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Firstpost,  Apr 27, 2020 New Delhi:  India plans to fast track the review of some investment proposals from neigbouring countries such as China following concerns new screening rules could hit plans of companies and investors, three sources told  Reuters  on Saturday. To avoid opportunistic takeovers during the coronavirus outbreak, the government said this week that all foreign direct investment from countries sharing a land border would require prior government clearance, meaning they can’t go through a so-called automatic route. Advisers to Chinese firms have said they are concerned the process could take several weeks and hit deals and investment timelines. Auto firms such as SAIC’s MG Motor and Great Wall, and investors Alibaba and Tencent have placed major bets on India. The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi has called the new screening policy discriminatory. A senior government source who is involved in  SAIC’s MG Motor and Great Wall, and investors Alibaba and Tenc

Business Standard,  April 27, 2020 Crippled by lack of inputs, funds and key information, 60% of firms are operating at less than a quarter of their full capacity, with just 10 per cent managing plant utilisation at over 50 per cent, a survey by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) shows. The movement of workers and raw materials remain key hurdles to resuming businesses despite the government allowing major chunks of the industry to operate, the survey has pointed out. Conducted on April 24, the survey shows that businesses consider getting permits for enterprises to restart, passes for daily travel of workers and establishing earlier supply chains, as their biggest headaches. For sectors allowed to function, 46 per cent of surveyed enterprises say permits are either not provided or are delayed. The CII has recommended that approvals of applications must have clear deadlines with a provision for automatic permits after the specified time. “For facilitat

Bloomberg,  April 27, 2020 Billionaire Bill Gates’s foundation will focus all of its resources on fighting the coronavirus,  according to  the Financial Times. The philanthropist and founder of Microsoft Corp. said that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with an endowment exceeding  $40 billion , will give “total attention” to the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 and is roiling economies around the world, he said in an interview with the newspaper. “You’re going to have economies with greatly reduced activity levels for years,” Gates said. The pandemic could cost the global economy “tens of trillions of dollars,” he said in the interview. The foundation has contributed  $250 million  to help counter the coronavirus and is re-purposing units dedicated to fighting other diseases to join in the battle against the pandemic. “We’ve taken an organization that was focused on HIV and malaria and polio eradication, and almost entirely shifted it to work on

The Indian Express, April 28, 2020 Last week saw a virtual bloodbath in oil, with US crude prices crashing to an unprecedented minus $40.32 per barrel before ending at $16.94. But it wasn’t just oil. Raw sugar futures prices for May delivery in New York closed at 9.73 cents per pound, the lowest since June 9, 2008. The front-month corn contract at Chicago, too, fell to $3.01 a bushel, a level it breached last on September 11, 2009. Crude palm oil prices in Malaysia, likewise, plunged by 7.5 per cent on April 21, while now trading nearly 31 per cent lower since the start of the year. The link with oil is obvious here: Sugarcane and corn are as much sources of food as substrates for ethanol that can be blended with petrol. Only 34 per cent of cane crushed by Brazilian mills in 2019-20 went for sugar production, the rest to make ethanol. Palm oil is used to manufacture bio-diesel. Indonesia, last year, mandated a 30 per cent mix of bio-diesel in the regular transport fuel, while Ind

The Indian Express, April 28, 2020 Mortgage lender HDFC on Saturday said it has acquired 6.43 per cent stake in debt-trapped Reliance Capital by invoking pledged shares. These shares were acquired pursuant to invocation of pledge by security trustee on behalf of the corporation, which was pledged against a loan given by the lender in its normal course of business, HDFC Ltd said in a regulatory filing. Following this, the company acquired 25.27 crore shares of Rs 10 each, it said, adding that the total value of these shares are Rs 252 crore. It further said the requisite disclosure had already been made on March 27, and since the shares have now been credited to the account of the Corporation, the disclosure was being made once again. Link: https://indianexpress.com/article/business/banking-and-finance/hdfc-acquires-6-43-per-cent-stake-in-reliance-capital-6378943/

The Indian Express, April 28, 2020 As the coronavirus spreads, severe dilemmas haunt policymakers. Even the scientific community is confused and does not seem to know whether the South Korean model of more intensive testing is preferable to the European model of a complete lockdown. The economic crisis that we are facing today is very different from any crisis that we have encountered recently. This is the first economic crisis in recent memory to have been triggered by a non-economic factor — a pandemic. It has brought to a grinding halt nearly all economic activity. The dilemma policymakers face is often starkly described as the choice between “lives” and “livelihoods”. On April 14, the government decided to extend the lockdown by another 19 days. A lockdown essentially amounts to limited economic activity and this results in throwing temporary workers and daily wage earners out of employment. Migrant labour falls in this category. According to the 2011 census, the number of

