategic plan for the Industry so that several large textile manufacturing and exporting companies could emerge and form part of the prestige conglomerate of fortune 500 companies. To achieve this goal, the Minister advised to Aptma Members to professionalise their companies and rapidly move up the value-added change of textile products.

PSO LAUNCHES UPGRADED CARTAGE CONTRACTOR TANK LORRIES

Pakistan State Oil (PSO), the largest oil marketing company in the country, on Tuesday launched its upgraded cartage contractors' tank lorries in general fleet.

Inaugurating the first fleet, the Managing Director of PSO, Mr Tariq Kirmani, said that the success of two Cartage Contractors Conferences, which the company had organized for the first time this year, had established the fact that contractors were also interested in improvement.

He said that dealers and cartage contractors were two very important links in the supply chain of petroleum products without which customer satisfaction was impossible.

"Change is essential in the world," Mr Kirmani told a large number of cartage contractors present at the PSO House auditorium. "And the changes in your tank lorries will benefit your business."

The PSO managing director said the upgraded fleet was a one-time investment for cartage contractors that would ensure quality and quantity of products being provided to PSO customers. "It is an investment that will bring cartage contractors more earnings."

The managing director announced the company will select two drivers for Umra, who fared best in the PSO Defensive Driving Training and adhered to Health, Safety and Environment practices.

The General Manager Logistics, M Z Tamimy, said that upgrading of tank lorries was a gigantic task, which has been achieved due to tremendous cooperation extended by cartage contractors.

The new upgraded tank lorries have been provided with the state-of-the-art vehicle tracking system and pilfer proofing, which enables the contractors and the company to monitor their movement effectively.

The system also provides means of avoiding loss of product in case of accidents through use of better and effective fittings.

The new upgraded vehicles will enhance customer confidence and image of the company and also improve the standard of operations.

The managing director later distributed certificates among five cartage contractors who are the first to offer their fleet for upgrading.

'PRIVATE SECTOR IS READY TO FACILITATE GOVERNMENT IN PROMOTING E-COMMERCE IN PAKISTAN'

"Private sector has made a lot of important and strategic contributions to the e-commerce in Pakistan and will continue to do so. However, these efforts have mostly been within individual capacities and lack proper recognition and government support." Mohammad Sohail, Managing Director of Transaction Processing System (TPS) said at the press conference on the sidelines of the Product Show "Switch Connectivity and Beyond", organised by the TPS.

The show, held between October 2, 2002 and October 3, 2003, was the first of its kind in Pakistan. It demonstrated state-of-the-art solutions from different national companies; all interconnected and working live, in a seamless manner. This was a demonstration of the basic plumbing that is required before e-commerce can permeate in Pakistan. Besides TPS, the representatives of NCR Corporations, Gestetner Pvt. Ltd., InfoTel Pakistan, VectraCom, ZRG International (Pvt.) Ltd. and 2BTechonologies Pvt. Ltd. participated in the show.

"Our intention is not only to educate the financial industry but also send a message to the government and policy makers that the industry is ready to work with the government and the financial industry," Sohail added.

While replying to the a question, Sohail said that though the support from the private sector was overwhelming but the enthusiasm and the commitment of the private sector would have been doubled if the government also showed their presence in the show.

On the relationship between the government and the private sector, Sohail said that government is the facilitator and the private sector is the enabler. Once these roles are understood and applied positively the synergy arrives and causes a significant impact on the economy. "Private sector can bring the necessary technical, intellectual and financial resources to build, promote and use the required infrastructure. We are very fortunate that we have the required technical skills within Pakistan that are capable of building and deploying even the most complex electronic trading infrastructure. It is only a matter of mobilising these skills and combining their individual skills to give a collective synergy. The support of the government to local private sector has to be in letter and spirit."

Sohail expressed confidence that the private sector can facilitate promotion of e-commerce by synchronising its efforts with the government to ensure e-commerce readiness in its solution range as per standards jointly defined by the government and the industry.

Transaction Processing Systems (TPS) are experts in switching and transaction processing technologies. It deployed the first online ATM Shared Switch in Pakistan based on its technologies that are jointly owned by ABN Amro, Askari Bank and Habib Bank Limited. TPS developed and introduced the first web-based online ATM network-monitoring tool in Pakistan.

TERADATA ANNOUNCES AN INDUSTRY FIRST: DATA WAREHOUSING FOR ALL

Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), announced Teradata(®) Warehouse 7.0, a suite of software with close to 150 technical enhancements that puts active data warehousing in the hands of all decision-makers, whether they be chief executives or call-center representatives. It marks the first time in the history of data warehousing that any company can extend decision-making beyond corporate management to all functions across the organization, optimizing operational and strategic decisions.

"Teradata Warehouse 7.0 is the most aggressive release of new performance and functionality features in the history of Teradata," said Stephen Brobst, Teradata chief technology officer. "Customers will benefit from enhanced performance and functionality for delivering data warehouse solutions that demand extreme service levels in the areas of performance, scalability, data freshness and availability."

"The technical advancements took two years to develop in order to assure that we delivered ease-of-use to end-users and database administrators," said Alan Chow, senior vice president, Teradata research and development. "Teradata Warehouse 7.0 significantly extends active data warehousing capabilities and extends our lead over competitive products in the marketplace."

Teradata Warehouse 7.0 is the first and only data warehouse solution to simplify complex data warehouse architectures by consolidating all decision-support databases into one central, enterprise data warehouse. The consolidation of data marts, operational data stores (ODS), and analytic servers running applications like data mining makes it practical to integrate historical and current operational data within the same enterprise data warehouse. Front-line employees are able to make better decisions because this consolidation of data provides a holistic and insightful view of the customer from which to take action.

In addition, cost-conscious corporations recognize that the consolidation of all the company's data (both current and historical) into one central enterprise data warehouse eliminates the expense and headache of administering redundant databases.

"For nearly 20 years, Teradata has always advocated and implemented integrated, centralized data warehouses, to the significant business benefit of our customers," said Vickie Farrell, vice president, Teradata warehouse marketing. "Organizations that instead took the federated data-mart approach to data warehousing have ended up with a proliferation of data marts, an expensive problem they are now struggling to fix."

According to Farrell, many companies are just now beginning to implement operational data stores. With Teradata Warehouse 7.0, they can avoid making the same costly mistake. As experience has proven with data marts, integrating the operational data store with the data warehouse is not only more cost-effective, but it enables a whole new set of tactical business-intelligence applications that have huge top- and bottom-line potential.

The struggle for many companies has been to improve the productivity of operations people who every day make on-the-spot decisions that have an enormous cumulative impact on everything from customer recruitment and retention to fraud detection and inventory management. Even a marginal improvement in the quality of their decisions can mean millions of dollars in cost savings, not to mention gaining a competitive advantage.

Teradata Warehouse 7.0 customer-driven enhancements focus on key areas that improve system availability, allow access by tens of thousands of concurrent users, keep data fresh, process mixed workloads using historical and current data and optimize the way the system handles queries. Without these capabilities, individuals who are charged with making minute-by-minute decisions can't do their jobs as effectively. They require fast, consistent and predictable response time to their queries.

74TH MEETING OF WORKERS WELFARE FUND

Mr. Iftikhar Ali Malik, President-FPCCI nominated Sheikh Javaid, Life Member-FPCCI and Chairman of Export Processing Free Zone Committee to attend the 74th meeting of Workers Welfare Fund held on 5th October 2002 at Lahore under the aegis of Ministry of Labour,