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The Hindu, March 22, 2018 The measures could target 1,300 products totalling tariffs up to $50 billion President Donald Trump on Thursday directed imposition of tariffs on Chinese products, and restrictions on Chinese investments in America in a move that officials described as “historic” and is meant to push back against “economic aggression”. A senior administration official said these measures mark a fundamental change in the current American approach towards Beijing that started with the Richard Nixon-Henry Kissinger era. That approach of trying to get China into the global market as a fair partner has failed, the official said. He said previous Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama failed in their initiatives with China, and so did Mr. Trump’s early overtures towards China. “The President (Mr. Trump) tried to resolve these issues through dialogue but China has a different approach,” he said. The measures follow the completion of a special assessment of C...

The Telegraph India, March 22, 2018 The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the government must address concerns that its aggressive push for Aadhaar cards wouldn't lead to "mass surveillance" and "stalking" and wondered why the Singapore model of individual chip cards couldn't be adopted in India too. "In the name of security and securing things... you can't have a stalking culture," Chief Justice Dipak Misra told attorney-general K.K. Venugopal, while referring to submissions by some petitioners. The constitution bench, which also included Justices A.K. Sikri, A.M. Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said the government must address apprehensions that "authentication and aggregation of data would lead to mass surveillance". "Why do you want to store data when you only want the identity of the person to be established?" Justice Sikri asked before citing the example of Singapore. In Singapore, the judg...

Dawn, March 22, Islamabad Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar University in Egypt Dr Shawki Ibrahim said on Wednesday that only courts could declare a person infidel while the state was the only authority to declare jihad. Endorsing the Paigham-i-Pakistan, a document issued by the government which offers a unanimous counter-narrative to extremist ideas by collating fatwas (edicts) against terrorism, he said extremism leading to terrorism, blasphemy and declaring any Muslim a non-believer were prohibited in Islam. “Groups like Daesh (the militant Islamic State) have strayed away from the message of Islam but they are targeting Muslim youths through social media,” Dr Ibrahim said while addressing a roundtable conference titled ‘Paigham-i-Pakistan and terrorism’ organised by the Council of Islamic Ideology. Calls for using modern tools of information to counter extremism The conference discussed the practical aspect of the Paigham-i-Pakistan to eradicate extremism and noted that...

The Hindu Business Line, March 21, 2018 Exporters have urged the Reserve Bank of India to reconsider the ban on letters of undertaking (LoUs), which was triggered by the $2 billion fraud at the Punjab National Bank, as it was causing distress to players in sectors such as textiles and leather and increasing their operating costs. “With some banks deciding to cancel LoUs that have already been issued, the situation has become worse as exporters do not have enough cash to pay upfront for their imports,” said Ajay Sahai, Director-General, FIEO. An LoU is a guarantee given by one bank to another to repay a loan on behalf of a client and which allows the client to raise short-term credit to mainly pay for an import. FIEO, an umbrella body representing a number of export organisations, has written to the RBI requesting its intervention in extending help to exporters hit by the move to ban LoUs. In the letter, FIEO has asked the RBI to consider introducing LoUs with safeguards a...

The Indian Express, By: ENS Economic Bureau | Mumbai |  March 22, 2018  Banks have rejected the takeover bids by Numetal — a venture formed by Russian lender VTB Bank and Rewant Ruia — and LN Mittal’s ArcelorMittal for Essar Steel, saying that both the bidders are ineligible under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) which categorically stated that promoters of defaulting companies are not allowed to bid unless he or she repays all pending loans before submitting the resolution plan. The committee of creditors (CoC) of Essar Steel which met here on Wednesday decided to reject both the bids and decided to allow a second round of bidding for the debt-laden steel company on April 2. Numetal and ArcelorMittal which were the only two bidders for Essar Steel submitted their bids on February 12 and both were challenging the eligibility of the other party to bid for the company. Both were declared ineligible by the lenders under Section 29 A of the amended I...