CNBCTV18, April 28, 2020 Indian banks have technically written off a staggering amount of Rs 68,607 crore due from 50 top wilful defaulters, including absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi, according to a reply under RTI from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Prominent RTI activist Saket Gokhale had filed an RTI query with the RBI seeking details of the 50 top wilful defaulters and their current loan status till February 16. "I filed this RTI because Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur had refused to reply to this starred question asked in the Parliament by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi in the last Budget Session on February 16," Gokhale told  IANS . Disclosing what the government didn't, the RBI's Central Public Information Officer Abhay Kumar provided the replies on Saturday (April 24), with several startling revelations in the 'diamond-studded list', said Gokhale. The RBI said that this amount (Rs 68,607

Dawn, April 28, 2020 NEW YORK: The United States on Monday posted rule changes that impose new restrictions on exports to China, including on civil aircraft components and items related to semiconductors. The new rules will require licenses for US companies to sell certain items to military entities in China even if they are for civilian use, and do away with a civilian exception that allows certain US technology to be exported without a license, if they are for a non-military entity. The rules, which were posted for public inspection and will be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, could hurt the semiconductor industry and sales of civil aviation equipment to China. “It is important to consider the ramifications of doing business with countries that have histories of diverting goods purchased from US companies for military applications,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Washington trade lawyer Kevin Wolf said the rules are a response to China’s policy of fin

Hindustan Times, Apr 27, 2020 Are leading Internet firms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, as operators of social media platforms, publishers of editorialised content (much like the  Hindustan Times  is), or are they indiscriminate platforms that offer open access to anything that you might wish to see? The debate sounds nerdy at first — a sort of philosophical enquiry that should only concern professors and legal scholars as a matter of business regulation. But this seemingly narrow intellectual question is increasingly becoming a central matter of urgent concern in the context of Indian democracy — and, indeed, democracy and the free flow of information around the world. Foreign governments are moving to impose new responsibilities on dominant tech firms. Australia, for instance, is forcing Facebook and Google to pay news companies for displaying their stories; French antitrust officials have ordered Google to negotiate with local media firms to pay for displaying their c

The Indian Express,  April 27, 2020 Global military expenditure at 3.6 per cent saw its largest annual spike in a decade in 2019 with China and India being the second- and third-largest spenders after the US, a Stockholm-based think-tank said on Monday, the first time the two Asian giants were among the top three countries spending more on armaments. The total global military expenditure rose to USD 1,917 billion in 2019, representing an annual growth of 3.6 per cent compared to 2018, according to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The 3.6 per cent spike it said was the largest spending growth since 2010. While the US drove the global growth, China and India — the top Asian military spenders — were respectively the second- and third-largest military spenders in the world, the report said. China’s military expenditure reached USD 261 billion in 2019, a 5.1 per cent increase compared to 2018, while that of India grew by 6.8 p

Business Standard Dated April 27, 2020 Shubhyan Chakraborty Crippled by lack of inputs, funds and key information, 60% of firms are operating at less than a quarter of their full capacity, with just 10 per cent managing plant utilisation at over 50 per cent, a survey by the  Confederation of Indian Industry  (CII) shows. The movement of workers and raw materials remain key hurdles to resuming businesses despite the government allowing major chunks of the industry to operate, the survey has pointed out. Conducted on April 24, the survey shows that businesses consider getting permits for enterprises to restart, passes for daily travel of workers and establishing earlier supply chains, as their biggest headaches. For sectors allowed to function, 46 per cent of surveyed enterprises say permits are either not provided or are delayed. The CII has recommended that approvals of applications must have clear deadlines with a provision for automatic permits after the specified t

First Post Dated: April 27, 2020 India plans to fast track the review of some investment proposals from neigbouring countries such as China following concerns new screening rules could hit plans of companies and investors, three sources told  Reuters  on Saturday. To avoid opportunistic takeovers during the coronavirus outbreak, the government said this week that all foreign direct investment from countries sharing a land border would require prior government clearance, meaning they can’t go through a so-called automatic route. Advisers to Chinese firms have said they are concerned the process could take several weeks and hit deals and investment timelines. Auto firms such as SAIC’s MG Motor and Great Wall, and investors Alibaba and Tencent have placed major bets on India. The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi has called the new screening policy discriminatory. A senior government source who is involved in policymaking told  Reuters  that New Delhi will try to approve any in