- NRIs may be let into farm houses
- The DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion) is considering a proposal to allow non-resident Indians to buy farm houses and small plantations in
- The proposed policy is aimed at curtailing the ‘benami’ transactions that are already taking place.
- India Portugal sign extradition treaty
- Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva is currently on a visit to
- When Abu Salem, the prime accused in the 1993 Mumbai blasts was arrested in
- US to send more troops to
- American President George Bush told Americans that 21,500 more troops would be sent to Iraq to help “break the cycle of violence” in Iraq and hasten an eventual withdrawal.
- This is surely going to set him on a collision path with the Congress, which has become Democrat controlled in the recently concluded Congressional elections.
- Automotive Research Association of
- It is the country’s apex automotive testing and certification agency.
- Its Director is Mr. S.R. Marathe.
- It has signed an agreement with
- What does “homologation” mean?
- Homologation is a technical term, derived from the Greek homologos for "agree," which is used in English to signify the granting of approval by an official authority. This may be a court of law, a government department, or a professional body, any of which would normally work from a set of strict rules or standards to determine whether such approval should be given.
- FTA with ASEAN
- ASEAN is reported to have agreed finally to
- Both sides have further agreed that trade coverage in the negative list should not exceed 5%.
- A negative list comprises items to be excluded from tariff reduction commitments.
- Government’s tax kitty keeps on swelling
- Indirect tax collections for the period April to December 2006
- Rose by 17% to Rs. 1,44,201 crores
- Direct tax collections
- Rose by 41.8% to Rs. 1,44,286 crores.
- Sugar export ban lifted on bumper crop
- The government lifted the ban on export of sugar with immediate effect.
- The bumper crop in this sugar season is expected to lead to a 33 lakh tonne surplus in the market.
- Sugar exports were banned in July 2006 to check rising prices of the commodity.
- Why is that job and educational quotas are proliferating fast and becoming the bedrock of political success and defeat?
- In the current coalition era, small group based parties have huge clout since they can make or break coalitions. Elections are won and lost on swings of just 1% of the vote, so parties have a strong incentive to give in to group demands over individual rights.
- Some debatable thoughts (from Narendar Pani in today’s centre page article) on rehabilitation of farmers who are dispossessed of their lands for industrialization:
- An ideal rehabilitation package would give the displaced persons the option of continuing with their old lifestyle in a different location.
- But because land is scarce, this cannot be implemented. Nor is it possible for the government to foot the entire costs of rehabilitation.
- So rather than putting in place a rehabilitation package that promises more than it can do, it would be much more rewarding to reduce the costs of displacement. One way of doing this would be to strengthen the links between the new industrial units and the displaced farmers – either by giving them employment, or by taking their land on lease instead of outright purchase. But this kind of an approach also has its limitations. In this, the farmers lot gets tied to the fortunes of the industrial unit. If the industry goes down, the farmer also gets hit in the process.
- So, the alternative could be to empower or enable the farmer to move to urban centres with much more ease than is possible at present. This can be done by improving urban housing for the poor, improving the basic amenities in urban areas etc.
- FII taxation and the difference between ‘investment’ and ‘trading’
- FIIs buying stocks directly in Indian stock markets and disposing them off in less than a year will be treated as traders and their gains from such transactions would be taxable as capital gains. If they hold the stocks for more than a year, then the gains would be long term capital gains and would be exempt from tax.
- FIIs operating in
- FIIs operating out of
- For FIIs which come from other locations, their profits would not be taxable in
- Chairman of the Forward Markets Commission
- S. Sundaresan
- SAFTA: South Asian Free Trade Area
- Under this, which was implemented from July 2005, all SAARC members have to phase out tariffs on products by 2016. The agreement is expected to triple regional trade to about $18 bn in the next five years.
- 150th Member of the WTO
- Amaranth Advisors founder
- Nicholas Maounis
- This is the hedge fund that has seen a mind boggling loss of $4.6 bn in just one week in September 2006. Ultimately the hedge fund was closed down, with about $6 bn in losses.
- He is the news again for setting up another business so soon after having lost such mind boggling money on behalf of his investors.
- IX Schedule judgement by Supreme Court
- In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court has said that laws which violate the fundamental rights of citizens, even if are sought to be given protection from judicial scrutiny by placing them in the IX Schedule to the constitution, would be struck down.
- The 9 judge constitutional bench of the Court was answering an issue raised by a 5 judge bench whether laws placed in the Ninth Schedule were beyond judicial review. The Court held that laws which are placed in the Ninth Schedule after 1973 (April, 24) when Kesavananda Bharti judgement was delivered, will be open to judicial scrutiny.
- In Kesavananda Bharti case, the Court has laid down the basic structure doctrine. The same was upheld in Waman Rao vs. Union of India in 1980.
- The present judgement of the Court has added the touchstone of fundamental rights.
- Ninth Schedule now has about 285 legislations. Those of them that are kept there after April 24, 1973 can be questioned, if they are violative of fundamental rights of the citizens. This means that the Tamilnadu law on reservations, reserving about 69% of seats in educational institutions can be questioned on this ground, even though it is placed under the IX schedule.
