Source: Business Standard, May 26, 2011
Ethiopia: To help consolidate India as a major global power, the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government will unveil a new policy to promote Indian companies in international markets. The new policy will be introduced by the end of this year, government sources told Business Standard on the sidelines of the second Africa-India Forum Summit.
Source: Business Standard, May 25, 2011
Addis Ababa: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh unveiled a new India aid package for African nations here on Tuesday, of $6 billion, and a comprehensive range of initiatives covering various social and economic sectors.
At the plenary session of the second Africa-India Forum Summit, there were representatives from 15 African nations sitting with him. The PM offered a $5 bn line of credit (LOC) for the next three years, an additional $700 million to establish new institutions and training programmes, and $300 mn to support the development of a new Ethiopia-Djibouti rail line. This last bit is part of a thinking to strengthen our presence in African infrastructure, now dominated by China.
Source: The Economic Times, Dec 13, 2010
NEW DELHI: It was the fresh-faced, new occupant of 10, Downing Street, that set the ball rolling. Among David Cameron’s first decisions as British PM was an announcement that he would take charge of UK- India relations and promptly set off with a planeload of businessmen and cabinet ministers on a discovery of India. It was a canny move.
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Source:(AFP)July 28,2010
NEW DELHI — Myanmar’s military ruler Than Shwe flew to Hyderabad Wednesday on the latest leg of a controversial state visit toIndia that has garnered millions of dollars in grants for infrastructure projects.
The general left New Delhi having received a full, red-carpet welcome Tuesday and held talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Human rights groups have severely criticised India for bestowing a formal state visit on Than Shwe, arguing that it helps legitimise a military regime that has been widely condemned for systematic rights abuses. Read the rest of this entry »
India and Canada have signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement and strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Stephen Harper hailed the signature of the nuclear agreement after their one-on-one and delegation level talks that will provide for cooperation in civil nuclear energy, including import of uranium and equipment from Canada.
Department of Atomic Energy Secretary Srikumar Banerjee and Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon signed the civil nuclear agreement in the presence of the two prime ministers.
The deal also envisages cooperation in fields of nuclear waste management and radiation safety.
The agreement assumes significance in the context of Canada’s strong attitude in the past when it slapped sanctions against India after the Pokhran I and II tests in 1974 and 1998.
A joint statement issued at the end of the meeting said the two prime ministers committed themselves to the ratification of the agreement and completion of all remaining steps necessary to ensure its early implementation.
They underscored the potential for mutually beneficial civil nuclear cooperation and trade.
At a joint interaction with the media in the company of Harper, Dr Singh said that civil nuclear cooperation agreement, which the two countries have signed, “breaks new grounds” in the history of bilateral cooperation in the sector.
“It reflects the change in International realities and will open new doors for mutually beneficial cooperation in nuclear technology,” he said.
“We have identified renewable energy, clean technologies, and energy efficiency as other priority areas of cooperation. The newly-constituted Canada-India Energy Forum has already begun its work and has our full support. We have also decided to focus on mining and agriculture as the other priority areas of cooperation,” he said.
Source : Rediff. 28/06/10
NEW DELHI: The government has barred its officers and staff from using the infrastructure or facilities of the state-owned companies and asked administrative ministries to repatriate PSU staff working with them.
The measures are aimed at providing greater autonomy to the state-owned companies by keeping administrative ministries at a professional distance.
“There are other issues related to corporate governance norms,” said a senior official with the ministry of heavy industry.
“We’re looking to ensure that there is no overlapping of functional and financial roles between the ministry and companies,” he said, requesting anonymity.
Several PSU officials are currently working in key ministries such as power, oil, steel, chemicals and heavy industry.
The government has also received complaints that governance norms have been violated in cases where PSU employees are working with the administrative ministries in advisory roles.
“The concerned individual may have the domain knowledge, however, he may also influence some key decisions in favour of his company,” the official said.
