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Indian Express, September 20, 2017 Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) has become eighth company to be conferred with the ‘Maharatna’ status by the government, according to the company statement. It will enhance BPCL’s financial autonomy and additional authorities with respect to manpower restructuring, it added. The company recorded an all-time high net profit of Rs 8,039.30 crore in 2016-17, and its market capitalisation crossed Rs 1 lakh crore during the year. Link :  http://indianexpress.com/article/business/bpcl-gets-maharatna-status-4851833/

Economic Times, September 20, 2017, Kaavya Chandrasekaran. A reverse auction of 500 MW of solar projects held by the Gujarat government on Tuesday saw the lowest winning bid at Rs 2.65 per kwH. This was the first solar auction held after the two conducted by Solar Corporation of India in May, when one of the winning bidders had promised to sell power at a record low of Rs 2.44 per kwH.  The auctions in May were held for projects at the Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur district, where solar radiation is the highest in the country. It was expected that winning bids at the latest auction conducted by Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd, as the state’s nodal power company is called, would be a shade higher.  This is because Gujarat has less intense solar radiation than Rajasthan, and the developers will not be provided land in solar parks — they will have to acquire land on their own. Further, in the four months since the last auction, the cost of solar modules ...

Financial Express, September 20, 2017 Private equity firm Madison India Capital today said it has raised $30 million (Rs 1,480 crore) from its fourth fund. The firm has also inducted Shailesh Mehta as Operating Partner. Mehta serves on several boards of companies including Safari Industries and Manappuram Finance, Madison said. Mehta was formerly the CEO of Providian, one of the top ten credit card issuers at its peak in the United States. He had also served on the boards of PayPal and Mastercard. “Madison India Capital has closed on approximately $230 million for its fourth fund – Madison India Opportunities IV,” the private equity firm said. Madison has been an active investor in India and has also made investments in Korea as well as Singapore. The fund is backed by global institutional investors including the US financial institutions, banks and pension funds. Link :  http://www.financialexpress.com/industry/madison-india-capital-raises-rs-1480-crore/862472/ ...

Financial Express, September 20, 2017 Chinese logistics firm Best Inc priced its U.S. initial public offering at the bottom of expectations, raising $450 million after it revised terms of the deal to cope with tepid investor demand. Up to $932 million had originally been expected for the listing, underscoring how some fast-growing companies may have to temper their expected valuations to lure investors burned by recent underperforming IPOs. The offering was the biggest by a Chinese firm in the United States since rival express delivery firm ZTO Express Inc raised $1.4 billion in October. ZTO’s stock has traded below its IPO price since debuting and is down 22 percent from the listing price. Best, which is backed by Alibaba Group, priced 45 million American depository shares (ADS) at $10 each, the bottom of a $10 to $11 indicative range, Thomson Reuters publication IFR said on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal. Best declined to comment on the IPO pricing when c...

September 19, 2017 Dinesh C Sharma As the debate continues on connection of climate change with growing intensity of hurricanes like Harvey and Irma, climate change is already becoming a ground reality for scores of farmers in the hill state of Mizoram. Changing rainfall pattern and rising temperatures are forcing them to move away from traditional farming and to grow exotic crops that are heat-resistant and can survive erratic rains. This year has been particularly bad. There has not been a single day when it has not rained. “Farmers are completely confused. They don’t know whether it was early monsoon or it is ‘everyday monsoon’. All important dates on the agriculture calendar have been missed,” pointed out Dr James Lalnunzira Hrahsel, a scientist with the Mizoram State Climate Change Cell. Data of the past thirty years shows a rise in average temperature of Aizawl in the month of January. The lowest maximum was 18.7 degree in 1992 while the highest was 28.2 degree in...