The Hindu Business Line,   MUMBAI, MARCH 21 A phased rollout of corporate governance norms suggested by the Uday Kotak committee, disclosure of debt default by listed companies and structuring of a pension scheme of its employees are on top of the agenda for the SEBI board meeting on March 28. In the wake of the PNB loan scam and subsequent instances of companies trying to delay default disclosure, SEBI is considering a proposal to force corporate borrowers to report all defaults above  ₹ 5 crore if repayment is delayed by over 30 days, two people aware of the matter said. In August, SEBI had made it mandatory for companies to disclose any instance of a default on the payment of interest or repayment of principal to banks or financial institutions within a day of the default. The regulator had said that while current regulations required listed companies to disclose delay or default in payment of interest/principal on debt securities, there was no such requirem...

The Hindu, March 21, 2018 Cambridge Analytica has been accused of using personal data of Facebook users Days after data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica (CA), a subsidiary of the U.K.-based SCL Group, was suspended by social media company Facebook for not deleting user data obtained from an app developer for the platform, the controversy reached Indian shores with both the BJP and the Congress trading charges of the other having used the firm’s services. Union Law and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned the links between the firm and the Congress at a press conference on Wednesday. Ahead of 2019 polls Citing media reports, he said the Congress engaged the firm for its campaign for the 2019 general election. Mr. Prasad raised questions about the extent of the party’s engagement with the firm and how far the Congress endorsed CA’s use of “sex, sleaze and fake news to influence elections.” The Minister was alluding to an investiga...

SME Times News Bureau | 20 Mar, 2018 Sounding a warning that over five billion people across the globe may run into water shortage, a United Nations report has pointed out that dams in India have done more harm than good to the cause of water security. Suggesting natural solutions to handle the water crisis, the UN World Water Development Report, 2018, notes that large-scale water development projects have led to major impacts like human displacement, and achieved only limited food security -- one of the main objectives of such projects. The report lays emphasis on the importance of "nature-based solutions" to meet the crisis, and calls for ancestral and indigenous solutions. "The World Commission on Dams country study on India concluded that a century or more of large-scale water development had resulted in major social and ecological impacts, including substantial human displacement, soil erosion and widespread waterlogging while, contrary to state...

The Indian Express, By: ENS Economic Bureau | New Delhi |  March 19, 2018 The Association of Power Producers (APP) asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for special relaxation for the power sector in its guidelines on when insolvency proceedings would be triggered. The industry body said the stress in the sector is largely due to irregularity in payment from discoms, regulatory delays, and coal supply constraints, which are beyond the control of power firms. In a letter written to RBI governor Urjit Patel, the APP said discoms delay regular payments by three-four months, and currently receivables to IPPs stand at about Rs 8,300 crore. Additionally, Rs 7,800 crore is stuck due to various delays in receiving orders from regulators. The IPPs are not compensated for the extra money they have to shell out to buy coal at higher prices due to insufficient supply (only 60 per cent of requirement) by Coal India. The RBI recently said even a one-day default in debt...

The Indian Express, By: Tech Desk | New Delhi | Updated: March 20, 2018 Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica, a data research firm closely linked to President Donald Trump, over concerns of data harvesting. According to The Guardian and The New York Times, the data analysis firm stole information from 50 million Facebook users’ profile without their permission. The information was then used to build a software tool to predict a user’s preferable candidate of choice during the 2016 US Presidential election. The data breach is being seen as one of the largest in the history of the social networking giant. Facebook however, is not calling this a data breach as such and said that users had willingly given the information to the app. Facebook’s newsroom statement says, “The claim that this is a data breach is completely false. Aleksandr Kogan requested and gained access to information from users who chose to sign up to his app, and everyone involved gave their consent. Peopl...

