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The Economic Times July 26, 2019 By- Abheek Barman In 1995, when the US’ growth dipped from the previous year’s supercharged 4% to 2.7%, one of the finest macroeconomists of our time was the vice-chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. He had earlier advised President Bill Clinton as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers.  In 1995, when Clinton asked for his opinion, Alan Blinder replied, “Well, a little inflation can’t do any harm.” Immediately, Blinder found himself cornered by the Boston Brahmins of the conservative establishment, led by their boss, Alan Greenspan. These folks had notions about economics that would make John Maynard Keynes’ ideas look like a Naxal conspiracy.  Blinder’s recipe was to boost growth by pushing public spending on good things like healthcare, education & infrastructure, and if this meant a slight slippage from deficit targets and slightly higher prices, well, that was aprice well paid for boosting ...

NDTV July 25, 2019 The Afghan Taliban has expressed willingness to travel to Pakistan and meet Prime Minister Imran Khan if he invites them for negotiations to end the 18-year conflict in Afghanistan, according to a media report. The statement by the Taliban came hours after Imran Khan returned to Islamabad after his maiden official visit to the US where he discussed the Afghan peace process with US President Donald Trump on Monday and agreed to work together to end to the conflict. During the meeting, President Trump said that Pakistan would help the US "extricate" itself from Afghanistan, adding there was "tremendous potential" in the relationship between Washington and Islamabad. Sohail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban's political office in Qatar's capital Doha, told the BBC Urdu that if Prime Minister Khan extended a formal invitation, they will accept it. "We frequently visit countries in the region and would surely go t...

The Express Tribune July 25, 2019 A Chinese startup successfully launched the country’s first commercial rocket capable of carrying satellites into orbit on Thursday, as the space race between China and the US heats up. Beijing-based Interstellar Glory Space Technology — also known as iSpace — said it launched two satellites into orbit around 1:0 0 pm Beijing time (0500 GMT) from Jiuquan, a state launch facility in the Gobi desert. The three-year-old company is one of dozens of Chinese rivals jostling for a slice of the global space industry, estimated to be worth about $1 trillion by 2040 according to Morgan Stanley. The sector is currently dominated by SpaceX and Blue Origin in the US. But Chinese startups are mostly focused on building technology to launch microsatellites instead of space tourism like their US counterparts, a spokesperson for iSpace said. Microsatellites are typically no larger than a shoebox and are used to monitor crops, weather patte...

AURORA INTEL NETWORK June 21, 2019 By Faran Jeffery militant named Adil Ahmed Das, affiliated with Islamic State’s Hind Province (ISHP) was found dead, while another militant Arif Bhat was found in injured condition in an orchard area in Bijbehara town of South Kashmir’s district Anantnag. As soon as the news of the shootout was reported by local Kashmiri and mainstream Indian media, there were many speculations from all sides. Some pro-IS Telegram channels blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) while others blamed Hizbul Mujahideen or Indian security forces. Some Indian journalists blamed al-Qaeda allied Ansar Ghazwatul Hind (AGH). While still some pro-militant Telegram channels blamed Indian security agencies for killing Adil Das and injuring Arif Bhat, claiming that Indian security agencies are remaining silent to create dispute among the militant groups in Kashmir. By Thursday, the statements started changing. Many pro-IS Telegram channels started pinning the blame exclusively...

The Indian Express July 26, 2019 Indian diplomats in Islamabad are at present discussing the terms and conditions of consular access to Jadhav with Pakistan government officials, sources told The Indian Express. From the number of Indian diplomats to time allocated for consular access, and from privacy to physical contact, India and Pakistan are negotiating hard on consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav, a week after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in favour of India on the issue of consular access. Indian diplomats in Islamabad are at present discussing the terms and conditions of consular access to Jadhav with Pakistan government officials, sources told The Indian Express. Among the key issues under discussion, sources said, are how many Indian officials will conduct Jadhav’s interview, duration of their meeting, whether Pakistani officials will be present besides security personnel, whether there will be a glass partition between them, and whether they w...

The News July 26, 2019 ISLAMABAD: In a bid to comply with 27-point action plan till September 2019 in timely manner, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has established a Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Cell under supervision of Directorate General of Intelligence and Investigation Customs Abdul Waheed Marwat. According to notification issued by FBR here on Thursday, the FBR established a FATF Cell under supervision of Director General I&I Customs and comprising four other officials. Pakistan is making all-out efforts to comply with 27-point action plan placed by FATF in order to avoid falling from grey to blacklist. So far Islamabad managed very well to foil Indian bids but there was also need to put in place all required institutional, legislative and procedural system to come out from the grey list in next September review. The government is taking all-out steps to comply with all conditions placed by FATF within the stipulated timeframe. There are several benc...

