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Nirbhay Kumar   | July 14, 2020 |  As many as 666 items such as electric lamps, wooden furniture, tricycles and ski-boots imported from China could be produced locally and hence cut trade deficit with the neighbouring country by about $10 billion a year, industry body Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME) has found. FISME carried out the analysis following a directive from the Commerce Ministry to ascertain products where import dependence could be substantially reduced. "We have identified over 600 items which are imported by MSMEs primarily from China. We are in the process of assessing the impact of higher duty on these items. In some cases, for instance low-value items, local capability can be easily built and import substitution can happen. We are studying it in detail and send our recommendations to the government," said FISME Secretary General Anil Bhardwaj. Most of these products are those which do not require m...

By  Manu Pubby ,  ET Bureau  Jul 14, 2020    The private sector wants the Centre to bar  Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd  ( HAL ) from a ₹21,000 crore plan to manufacture naval utility helicopters (NUH), saying that the state-owned company has an undue advantage as it has access to government-funded infrastructure and the ability to cross-subsidise the bid through other nominated orders. The companies were responding to a question posed by the defence ministry in May on allowing HAL in the competition, which was reserved for the private sector as reported by ET. They said the monopoly of the state-owned enterprise needs to be broken and a level playing field is needed for all bidders.  Four Indian companies –  Bharat Forge ,  Tata Aerospace and Defence ,  Mahindra Defence Systems  and  Adani Defence  – are contending for the Make in India programme to manufacture 111 naval utility helicopters under ...

 :  Zia Haq Jul 14, 2020  India’s benchmark inflation measure Consumer Price Index (CPI) grew at 6.1% in the month of June. The June inflation numbers are slightly higher than 5.8% figure for March 2020. The National Statistical Office (NSO) has released full inflation statistics after a gap of two months. Because there is no headline CPI number for the months of April and May, it is difficult to infer whether the lockdown and subsequent unlocking of the economy has led to a rise or crash in prices. To be sure, imputed inflation numbers released for the months of April and May yesterday show that inflation has been declining from May. Yesterday’s data does show some signs of disruption in non-food supply chains due to the lockdown. Core inflation, which is the non-food non-fuel component of CPI, grew at 5% in June, 2020 compared to 3.8% in March 2020. Retail inflation data released by the government after a two-month gap showed prices in June surged to 6.09%, just...

Indivjal Dhasmana      July 14, 2020 Former Chief Statistician Pronab Sen on Monday said that the government was in a wait and watch mode in terms of taking fiscal decisions to revive businesses, which was not a good strategy in times of the crisis. If the government takes too long to take fiscal steps, this may kill the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), he warned while delivering the TN Srinivasan Memorial Lecture, titled Data in  Coronavirus  Times. “At the moment, the sense I am getting is that the government is in a wait and watch mode. A wait and watch is a bad strategy at the time of the crisis,” Sen said in his lecture, organised by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). He said that while the  lockdown  had created supply side shocks, these had transformed into demand side issues now when the  lockdown  was being lifted. “The supply side issues with no production in the  lockdown  led ...

  Jul 14, 2020   Yashwant Raj The United States on Monday categorically rejected all of China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea in a hardening of its position on a long festering regional dispute that reflected worsening of relations between the two countries in recent months. “We are strengthening US policy in a vital, contentious part of that region, the South China Sea,” Secretary of State Michael R Pompeo said in a statement. “We are making clear Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.” The United States was “aligning” itself, Pompeo added, with a 2016 order of the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the 1982  Convention that had rejected China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea. China has claimed between 85% and 90% of the South China Sea hemmed in by the so-called “Nine-Dashed Line” - a Chinese cartographic inscription from 1947 and m...

  Radhika Pandey  ,  Amrita Pillai  |  Updated: July 14, 2020 The government’s initiatives announced in the stimulus package have been geared towards helping MSMEs maintain liquidity and for ensuring greater credit availability. The emergency credit line, the subordinate debt provision and the equity infusion measure, apart from the long-awaited reform to the MSME definition, have been significant interventions. It is important, however, to examine how game-changing they have been to the existence of approximately 6.3 crore MSMEs that employ 11 crore people across the country. A recent nationwide survey, conducted by the All India Manufacturing Organisation (AIMO), found that 78 per cent of small companies’ owners were not satisfied with the implementation of the package. The results of the survey also suggest that transmission on the ground is slow, moreover 85 per cent of the sector may not benefit from it. In another survey carried out by FICCI-Dhruva Ad...

Divya Rajagopal Bengaluru based Biocon NSE 5.48 % will take on Swiss drugmaker Roche with its psoriasis drug Itolizumab which received emergency drug approval from the Drug Controller General of India. While some physicians expressed surprise about the limited number of patients used for the drug trial on the basis of which the company got the go-ahead, Biocon said in an emergency situation, the size of the trial is alway small. Biocon says its drug is the first biologic to have received approval in the world for the treatment of moderate to severe Covid-19 patients. The company is marketing the drug as a replacement to Roche Pharma’s Tocilizumab (originally approved for rheumatoid arthritis) that is currently in off label use (it means use of a drug for an unapproved indication) among Covid-19 patients who suffer from cytokine release syndrome (CRS) or “cytokine storm”. CRS happens when a protein called IL-6  mounts an immune response to infections. Some Covid-19 patients hav...

Akshay Narang   Western opinion-makers today envisage a triangular world with Russia, China and the US being the main competitors. They tend to put Russia and China in an informal strategic axis. But few realise that the Sino-Russian strategic partnership is just as fragile as the melting Polar ice in the Arctic.  Russia cooperates with China because the West had cut it off after the Crimea annexation in 2014. Now, Putin cooperates with China in areas of interest and reluctantly eschews deep conflicts in the Sino-Russian relationship. However, 56 years ago, a visionary American diplomat, Chester Bowles- the Ambassador to India from 1963 to 1969 had predicted the fault-lines between the erstwhile Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. He was far-sighted in his perception of the threats that Chinese expansionism posed to the world peace and the Washington-led rules-based international order. Bowles had also realised New Delhi’s pivotal role in 1964 its...

July 10, 2020 Acreage up 44% at 580 lakh hectares Favourable conditions have helped farmers to complete planting in 55 per cent of the normal kharif cropping area in a record time and the area covered till Friday was 44 per cent more than that was sown in the corresponding week last year, at 580 lakh hectares (lh), according to kharif sowing data released by Agriculture Ministry, here. The area planted in the same week last year was 402.6 lh. Helping farmers plant more this time was due to better monsoon – both in terms of coverage and quantum as well as comfortable water storage in reservoirs. As on Thursday, the country received 275.4 millimetres (mm) of rainfall as against the normal of 243.6 mm during the monsoon season which started on June 1. Similarly, 123 reservoirs monitored by the Central Water Commission on Thursday had 67 per cent more water as compared to the corresponding period last year.   Pulses, oilseeds and cotton accounted for much of the increase. A...