September 19, 2017 Dr. T. V. Venkateswaran and Jyoti Singh Cancer of the uterine cervix, also known as cervical cancer, is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women in India. Almost one lakh women fall victim to the insidious disease every year in the country. Researchers at the New Delhi-based National Institute of Immunology (NII) are in the process of fine tuning a solution that promises to add a highly potent weapon to the armoury against this type of cancer. They have extracted and identified a tumour antigen which seems to hold a lot of promise. The antigen has been named SPAG9. “The tumor antigen, which is expressed in reproductive tract cancers and a variety of malignancies, has proved successful in phase I trials. This means it has been proved to be safe on human subjects. Phase II clinical trials are presently underway to gauge its efficacy. We hope to get positive results by next year,” said Dr Anil Kumar Suri, NII director, in an interview. T...

September 19, 2017 Business Line Infosys Foundation has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Visakha Jilla Nava Nirman Samithi (VJNNS) to construct 100 gravity fed water supply systems in the tribal villages of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The endowment of Rs 5.92 crore will be used to promote good sanitation practices and create efficient water management systems in all the villages. VJNNS, an NGO in AP, aims at making potable drinking water available to remote tribal villages in the districts of Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam. Through this partnership, Infosys Foundation intends to provide an impetus to VJNNS’s objective of constructing a gravity fed water supply system that will help 100 tribal villages and 40,000 beneficiaries using pipelines. This will not only help enhance health but also aid in reducing water-borne diseases. Speaking about the MoU, Sudha Murty, Chairperson of Infosys Foundation, said, “Drinking water supply and sanitation in India ...

September 19, 2017 PTI India today sought investigations into North Korea’s nuclear proliferation linkages and asked to hold accountable those responsible for it, in a veiled reference to Pakistan. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s remarks came days after North Korea fired another mid-range ballistic missile over Japan on Friday. It follows North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3 which was in direct defiance of United Nations sanctions and other international pressure. “External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj deplored North Korea’s recent actions and stated that its proliferation linkages must be explored and those involved must be held accountable,” the ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar told reporters at a news conference here. Swaraj’s assertion in this regard came during her trilateral meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono yesterday on the sidelines of the ongoing United Natio...

September 18, 2017 Patrick Tucker U.S. airmen are rapidly developing and remixing new technologies and techniques in the fight against ISIS, but sometimes you can’t beat the tried and true. ISIS doesn’t have an Air Force, but the Syrian skies are nevertheless a rapidly evolving “laboratory” for air warfare, said U.S. military leaders, who described how the U.S. is fusing cyber attacks with real bombs and using open-source intelligence to find and strike targets. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, who leads U.S. Air Forces Central Command, described a “dynamic targeting tool” that lets analysts and airmen at al Udeid Air Base in Qatar send the latest targeting information to airborne pilots and ground-based commanders alike. “The tool pulls together everything from the intelligence background to show me all the data on that target. Where did that target generate, how many times have we looked at it? And how do we communicate that, ultimately.” As described, the targeting to...

September 18, 2017 Rajalakshmi Nirmal Trading volumes on the agri commodity exchanges have been thinning. In the first eight months of 2017, total turnover at NCDEX, the country’s largest agri futures exchange, was ₹3.43 lakh crore, down from ₹5 lakh crore for the same period last year. In fact, turnovers at the agri exchanges have been shrinking since 2012. Volumes today are just about a third of what they were five years ago. Turnover at NCDEX and MCX agri basket together was ₹21.2 lakh crore in 2012. In 2016, this was just ₹7.8 lakh crore. There are many reasons why agri futures have lost their sheen. One, regulatory uncertainty, with the government suspending agri contracts every now and then, has turned away traders. Trading in tur, urad, rice and wheat was suspended in 2007, and has not been allowed since then. Chana contract was suspended in May 2008 and re-launched in November 2008. In June 2016, the contract was again suspended, and re-launched in J...

September 19, 2017 Business Line The total food crops output during the current kharif season will exceed last season’s record production, the government said here on Tuesday. The cumulative output of foodgrains and oilseeds during kharif 2017 is projected to be 162.40 million tonnes (mt), against 160.92 mt in the previous season, the government told a national conference on agriculture where State officials were present. “The production during the current kharif season is expected to be match last year’s record output,” Union Agriculture Secretary Shobhana K Pattanayak told mediapersons on the sidelines of the meeting which set off rabi campaign for the year. While the target for 2017 kharif rice is to be 94.50 mt, marginally less than the 96.39 mt estimated by the fourth advance estimates, the government expected a 13 per cent increase in oilseeds production, even though there was a substantial reduction in the area under oilseeds cultivation. “We expect the area ...

