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The Economic Times,  By Ruchika Chitravanshi, ET Bureau, New DelhiOct 16, 2017 Sany Heavy Industry heads up a list of close to 600 companies planning to invest a total of about $85 billion in India in projects that will create an estimated 700,000 jobs in the country in next five years.  Invest India, the government's foreign investment promotion agency, is planning to actively promote the country as an investment destination and has drawn up a list of 200 companies not present in India that it wants to target.  "We want to achieve a $100 billion target of foreign investment in the next two years — both greenfield and brownfield," said Invest India managing director Deepak Bagla. India recorded its highest FDI (foreign direct investment) in FY17 at $43 billion, up 9 per cent over the previous year.  One of the world's leading engineering machinery manufacturers, China's Sany Heavy Industry plans an investment of $9.8 billion. Ama...

the hindu business line, NAYANIMA BASU,  NEW DELHI, 16 OCTOBER:   China is carrying out systematic annihilation of the cultural heritage of Tibet with the destruction of Tibetan Buddhism and religious traditions, education system, social breakdowns, lawlessness, communal disharmony, uncontrolled greed and a high growth in sex trade and alcoholism, according to a report. In the report – Cultural Genocide in Tibet – brought out by The Tibet Policy Institute Lobsang Sangay, President, Central Tibetan Administration stated that acts of genocide have been and are still being committed. He said that the Chinese are carrying out destruction of their religion, language, and also doing forceful removal of Tibetan nomads while it is continuing population transfer onto the Tibetan Plateau from mainland China. He even highlighted that the as per the 2017 Freedom House report, Tibet is one of the least free countries in the world. “Policies relentlessly carried out in thes...

The Indian Express, Khushboo Narayan | Mumbai |  October 16, 2017  A PROBE by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has found that two foreign entities controlled by liquor baron Vijay Mallya, which had a stake in Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, carried out financial transactions with a Liberia-registered entity named in the Panama Papers, after the merger of the airline with Deccan Aviation Ltd. According to the SFIO report, IQ Bridge Limited, Mauritius, and its Indian subsidiary, IQ Bridge Limited, Bangalore, controlled by Mallya and the UB Group, held 15 lakh and 52 lakh equity shares respectively in Kingfisher Airlines before its merger with Deccan Aviation. In 2007-08, Mallya transferred 89 of the 99 shares he held in IQ Bridge, Mauritius, to Liberia-registered Lombard Wall Corporate Services Inc, the report said. The SFIO report said that UB Overseas Limited (UBOL), an overseas subsidiary of United Breweries Holdings Ltd incorporated in the British Vi...

The Hindu Business Line,  PRESS TRUST OF INDIA,   NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 15:   An ambitious high-speed train project in south India has been delayed after Chinese railways, which completed a feasibility study a year ago, did not respond, railway officials have said, suggesting that the “lack of response” may be due to the Doklam stand-off. An internal brief of the Mobility Directorate on the status of nine high-speed projects of the Railways, accessed by PTI, shows that the Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysore corridor, a 492-km stretch, is in limbo because the Chinese railways has failed to respond to the Ministry’s communiques. “The Chinese company submitted the final report in November 2016 and after that the Chinese team has suggested a face-to-face interaction. No date has been fixed from their side,” said the note prepared by the Mobility Directorate. On the reason for the delay, the brief states — “lack of response” from Chinese railways. The brief also st...

The Hindu Business Line, PTI,  WASHINGTON, OCT 15 Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that most of the pending issues with Iran particularly relating to the oil payment have been resolved. Jaitley, who is here on a week-long visit to the US to attend the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, made the remarks after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Karbasian. “There were several pending issues with Iran particularly relating to the oil payment. Most of them have been resolved,” he told reporters yesterday. India is Iran’s second biggest oil buyer after China and was among a few which had continued to import crude despite Western sanctions against Tehran. Jaitley said India has a very stable relationship with Iran. “It’s very strategic for us, because the Chabahar port is not only going to service Iran, but also going to service Afghanistan,” he said. India and Iran had in 2003 agreed to develop strategic Chabahar port...

The Hindu Business Line,   SURABHI,   WASHINGTON D.C., OCTOBER 15 The Goods and Services Tax Council will discuss including real estate in the new indirect tax levy at its next meeting, although bringing petrol and diesel in its ambit would have to wait. “Real estate is on the agenda for the next meeting of the GST Council,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told  BusinessLine. To meet on Nov 10 The Council, chaired by Jaitley, is scheduled to meet in Guwahati on November 10. Concluding his near week-long trip to the US, Jaitley told reporters that he expected the economy to now be on a recovery path after GDP growth slowed to a three-year low of 5.7 per cent in the first quarter of the fiscal. “Some of the recent indicators, such as industrial output, core sector, purchasing managers’ index and exports, indicate good signs for the future,” he said, adding that this will be coupled with the recovery in the global economy, which will impact two critical...