The government is of view that it is important to separate the functions of the ministry and its public undertakings, given the government’s disinvestment programme. “No PSU official should be involved in such decision making process barring the chairman and his appointed staff,” the official said.
The department of public enterprises, the nodal agency for all state-owned companies, has also come out with guidelines restricting officials of the administrative ministry from participating in retail issues.
“The same is applicable to PSU employees who are involved in the decision making process,” said an official from the nodal agency.
Some administrative ministries, however, feel that this exercise may lead to delays in decision making on key matters.
“The officials on deputation are professionals and expected to focus on their mandate without any bias. Also, there are enough checks and balances within the system,” said an official with heavy industry ministry.
The government is further looking to curtail the role of administrative ministries both in functional and financial matters. Four PSUs — NTPC, SAIL, ONGC and IOC — have been approved for the new maharatna category. “As of now only NTPC enjoys this status, the rest of the PSUs have to appoint non-official directors to get maharatna powers,” said the DPE official.
Source : Business Standard. 28/05/10
New Delhi: Giving Indo-US economic relations a fillip, the visiting US Treasury Secretary, Mr Timothy F. Geithner, and the Union Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, launched the India-US Economic and Financial Partnership in the Capital on Tuesday.
The US is mainly interested in India’s financial sector reforms, which it wants hastened; its exit strategy from the economic stimulus of 2008 and 2009; and, above all, Indian cooperation in G-20 on China’s exchange rate which it regards as being grossly undervalued.
Mr Geithner said that India and the US are working together to build on the basic cooperation that was in evidence during the height of the financial crisis.
“Our ability to cooperate on economic and financial issues will be critically important to the success of global efforts to create conditions for a more stable global financial system, more balanced global economic growth and a more open global trading system,” he said at a press conference after the launch. “We are working together to make sure we strengthen the IMF/World Bank to make them more representative” , he added.
Mr Geithner said that Mr Mukherjee had conveyed the “specific reforms” being undertaken in India. “I also walked them through the reform agenda of the US and the legislation issues,” he said. He sidestepped a query on the Chinese currency yuan.
Source : The Hindu Business news. 07/04/10
New Delhi: A new express train called ‘Peace Express’ between Kashmir and Kanyakumari is likley to be announced in the Railway budget, which Mamata Banerjee said would be dedicated to the common man.
“It is dedicated to janata as common man is our asset and strength,” the Railway Minister told reporters as she gave finishing touches to the Budget 2010-11 she would present in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
Refusing to say anything on the budget proposals, she said “wait for tomorrow to know everything.”
Besides the Peace Express, a “Culture Express” is also slated to be announced as railways’ tourism package to cover India’s important heritage sites.
Expansion of Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) connecting Mumbai with Kolkata and Chennai with Mangalore are also expected to be announced in the budget.
Currently Eastern DFC is linking Delhi with Kolkata and Western DFC is connecting Delhi with Mumbai.
Railways are likely to include Kharagpur station in the list of world class railway station project. It had already announced 50 stations including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Sealdah, Banglaore, Lucknow and Bhubaneswar to be upgraded as world class station.
Besides a slew of projects for West Bengal, Mamata is likely to announce some big projects for Uttar Pradesh, sources said.
Source : Press Trust Of India .24/02/10
NEW DELHI: Will the Union Budget continue with the policy of reducing women’s needs to a chapter of complicated arithmetic? Or will it go a step forward and announce measures which would widen the reach of allocation targeted at women?.
Women’s groups analysing the impact of the gender budgeting exercise initiated by the UPA government more than five years back feel that while the pioneering initiative has done its bit in sensitising people to women’s needs, much more needs to be done in terms of increasing allocation and devising better schemes.
The National Common Minimum programme of the UPA made a committment towards gender budgeting which found reflection in former finance minister P Chidambaram’s speech in this government’s first budget in 2004-05. “Women’s groups have met me and urged me to consider gender budgeting. This means that the budget data should be presented in a manner that the gender sensitivities of the budgetary allocations are clearly highlighted,” he said.