September 19, 2017 PTI Noting that the economy has been on a downslide since September 2016, SBI Research today said the slowdown is real and not technical and called for more public spending to arrest the slide. “We certainly believe that we are in a slowdown mode since September 2016 and a slowdown that has been prolonged to Q1 of this fiscal year is technically not short-term in nature or even transient,” SBI Research said in a report. The report said the continuing slowdown has “raised the spectre of whether slowdown is temporary or not” but stopped short of answering the question. The note comes days after BJP president Amit Shah attributed the slowdown — GDP growth slid for the sixth quarter in a row to hit a three-year low at 5.7 per cent in the June quarter — to “technical reasons” without elaborating on the same. Shah had said growth had gone up to 7.1 per cent after falling to 4.7 per cent in FY14 when the UPA was in power. The report advocated uppin...

September 19 , 2017 PTI India, with over 65 per cent of population below the age of 35, will supply more than half of potential workforce over the coming decade in Asia, which is grappling with ageing population, according to a report. India will however have to first equip its workforce with necessary skills to contribute to the national economy in order for the country to reap dividends of its demographic potential, said the report by Deloitte — ‘Demographics fuelling Asia’s shifting balance of power’ “India is among a handful of South Asian countries that sits on a demographic gold mine,” the report said, adding that the country has a median population age of 27.3 years compared to 35 years for China and around 47 years for Japan. Deloitte India Lead Economist Anis Chakravarty said: “India will account for more than half of the increase in Asia’s workforce in the coming decade, but this isn’t just a story of more workers...” These new workers will be much bet...

September 19, 2017 PTI In view of the growing incidents of financial cybercrimes, including frauds using cards and e-wallets, Home Minister Rajnath Singh has ordered strengthening of the surveillance and legal frameworks to check the menace, the home ministry said today. The issue came up at a high-level meeting where the strategies being adopted to check financial cybercrimes were discussed in detail. “Representatives from various agencies made presentations and appraised the Home Minister of the current trends of financial cybercrimes in the country and the steps being taken by their agencies to address this challenge,” a Home Ministry spokesperson said. Concerned agencies and representatives of certain states highlighted the steps being taken to arrest the growing trend of cybercrime in the financial sector. It was noted that both legal and technological steps need to be taken to address this situation. “The Home Minister directed all concerned agencies to ...

September 20, 2017 Padmashree Gehl Sampath Global trade and intellectual property are at a crossroads. In a time when multilateral consensus is languishing on a large number of issues, the Trump administration is considering pulling the U.S. out of most free trade agreements on the ground that it needs a more favourable environment for its companies and its people. Much will be written about the carnage as far as jobs, wages and national sovereignty that the current American onslaught on trade deals brings to the fore. Here, I focus on a critical issue — how trade deals are becoming the new Trojan horse to ensure stronger patent protection and continued profits to global companies. Problem with trade deals A bit about the historical trajectory of events. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) embodied an international regulatory regime for the first time, in 1995. Although it represented a major compromise for most developing coun...

September 15, 2017 Sangita Mehta Banks led by SBI will soon call for a lenders meeting to discuss what to do with Reliance Naval and Engineering which has defaulted on loans worth Rs 9,000 crore. The Anil Ambani group firm, which was called Pipavav Shipyard and Reliance Defence in earlier avatars, has missed payments to lenders for the last two and a half months, and its loans will be classified as non-performing loan if it does not pay up in the next 15 days.  "Reliance Naval is classified as special mention account-2 or SMA-2 with all banks. Somehow, in the past few months, the company has managed to make critical payment before the end of the 90-day deadline to prevent the account from slipping into the bad loan basket," said two senior bank officials. " This time we are not very confident if the company will be able to make critical payment before the month end," they added. Special mention accounts-2 or SMA-2 are those where bank have not received p...