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A government-industry task force headed by Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma will meet soon in New Delhi to discuss fall in industrial output and suggest measures to reverse it. Sharma, who also holds the textiles portfolio, recently met Finance Minister P Chidambaram and discussed the macro-economic situation, especially the drop in industrial output.

The Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) national IT committee has tied up with the central government for use of cloud computing among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country.

Tea production in the organised sector in declining in India due to ageing bushes and little investment and the country may have lost 50 million kg of tea in the past 10 years. At the same time, it is rising in small holdings which account for nearly 28 percent of the total tea cultivation area and 26 percent of the country's total production.

The long dry spell during the monsoon season may see apple production in Himachal Pradesh falling by 20 percent from the projected 25 million boxes of 20kg each, but this will still be higher than last year's production of 14 million boxes.

India's total tea production in January-May 2012 stood at 215.82 million kgs, which is 11.41 percent less than the same period last year. The total tea production of the country, the second largest tea producer of the world, in 2011 was 243.62 million kgs.