The promise was fulfilled in the next year’s budget when the government introduced along with the Budget documents a separate statement highlighting the gender sensitivities of the budgetary allocations under 10 demands for grants. The exercise has been repeated in subsequent budgets.
Appreciating the government’s efforts, Kanta Singh from Women Power Connect, a coalition of women’s groups, academic institutions and women leaders which holds dialogues with policymakers on women’s issues, pointed out that the gender budgeting exercise had indeed sensitised the government to women’s needs. “It has underlined the fact that women have separate needs than men,” she said.
However, the government is still a long way from meeting the target of allocating 30% of resources to measures targetting women as promised in the Ninth five year Plan (it is estimated at a little over 5%). To top that, allocation for women specific programmes have almost remained static as a portion of the total government expenditure (at 5.5%) over the last two years.
“The concept is too new to have made much of an impact,” Ms Singh said, adding that a lot more needs to done.
Women groups now want the government to take gender budgeting to its next level now. “Since food security impacts on women disproportionately and National Family Health Survey data shows that anemia levels among women are going up, it is extremely important that the National Food Securities Act with adequate allocations and gender responsive provisions to see the light of the day. This would have a far reaching impact on ‘aam aurat,” says Yamini Mishra, director, Centre for Budget Analysis.
Source : Business Standard. 19/02/10
Budapest: India has mounted a big diplomatic and economic push to strengthen bilateral ties with Hungary with an eye on further improving its ties with the European Union, its largest trading partner. Hungary is set to assume the presidency of the European Union in 2011.
“Hungary’s membership to EU (in 2004) has added a significant dimension to our overall relationship. We also look forward to Hungary’s Presidency of the EU in 2011 and would be happy to learn of any initiatives that Hungary proposes to take, particularly in the economic area,” Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said at the India-Hungary Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation in Budapest on Tuesday.
Mr Sharma is leading a 23-member high-level business delegation of industry body Ficci to Hungary to boost bilateral cooperation.
The members of the delegation include, Phiroz Adi Vandrevala of TCS, Pramod Bhasin of Genpact, Anil K Mani of Apollo Hospitals Group, Harin Mehta of Sun Pharma. Some of these companies already have a presence in Hungary while other are looking at opportunities for collaborations.
Hungary has been an important trading partner of India with two-way trade growing five folds between 2005 and 2008 to reach $700 million mark, though it dropped 15% in 2009 due to the global demand slowdown. Both countries are exploring options to boost the bilateral trade to $1 billion by 2012.
During the interaction, business leaders from the two sides explored areas of cooperation to increase trade and investment in sectors like auto component, port equipment, health, education, electrical machinery besides chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
“Hungary is promoting greater use of generic drugs. India has a large competitive advantage in pharma sector,” said Sharma.
On the exploration side, ONGC and Hungarian oil company MOL have already entered into an agreement to explore for oil in India. MOL has taken 35 per cent stake in the joint venture with ONGC for exploration activities in Himachal Pradesh. Drilling is expected to start in March, said an MOL official. In addition, India and Hungary would soon operationalise a two million euro per annum Science and Technology Fund to promote joint research projects.
“We expect that the initiative will bring together research institutes of both the countries to collaborate on development R&D activities in high technology areas,” Mr Sharma said.
Mr Sharma also met Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Dajnai and the country’s finance minister and discussed bilateral issues, including steps to enhance the economic engagements.
Meanwhile, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) signed two memorandums of understanding to promote bilateral trade and investment with ITD of Hungary and another with Hungarian Chambers of Commerce and Industry to advance international commercial arbitration on any disputes arising on contracts reached between companies in the two countries.
Indian industry has raised issues such as visa to business people, refund of social security tax paid by the IT professionals.
“The business delegation closely interacted with their counterparts in Hungary and zero in on strategies to raise level of bilateral trade to $1 billion by 2012,” said KK Modi, head of the Indian business delegation to Hungary.
Source : The Economic Times. 03/02/10