Showing posts with label ASEAN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ASEAN. Show all posts
12.01.2007
30.12.2006
- Volatility coefficient for sensex
- The annualized volatility coefficient for BSE sensex stood at 26% for 2006, compared to 17% and 25% during 2005 and 2004 respectively.
- This coefficient indicates the amount of fluctuation in market movements during the year.
- It is calculated by taking the standard deviation of daily returns for either the stock or the index and then annualizing it over the total number of trading days during the year.
- Call money rates hit a 9 year high
- Call money means the money on call or overnight funds borrowed by banks to meet their daily asset liability mismatches. The money is lent by other banks with surplus funds and bond houses with a specific mandate to lend in the call money market. Banks can also borrow from the RBI by pledging their surplus government bond holdings.
- These rates have touched a high of 18 to 19% on fund crunch.
- Quantitative restrictions on agricultural exports may go
- The government’s motivation on banning farm exports is to hold their prices domestic market.
- The government is signaling that these restrictions will be replaced with tariffs; a measure which will have huge impact on farm incomes and commodity prices in general.
- Schedule of assembly polls in three states
- The Election Commission has announced that elections to the state assemblies of
- Demand for return of Kohinoor diamond
- The diamond was gifted to Queen
- There were claims from
- What are interconnect user charges? Is service tax leviable on such charges?
- Interconnect user charges are charges paid by one telecom service provider to another for enabling calls to move from one network to the other.
- The Attorney General of India has opined that service tax cannot be levied on such charges. This is because interconnectivity is a service provided between telecom operators and not between the telecom company and the subscriber.
- Hutch shareholding pattern
- Hutchison Telecom and associates hold 67% in Hutch Essar. While 52% is directly held by Hutchison Whampoa, the balance 15% is held indirectly through associates like Telecom Investments Inida and subsidiaries and Indusind Telecom Networks.
- Of Essar’s 33% holding, a 22.02% block is foreign controlled.
- Managing Director of NABARD: Mr. K.G. Karmaker.
- Balance of payments surplus helps the country brave the current account deficit
- The country’s current account deficit touched $6.9 billion during the quarter ended September, 2006. The capital account has seen a surplus of $8.6 billion during the same period. Hence the balance of payments, which is the sum of the current and capital account transactions in a given period showed an overall $2.2 billion surplus.
- The country’s trade deficit is at $17.9 billion on an exports figure of $30.8 billion and imports of $49 billion.
- Management of external debt
- Foreign debt management policies administered by the government include:
- Placing of emphasis on raising funds at concessional terms and from less expensive sources with longer maturities
- Monitoring short-term debt
- Prepayment of high-cost loans
- Rationalization of interest rates on NRI deposits
- Restrictions on end-use of external commercial borrowings (ECBs)
- Limiting of trade credits
- Encouraging non-debt creating capital flows
- Indo-Asean FTA talks
- ASEAN has not responded positively to
- ASEAN’s primary interest lies in the area of palm oil where it has demanded that duties should be pruned to 30% to 40% within 5 years of the implementation of the free trade agreement instead of the 50% within 10 to 12 years as suggested by
- ASEAN, which has initially produced a negative list of 600 items, has later hiked it to 1000 items.
- What is competitive advantage?
- Competitive advantages are the firm specific set of capabilities that enable individual firms to perform well in open markets.
- Changing composition of our exports during the period 2000 to 2006
- Exports can be grouped into three broad classes on the basis of primary factors affecting the competitive process in each activity and the technological characteristics.
- The first is the resource intensive product category whose major competitive source is access to abundant natural resources – like aluminium smelting, oil refining etc. The share of these products has remained stagnant and did not show any definite trend over the period.
- The second is labour intensive exports where the main competitive advantage is labour costs – garments, clothing, footwear, toys etc. The share of these products in our exports has gone down from 26% to 21%.
- The third is knowledge and technology intensive product category. There has been a substantial increase in the share of this category of exports from 24% in 2000-2001 to 29% in 2005-2006.
- Thus
- What does El Nino have to do with tyre prices in
- The El Nino effect, created by the abnormal warming of waters in the Pacific Ocean around the equator, usually results in drought in
- Since rubber tress are impacted by warm weather, availability of natural rubber is also reduced. Since production of synthetic rubber will not increase dramatically from crude oil, in view of the volatility in prices of crude, rubber prices are set to rule firm. This leads to an increase in prices of rubber products like car tyres.
- Joseph Stiglitz on why interest rates as a tool for managing monetary policy are less important now.
- The objectives of the monetary policy are achieving growth and stability. These objectives can be achieved by a adopting a multiple indicator approach and the central bank should focus on a plethora of tools.
- The focus should be on credit markets. With new technologies, money is not required for transactions, only for credit. Most transactions are not income-generating, but simply exchange of assets. The ratio of exchange of assets to income is not stable. This has changed the velocity of money. This in a way, has restricted the effectiveness of interest rates as a tool of monetary policy.
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