Firstpost July 26, 2019 By- Abhijnan Rej   On Wednesday, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China published a white paper on China’s defence and security posture. While the India-specific content of that document is relatively staid, the white paper is extremely vital for New Delhi in one specific way: By publishing the composition of China’s military budget between 2010 and 2017, it allows the government and analysts to compare the People’s Republic’s defence spending patterns with those of  India. Earlier on Thursday, the chief of the Indian Navy Admiral Karambir Singh noted that that when it comes to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the white paper shows that a “(l)ot of resources have been shifted from other arms to the PLA Navy, obviously in line with their intention to become a global power.” A comparative analysis of India’s defence spending patterns with those of China in the time frame the new Chinese defence white paper considers ...

First Post July 26, 2019 Mumbai: With increasing cases of fund diversions, banks have come together and empanelled as many as 83 oversight agencies to keep a tab on the end-use of loans, State Bank of India (SBI) chairman Rajnish Kumar said on Thursday. The chairman of the largest lender said there have been instances where an individual or a company has borrowed from one bank and at the same time uses a current account facility with some other bank to divert funds. "Hiring oversight agencies is one of the things being done by banks to prevent such misuse," Kumar told reporters. Banks hire scores of oversight agencies to curb fund diversion, says SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar.  He also suggested that methods of lending will need to undergo change. "The consortium discipline or the multiple banking discipline has to be improved and there the regulator also has to play a role," he said. On the tepid credit growth, Kumar said he expects some pick-up du...

Business Standrad July 26, 2019 By- Subhayan Chakraborty   Curbs on cross-border data flow can severely restrict growth in India’s digital trade, according to a report by the All India Management Association and Hong Kong-based Hinrich Foundation — a trade research body. The Draft Personal Data Protection Bill, expected to be tabled in Parliament soon, has proposed the data of all Indian users be stored within the country. To this end, the government had mandated strict guidelines for mandatory server localisation, arguing that the data stored on foreign servers may be compromised. This had prompted swift opposition from Google, Amazon, and Facebook. The digital giants claim the move would entail huge cost overheads, burden businesses with unnecessary compliance, and cut India off from the global data movement system. The report released on Thursday said data localisation requirements could actually increase privacy risks, unless data is stored within multiple...

Deccan Chronicle July 26, 2019 Mumbai: The government measures to provide partial credit guarantee to public sector bank on their asset purchases from NBFCs can ease funding pressure only for the short-term but it does not address investors' long-term concerns about the sector's exposure to stressed real estate, Fitch Ratings said. In the Budget, the government had announced that it will provide a first-loss guarantee of 10 per cent on securitised assets issued by NBFCs to banking entities, to increase the flow of funds to the stressed NBFCs. The guarantee is more than enough to cover typical losses. The government will cover up to Rs one lakh crore of issuance. According to Fitch, this will cover the NBFC sector's liquidity needs for about six months. The provision refers only to financially-sound NBFCs, which suggests that weaker entities in need of funds may still have to fend for themselves, it noted. The funding stress has been most severe for wholesa...

Business Standard  July 26, 2019 Advocates of India’s first global bond offering are set to face another obstacle: there may not be enough appetite for $10 billion of yen-denominated debt. The nation’s planned sale has been marked by controversy even before it gets off the ground, as reports surface of opposition from the prime minister’s office and the departure of an official handling the issuance. The government is said to be considering raising $10 billion at one go as early as October, with the yen and euro marked as preferred currencies. The plan, if it does go ahead, may need to be revised, according to Kenichi Kurahashi, a Tokyo-based chief fund manager at Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co.  A yen issuance that size would be equal to half the record 2.25 trillion yen ($20.7 billion) of Samurai bonds sold worldwide last year, and this may be too much for Japanese investors to stomach. "Investors will mostly be concerned whether they will...

The Economic Times July 26, 2019 Ratna Bhushan, Writankar Mukherjee Consumer goods companies said the October-December festive quarter will be crucial for a revival in demand that would halt the slowdown of the past three quarters.  “The third quarter will be critical for a turnaround in the consumption trajectory. A lot will also depend on the monsoon, which has improved but is still below normal,” said Britannia Industries MD Varun Berry. “We hope overall agricultural conditions improve enough to cause a revenue uptick. With 44% of Indian workforce employed in agriculture, this will also be a critical requirement for the consumption turnaround.” Berry leads the country’s largest biscuit maker.  Consumption in rural India, which accounts for about a third of the market, has been under stress for the past three quarters. Its rate of expansion is now at par with that in cities, compared with nearly double two years ago. Companies said urban growth has also t...

The Hindu Business Line July 25, 2019 Murali Gopalan With barely a week to go before the July sales figures come in, auto-makers are bracing themselves for yet another round of bad news. Customer sentiment has been at its lowest level in recent years and there is just no semblance of any recovery happening across vehicle segments. Be it two-wheelers, cars, or trucks, the story is the same everywhere with manufacturers and ancillary suppliers cutting back on production while dealers are trying their hardest to woo customers to showrooms. This also includes the construction equipment industry, an important part of the overall ecosystem, which is facing hard times. The latest missive from the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association on job losses is, therefore, not entirely surprising. Nearly a million people have been asked to go over the last year with a lion’s share being contract workers. The numbers could grow even further in the coming months with absolutely n...