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FE Bureau, Aug 9, 2017 India, along with 17 countries under the Heart of Asia – Istanbul Process, is seeking to make transit and trade agreements among them more inclusive and comprehensive by expanding them both northwards and southwards, to connect South Asia with Central Asia. At a meeting held in New Delhi, the participants, besides viewing Afghanistan as a natural bridge in promoting regional connectivity and economic integration, also reviewed steps taken for development of transit and transport through Chabahar Port involving India, Afghanistan and Iran, TAPI gas pipeline, CASA-1000, TAT railway line and Lapis Lazuli corridor. At the eighth meeting of the Regional Technical Group on Trade, Commerce and Investment CBM of the Heart of Asia – Istanbul Process, hosted by India as the lead country, all agreed on the value of such connectivity and economic integration projects to overall growth, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan. The meeting was co-chaired by the actin...

Geeta Nair, Aug 09, 2017 Thermax is expanding its international operations to make up for missing out on growth in the Indian market. This expansion is expected to make up for some of the drop in the Indian business. As part of plans for localisation of manufacturing in international markets, Thermax has opened its new manufacturing facility in Indonesia with an investment of $25 million. This plant will tap the Indonesian as well as the ASEAN markets for its products business, Thermax Group chairperson Meher Pudumjee said. The manufacturing base in Indonesia will benefit from the FTA agreement among ASEAN members and help them to get into markets in Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines, she said. Thermax has created an investment hub in Singapore through which it would be investing in these markets. The core sector in India has been sluggish over the last three to four years, Pudumjee said. There are few orders and a lot of competition, so margin...

Reuters, Aug 09, 2017 The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India on Tuesday said the merger of Sahara India Life Insurance Company with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company was the result of a two-year-process, Mint reported. The IRDA was responding to Sahara’s appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal claiming that the merger did not follow the principles of natural justice. The IRDA said that Sahara was made fully aware of every part in the two-year merger process. It said the company had also been issued two show-cause notices in the last two years about its insurance business. “The appellant [Sahara] chose not to reply or to provide vague and evasive replies,” the publication quoted the IRDA statement. “Sahara provided a vague, belated and unimpressive reply to the first show-cause notice—a case of too little too late.” On July 29, while passing the order for merger of Sahara Life and ICICI Prudential, IRDA had observed that Sahara was uninterested i...

PTI, Aug 08, 2017 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday questioned the control of third-party entities such as app stores to “limit” mobile users’ right over their own data in the name of data security and privacy. Trai chairman R.S. Sharma said the question is who owns data like call logs and messages that a user receives on his/her mobile, and whether third-party entities can actually “extinguish” the users’ right over such data. He said that Trai will release a discussion paper on the issue in a day or two. The comment comes in the backdrop of the regulator’s ongoing tussle with Apple that is reportedly not allowing convergence of the Trai’s do-not-disturb app on its iOS platform. Trai’s app allows users to flag pesky calls and unsolicited messages directly to the regulator as it pulls out such details from messages and call logs. While Google’s Android operating system supports the Trai app, the regulator’s talks with Apple have reportedly no...

Manas Chakravarty, Aug 09, 2017 Perceptions matter. The government of the day will be able to garner more support if people feel their incomes are increasing or their employment prospects have improved. True, non-economic factors matter a lot and, throughout history, the ability to stage circuses has been as important for governments as providing bread. But economic factors play a big role in people’s sense of well-being and the latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) surveys should be a wake-up call for the central government. For example, shouldn’t the government be concerned that in the June 2017 RBI survey on consumer confidence, the percentage of respondents who said that their incomes had decreased from a year ago was more than in September 2013, during the depths of the balance-of-payments crisis? Should it not worry them that the percentage of people polled who said their incomes had increased from a year ago was lower than in December 2013 and March 2014, when the disench...

