Hindustan Motors have launched a mini-truck co-branded with Chinese auto company Shandong Shefing. Christened HM-Shifeng Winner, the vehicle will roll out of HM's Uttarpara plant.

With retail finance becoming a serious problem in the last three months, Ambassador sales had nearly halved between July and October as compared to the same quarter in 2007. The mother unit at Uttarpara has an annual capacity of 24,000 units.

Hindustan Motors Managing Director R. Santhanam said, "With the new car 'HM-Shifeng-Winner' we hope to utilise some of the excess capacity."

Bombay Bullion Association has declared that India's gold imports fell 26-35 percent in November as high prices ruled out any chance of reviving the sagging demand during the wedding season.

Suresh Hundia, president of the Bombay Bullion Association said, gold imports by India, the world's biggest consumer of the metal, were around 35-40 tonnes in November, compared with 54 tonnes in the same month a year earlier.

Amid a cautious start, Indian equities continued to trade positively but on a flat note.

Global signals are fairly positive and there are expectations that the government will shortly declare a strong stimulus package to boost up the financial system.

Realty, consumer goods and banking stocks went up, whereas consumer durables and metal stocks turned down.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap index gained 0.65% and 0.61% respectively.

Jet Airways, owing to the accumulated losses and the current slowdown in the economy, has announced a slew of cost-cutting measures, including a 5-25 per cent cut in salaries of its employees who are earning above Rs 75,000 per month. The airline said in a media statement that for the pilots, this will be in the form of a combination of wage cut and allowance rationalisation, which will bring the contribution of pilots in line with the company's other employees.

Tata Motors commercial vehicles plant at Pune shall be shut down for 3 days again this month, owing to poor demand in the market. Demand for commercial vehicles has been severely hit by lack of vehicle financing, rising interest rates and higher input costs.

According to Sujeet Patil, leader, Tata Motors Employees Union, it was likely that the commercial vehicles plant would go in for block closure for another three days towards the end of December.

To celebrate the success and to mark the ten years of commencement of construction of Delhi metro, a museum tracing its history will soon be set up on one of its station premises, showcasing the origin and memorable moments during the construction of one of the most ambitious Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) of modern India.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) spokesperson Anuj Dayal said, "The metro museum will house photographs, newspaper archives, models of the trains, curios, books and audio-visual films explaining the history of Delhi Metro."