IBTimes, UCNews,  October 15, 2017,  Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh scramble for food. The Intelligence Branch of Nagaland has warned of a possible attack by some Rohingya refugees allegedly trained under Islamic State (ISIS) militants who managed to sneak into the refugee camps. Around 2,000 Muslims are undergoing arms training to fight the Nagas if the latter tries to drive the Myanmar refugees out, the officials stated. The intelligence officials claimed that the Rohingya refugees were being trained by at least 20 militants of the Islamic State (ISIS) group who had entered Nagaland. These reports come just a few days after the Narendra Modi government said that "many of the Rohingya refugees"were suspected of having links with Pakistan's ISI, the ISIS group and other extremist outfits targeting India. And the government wanted to deport them back. Dimapur Imam working with Rohingya rebels? The Naga Intelligence Branch said the Imam of Dimapur has teame...

By PTI | Economic Times,   WASHINGTON,   Oct 15, 2017,  The IMF today shot down media reports speculating that it was pushing for the Public Distribution System (PDS) to be replaced by the Universal Basic Income (UBI) in India.  The reports emerged in a section of media after the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its annual Fiscal Monitor report, said the UBI will outperform the PDS in terms of coverage, progressivity, and generosity. The IMF's observation was based on the results of a microsimulation analysis of a policy reform that replaces food and fuel subsidies in India with a UBI.  Director of Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF, Vitor Gaspar, said the report on India was just a case study on UBI and was carried out in order to demonstrate as to how a large but inefficient scheme can be replaced.  "We don't regard Fiscal Monitor as advocating for or against UBI. This is not the case at all," Gaspar told PTI in an i...

Written by Shubajit Roy  | New Delhi | The  Indian Express,  October 15, 2017 A day after Pakistani security forces rescued an American-Canadian family from the clutches of the Haqqani terror network, US President Donald Trump said he has started to develop a much better relationship with Pakistan. South Block sources, however, remain unfazed by the US President’s comments, saying this is the outcome of a familiar pattern, with Pakistan trying to demonstrate “good behaviour” and US being made to believe that Islamabad is serious in its fight against terror. Officials in New Delhi, who follow Trump’s comments closely, are keen to see the follow-up actions of the US President. This could form part of the discussions between Indian officials and leaders when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visits India in the last week of October. “Starting to develop a much better relationship with Pakistan and its leaders. I want to thank them for their cooperation on ma...

The Hindu, Reuters, October 14,2017 Under the once-vaunted “keiretsu” system of close, trust-based ties between manufacturers and suppliers, “Made-in-Japan” became a byword for industrial quality and reliability. That reputation has eroded over recent years. Kobe Steel is just the latest in a string of corporate scandals involving data tampering and other methods of cheating to tarnish the Japan Inc. quality stamp. It may be a sign that the government’s push to improve corporate governance is seeing greater disclosure of wrongdoing. But the root cause is more likely that Japanese manufacturers are failing modern compliance standards as they grapple with a shrinking domestic market and increased global competition. As the focus has shifted to market mechanisms instead of cosy relationship-based arrangements, Japanese manufacturers have had to compete on price and expand their client base. “Growing global competition has forced Japanese manufacturers to cut...

The Hindu, October 15,2017 To pressure ILO to distance itself from Australian NGO’s report that can potentially harm India’s image After sending a rebuttal to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) challenging India’s ranking in a global slavery report, India will build pressure on the global body to distance itself from the Australia-based NGO-Walk Free Foundation. It was the WFF, founded by Australia’s mining mogul Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, that had compiled the report. Indian security agencies informed the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) that though the methodology of sampling was not clear, the WFF’s entire focus was on India and had “enough potential to substantively harm India’s image and kill its exports market”. The PMO was warned that there was “evidence of rising interest of private and multilateral institutions in highlighting human trafficking and forced labour as modern-day slavery, with India being the largest hub of slaves”. Point-wise rejoinder ...

The Hindu Business Line,  New Delhi, October 9, 2017 Coming to the rescue of the oil and gas explorers in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured them that the GST Council will consider their requests for tax rationalisation in all fairness. The Prime Minister met top corporate honchos and officials from the sector including Rosneft, BP, Reliance, Saudi Aramco, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Vedanta, ONGC, Indian Oil Corporation, GAIL, Petronet LNG, Oil India, HPCL, and Delonex Energy on Monday. A CEO who was present at the meeting said, the Prime Minister assured the industry that tax on upstream operations will be rationalised. “The Prime Minister is very conscious of high tax rate on services in upstream sector. He said that service tax on rigs and bunker crude will be rationalised,” the CEO said. The focus of the meeting was to secure India’s energy future: increase domestic production – aspiration to reduce imports by 2022; build infrastructure: Gre...

The Hindu Business Line,  KOLKATA, OCT 13: Stressing on the need for higher provisioning, the Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor NS Vishwanathan said the required provisioning for the NPA (non-performing asset)  accounts referred for insolvency resolution is “nothing unusually large”. According to him, higher provisioning will make banks’ balance sheet more resilient; it will also boost credit growth. “Provisioning by banks needs to be higher to make their balance sheet more resilient and boost credit growth,” he said at an interactive session organised by the Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry here on Friday. The central bank has directed banks to set aside 50 per cent of the loan amount as likely losses for all NPA accounts it has referred to to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The provisioning should be 100 per cent in cases that fail to get resolved under insolvency proceedings and are ...