India-France to jointly build, run space-based ship tracking system

Source: The Hindu Business Line, Aug 25, 2019

Mumbai: The world’s first space-based automatic identification system (AIS) to track merchant ships on a real-time basis will be built and operated jointly by India and France, the French space agency (Centre national d’études spatiales or the National Centre for Space Studies — CNES) has said.

CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall and K Sivan, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), signed an agreement recently to start development and production of a constellation of satellites on which studies have been underway for more than a year.

The pact between the two space agencies  was signed during  Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to France.

Finance ministry reviewing India’s free trade agreements

Source: The Economic Times, Aug 21, 2019

NEW DELHI: The finance ministry has initiated a review of India’s free trade agreement framework to assess the impact of such pacts on the overall economy. The view has been gaining ground among policymakers and industry that these free trade agreements (FTAs) brought little tangible benefit to India, while helping the partner country.

There is also a sense that FTAs have adversely impacted India’s manufacturing, which the government is trying to boost through ‘Make in India’.

July M&A value dips 52.7 per cent to USD 4.3 billion amid global trade tensions: Report

Source: The Economic Times, Aug 18, 2019

Corporate India announced merger and acquisition deals worth USD 4.3 billion in July, down by 52.74 per cent compared to the year-ago period amid a subdued global growth and rising geo-political tensions, a report said on Monday.

According to Grant Thornton’s monthly M&A Dealtracker, as many as 39 deals worth USD 4.3 billion were reported in July against 49 transactions worth USD 9.1 billion in the year-ago period.

“Subdued global growth, the continued Brexit-related uncertainty and the rising geopolitical tensions roiling energy prices, affected the overall deal sentiment,” the report noted.

Signs 10 MoUs, PM Modi holds talks with Bhutan’s PM

Source: IBEF.org, Aug 19, 2019

The two countries signed 10 Memoranda of Understandings (MoUs) to infuse new vitality in their ties.

Indian Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi is here on his second visit to Bhutan and the first since his re-election in May 2019. He introduced the Mangdechhu hydroelectric power plant and propelled stamps to remember five decades of India-Bhutan Hydropower cooperation.

Modi also propelled the RuPay Card in Bhutan by making a purchase at Simtokha Dzong, worked in 1629 by Shabdrung Namgyal. This spot functions as a religious and regulatory focus and is one of the oldest dzongs in Bhutan.

Reliance-Microsoft cloud tie-up could spell doom for Amazon, Google in India

Source: LiveMint.com, Aug 13, 2019

Mumbai/Colombo: Reliance Industries Ltd on Monday announced a partnership with Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, in a move that deepens the offerings of its Jio telecoms unit while posing a direct challenge to rival cloud services providers such as Amazon.com and Alphabet’s Google.

As part of the 10-year alliance, Jio will build data centres across India that will be hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani told shareholders at the company annual shareholders’ meeting.

“We now have the capability to develop truly India-native solutions, including speech recognition and natural language understanding for all major Indian languages and dialects,” said Ambani, Asia’s richest man with a net worth of $46.2 billion according to Forbes.

Pakistan formally suspends trade with India

Source: The Economic Times, Aug 10, 2019

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has formally suspended its trade relations with India, in retaliation against New Delhi’s decision to revoke Article 370 that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the media reported on Saturday.

The federal cabinet headed by Prime Minister Imran Khan endorsed the decisions taken by the National Security Committee and the joint session of parliament, which include suspension of trade ties with India, reports Dawn news.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information Firdous Ashiq Awan, replying to a question at a media briefing, said that Pakistan had also suspended import of Indian goods under the Pakistan-Afghanistan transit treaty.

India, Israel explore new areas of cooperation to boost financial ties

Source: The Economic Times, Aug 06, 2019

NEW DELHI: Israel and India are exploring to open new vistas of partnership in the world of finance, including collaboration between market regulators and allowing Israeli investment in corporate bonds, taking advantage of a favourable climate in both countries.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and its Israeli counterpart are exploring partnerships and the two sides are also focusing on cyber security collaboration to safeguard their financial markets, Israel’s ambassador to India Ron Malka told ET in an interview, ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed visit to India next month.