The Economic Times, By Kirtika Suneja, Mar 19, 2018, New Delhi Ahead of a gathering of representatives of 50 WTO countries here on Monday, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) has asked the government to protect India’s national interest even if the country has to stand alone.  SJM, an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has also cautioned the commerce and industry ministry from making any statement at the World Trade Organization (WTO) mini ministerial on the contentious issue of investment facilitation. It said other nations can view such a move as an indication of India’s flexibility on initiating negotiations on investment facilitation.  “Even if India has to stand alone for protecting its national interest, it must not hesitate in doing so,” SJM said in a letter to commerce minister Suresh Prabhu.  India is hosting an informal WTO mini ministerial meeting on March 19-20 to decide the way forward for the multilateral trade b...

The Hindu Business Line,   KOLKATA, MARCH 18 In an effort to reduce logistics costs and make India-Bangladesh trade more competitive, the Union Shipping Ministry has proposed the inclusion of Pangaon river terminal near Dhaka in the bilateral protocol for inland water trade, during the upcoming secretary-level talks. The Pangaon container terminal is located 20 km from Dhaka. Currently Kolkata port in West Bengal; Mongla, Narayanganj, Ashugunj in Bangladesh; and Karimgunj in Assam are listed in the protocol. “We will propose inclusion of Pangaon terminal in the protocol during the annual secretary-level meet, which is expected shortly. We expect the proposal to receive the support of the Bangladesh government as it would help transport goods at a cheaper cost between Kolkata and Dhaka,” Gopal Krishna, Secretary Shipping, told  BusinessLine . He was in Kolkata to assess the progress of the World Bank-aided Ganga Jal Marg project and flag-off two tug-barge flo...

The Hindu Business Line, BY PTI,  WASHINGTON, MAR 18 The first Indo-US ‘2+2 dialogue’ has been postponed due to the uncertainty over the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as the new Secretary of State, an American official said after President Donald Trump fired Rex Tillerson. The two-day dialogue, announced last summer when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a successful meeting with President Trump at the White House, was tentatively scheduled for April 18–19. “It has been postponed for now,” an informed US official said. The official wishing anonymity, however, quickly pointed out that it would have no impact on the bilateral relationship as the meetings this week by the foreign and defence secretaries decided to continue with their agenda. There was no official announcement of the high-level dialogue involving the foreign and defence ministers from the two countries. India’s foreign and defence secretaries were here early this week for preparatory talks with their American...

The Hindu Business Line, BY PTI,  NEW DELHI, MARCH 18 The process of network port-out is set to become faster and simpler for mobile subscribers, as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is planning to initiate a review of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) mechanism. It will issue, by the month-end, a consultation paper that will look at reducing the time taken to switch from one network to another under MNP, and will also seek to simplify the entire process, according to TRAI Chairman RS Sharma. “We will be bringing a consultation paper on expediting MNP. Today, the process takes time. The consultation paper will be aimed at reducing that time and changing the processes. We are currently working on it and will issue it by the month-end,” Sharma told PTI. The move to revamp the current mechanism for MNP comes on the heels of the regulator recently slashing the MNP charges by almost 79 per cent to a maximum of Rs 4. The prescribed ceiling for MNP charge was Rs 19 p...

The Hindu Business Line, BY PTI, March 18, 2018 The Reserve Bank is expected to be on an “extended pause” as inflation is likely to remain close to 4.5 per cent during 2018-19. According to Kotak Economic Research, inflation through the next financial year, commencing April 1, is likely to remain close to 4.5 per cent, higher than its stated target of 4 per cent and this will warrant “cautiousness from RBI’’ “We expect the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to maintain status quo as it awaits clarity on monsoon, sustainability of high crude oil prices post the winter squeeze, and global financial conditions,” the report said. For the Reserve Bank, the Consumer Price Index (CPI)-based retail inflation continues to remain the prime focus, besides monsoon, high crude oil prices and global financial conditions. “Amid still-subdued capacity utilisation levels and being mindful of any nascent growth recovery, the RBI would possibly remain on an extended pause,” the report s...