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Economic Times March 10, 2019        Investors will this week finally get a comprehensive read of how China’s economy is faring this year as worries mount over the outlook for the rest of the world.  Retail sales, investment, credit and industrial production data for January and February are all scheduled for release just as the National People’s Congress is set to wrap up with a speech on Friday from Premier Li Keqiang.  “China’s credit and activity data will help in assessing the extent of any stabilization in growth,” said Chang Shu, chief Asia economist at Bloomberg Economics. “China’s credit data are important to help determine whether the economy is stabilizing.”  China Aggregate Social Financing   The snapshot of the world’s number two economy comes the week after the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its forecasts for global growth, Citigroup Inc.’s global surprise index fell to i...

The Economic Times March 10, 2019        Amidst the ongoing repercussions of the punitive air strike made by the Indian Air Force to take out the training camp of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) at Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, the address of India's External Affairs Minister - Sushma Swaraj - at the Foreign Ministers conference of OIC at Abu Dhabi on March 1 was an event of extraordinary significance for the geopolitics of South Asia, the future of India-Pakistan relations and the so-called Islamic world itself.  The Crown Prince of UAE hosting the meet had invited India's External Affairs Minister to be the guest of honour at the inaugural day of the OIC meet and thus for the first time put the stamp of official recognition on India's association with the Islamic block - even as India did not have an Observer's status yet. Brief attempts made by our diplomats in the Cold War Era to secure that position on the ground that Indi...

The Hindu March 10, 2019  Washington won’t accept half-measures from Pakistan, says a U.S. official . The United States is working to convince China to allow the listing of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) Chief Masood Azhar by the UNSC 1267 Committee, a senior administration official, who did not want to be named, said, speaking exclusively to  The Hindu . “We are working hard to convince  China.  It is not in China’s interest to shield terrorist groups operating in Pakistan, and as a responsible global power, China should take a clear stand against terrorism. So we expect China to join in designating Masood Azhar as a terrorist,” the official said. The official said that the U.S. felt India’s frustration and that Pakistan has been isolated over the February 14 Pulwama attack and its aftermath. The U.S. was looking for permanent action by Pakistan to end its support for terror. Pakistan had, last week reportedly detained more than 120 individuals connected ...

The Express Tribune March 10, 2019 KARACHI:  Pakistan is set to receive $4.1 billion in financial assistance from  friendly countries next week, according to Finance Minister Asad Umar. The minister’s disclosure came at a seminar organised on Saturday by the Pakistan Business Council. Giving a break-up of the expected inflow, Umar said the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would soon deposit $2 billion into the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) foreign currency reserves. The remaining part of $2.1 billion would come from China, he added. “The UAE is providing the loan at an interest rate of 3%, while the Chinese have offered us an interest rate of 2.5%,” Umar said . With the receipt of the soft loans, SBP reserves would surge to around $12 billion and total reserves, including ones available at commercial banks, would stand at approximately $19 billion by the end of next week. UAE makes fresh pledge to deposit $2b in SBP rese...

DAWN March 10, 2019 The country’s rejuvenated anti-militant campaign will strengthen its diplomatic and moral position in the ongoing stand-off with India. This will help Pakistan fulfil its commitments to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). And, sustained over a longer period of time, it will certainly improve internal and border security, as well as relations with its neighbours. In fact, it appears that the government and the military establishment have both acted in sync to make the renewed campaign look both serious and different this time. In January 2002, when Gen Musharraf banned several militant groups, I was collecting data for my research on jihadist organisations in Pakistan. The offices of jihadi groups based in Azad Kashmir and other parts of the country had been shut down. In an extreme situation, the militants felt uncertain about their future. They had lost connection with their leadership that was either under house arrest or had gone underground. Ma...

The Hindu March 10, 2019 Hamad Azhar, who Pakistani authorities claimed to have taken into preventive detention, finds no mention in records of intelligence agencies in India. His name has not featured so far in any of the dossiers on the terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), officials told  The Hindu . Pakistan took 44 members of banned organisations, including Hamad and JeM chief Masood Azhar’s brother Abdul Raoof, into preventive detention, its Ministry of Interior said on March 5. A top official from Indian intelligence said the “senior leadership of JeM had always been close family members,” and the “44 detentions made by Pakistan had nothing to do with Indian dossiers, though some of the names do figure in these dossiers.” A senior government official said the JeM was run like a “family enterprise” by Masood Azhar and though others in the family had figured in investigations, there was no mention or reference to Hamad yet. “Maybe Hamad was still being groom...

The Hindu Business Line March 10, 2019 Soon, there will be tough norms for common directors in the insurance sector to prevent conflict of interest. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has released a draft of the IRDAI (Conflict of Interest) Guidelines, 2019. If a promoter of a general insurance company wants to be a promoter of a health insurance company or vice-versa, his application for registration needs to be accompanied by a note approved by the board of directors. The note should detail the manner in which segregation of business between the general insurer and the standalone health insurer would take place. As per the draft guidelines, it will be the responsibility of the board of the insurance companies to formulate a policy to address conflict-of-interest situations. For a director or officer who becomes aware of a material conflict of interest, two options will be available — either to eliminate the conflict or resign in 30 d...

The Hindu Business Line March 10, 2019 Chinese and US officials discussed exchange rates and reached a consensus on many “important” issues during the latest round of negotiations to end the trade war, Governor of the China’s central bank Yi Gang said on Sunday. “The two parties discussed about how to respect the autonomy of each other’s monetary authorities in determining the monetary policy,” Yi told a media briefing here. Yi was part of the Chinese delegation, led by Chinese Vice Premier Liu He with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin. “The discussion involved mutual adherence to the market-decided exchange rate mechanism, honouring the commitments made at previous G20 summits such as choosing not to adopt competitive depreciation, not to use exchange rates for competition purpose, and maintaining close communication on foreign exchange markets,” Yi said. They also discussed the issue that both sides should commi...

The Indian Express March 11,2019 As the events set in motion by the Pulwama attack wind down, one point, always present in India-Pakistan relations, bears reiteration. The relationship relates not only to India’s external interests and foreign policy but also, in almost equal measure, to the country’s politics and social equations. That explains, perhaps, the absence of serious discussion on the Pakistani reality, the prevalence of entrenched reflexes of the political and security classes and the media projection of the complex relationship as a mixture of a high decibel gladiatorial contest and a raucous tamasha. All this was on display in the weeks after the Pulwama attack and distracted attention from what in the aftermath of the attack should have been the national focus — how to end Pakistan’s terrorism, which has continued for almost three decades. Instead, popular attention by itself, and intensified by the media, was on the politics over the entire sequence — Pulwama,...

The Indian Express March 11, 2019 Jobs, reformative measures, and a monthly stipend of Rs 6,000. These are the key points of a new “reintegration policy” draft that is under the consideration of the J&K government headed by Governor Satya Pal Malik to encourage militants hailing from the state to give up arms. Speaking to  The Indian Express , K Vijay Kumar, advisor to the state government, said the policy draft “is presently at the pre-SAC stage”. “It is subject to clearance by the State Home Department and the Chief Secretary,” he said. The State Administrative Council (SAC) is the body governing J&K, which is under President’s rule, and is led by the Governor and includes his four advisors and Chief Secretary B V R Subramanyam. According to the draft, the new initiative addresses the need for rehabilitation at a policy level through a two-pronged approach: reformative measures and opportunities of livelihood. There is also provision for a...