Shakti Patra, Aug 09, 2017 Tata Steel Ltd is actively looking at inorganic expansion as part of its growth strategy while it aims to ramp up capacity in India, chairman N. Chandrasekaran told the firm’s shareholders at its annual general meeting on Tuesday. At the same time, he warned that the short- to medium-term focus would be on paring debt. “We are seriously looking at inorganic growth and scaling (up) the Kalinganagar plant,” said Chandrasekaran. When shareholders asked whether he would consider buying stressed steel assets including Essar Steel Ltd, which would give the firm a foothold in western India, he said he was open to everything. Chandrasekaran’s statement comes at a time when several large steel producers such as Essar Steel and Bhushan Steel Ltd are facing insolvency proceedings due to their inability to service debt. Tata Steel has a current capacity of 24mt, including its European operations. The production ramp-up at its Kalinganagar facility was one of th...

Kalpana Pathak, Aug 09, 2017 Billionaire Dilip Shanghvi’s Sun Oil and Natural Gas is close to acquiring state-run Gujarat State Petroleum Corp.’s (GSPC) 66.67% stake in the Hazira gas field located in the Cambay basin in Gujarat, two people aware of the development said. The deal is expected to close by September, the people said on condition of anonymity, without disclosing the deal value. The purchase would give Sun Oil and Natural Gas full control of the gas field, in which it bought a 33.3% stake from Canada’s Niko Resources Ltd in December for an undisclosed sum. Also in December, state-owned explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) said it had decided to purchase an 80% stake and development rights in GSPC’s Deen Dayal West field in the Krishna -Godavari offshore block OSN-2001/3 for $995.26 million. The Hazira field is part of 16 hydrocarbon assets in Gujarat’s Cambay basin in which GSPC holds stakes. Niko has operated the field for the past 22 years. Sun ...

Tarun Shukla, Aug 8, 2017 Boeing Co. is in talks with Indian companies to collaborate on drones, digital technology and aerospace services, a top company executive said.​ The US-based aircraft maker is already making the fuselage of its Apache attack helicopters and floor beams for some of its planes in collaboration with the Tata group in India and has also invested in an engineering unit in Bengaluru. Marc Allen, president of Boeing International, said Boeing is casting its “anchor deep into India” and more announcements are likely soon. “You see that we are producing the structure for Apache (helicopters) but what’s ahead now will be the progression (of this),” he said in an interview on 1 August. “We have talked around a variety of possibilities whether it is autonomous systems or whether it is systems themselves on another platform. None of them are announced yet, so I am not going to make news... but there are a number of discussions ongoing, so that’s going to contin...

Shashwati Shankar, Aug 8, 2017 A Google executive confirmed that the company will bring its Google feed service to India shortly. As for Google Home, three people aware of the company's plans said the smart speaker is likely to be launched here next year. "India is super high priority for us. It’s difficult to say exactly how soon, but we want to get Google Feed to India soon," said Shashidhar Thakur, vice president of Google Search, during an interaction with ET at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. "We are also putting quite a bit of energy into Google Search’s language diversity needs in India, focusing on 20-odd Indian languages," he said.  In July, Google released a personalised news feed for phones that would throw up a stream of content for users, based on location, search history and topics they have selected. The company also plans to introduce a 'new-to-you' feature in the feed this year, which will list out link...

By  ET Bureau  |  Aug 08, 2017 Former chairman of Unique Identity Development Authority of India (UIDAI) Nandan Nilekani said the Aadhaar system has not been breached but going forward, security was going to be a cause for concern. “On the security front, there has really been no ‘hack’ to the Aadhaar system. But people (hackers) have tried to get users to do an OTP and give their details,” Nilekani said, adding, “It is not a hack. But absolutely, security is going to be a big concern in all these things.” His comments come in the backdrop of UIDAI lodging a complaint with the Bengaluru police last month against an IIT-Kharagpur engineer Abhinav Srivastava and his startup Qarth Technologies Pvt Ltd for developing an app and illegally accessing the Aadhaar database. Nilekani, who was speaking at the CK Prahalad Memorial Lecture, answered multiple audience queries on data privacy, security and the use of data for public good. “If we are going to be an incr...