- 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 WTO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WTO. Show all posts
12.01.2007
06.01.2007
- The global market for set top boxes is over $7 billion a year.
- The global market for iPod is estimated at $4 billion.
- World Cup and vocabulary
- Today’s paper said “A heady mix of cricket, steel drums and angosturas wilk keep travel buffs and cricket fans in good spirits…”
- What is angosturas? Angostura is an aromatic bitters which takes its name from the town of
- We have Hutchison sell off also teaching us a bit of vocabulary. Today’s reports read “.. the Ruias seem to be playing their variation of Ruy Lopez defence by offering to buy out Mr. Li’s stake.” What is this Ruy Lopez defence?
- In the game of chess this is a particular method of opening the game; also popularly called the Spanish game. It is difficult for me to explain this in worlds. Instead take a look at this page which explains various chess openings.
- Air
- Biggest ad spenders in the country by sector
- Realtors – spent around Rs. 510 crores between January and November 2006
- Automobile
- Educational institutions
- Mumbai local train traffic
- As many as 62 lakh commuters use these trains everyday.
- Government to discuss lifting sugar export ban
- As against a domestic consumption of 185 lakh tonnes, sugar production is expected to touch 240 lakh tonnes this year and the total available stocks could be around 270 lakh tonnes if carry-over stocks are included.
- Hence the government is likely to consider lifting the export ban on sugar.
- What are HSN codes?
- Harmonized System of Nomenclature, is a tariff classification system of the World Customs Organisation. It allows merchandise to be identified across nations without error, assigning an eight-digit number for each commodity.
- It updates the HSN every five years and countries which are members of the body have to adopt the new system. Indian customs departments follows the HSN system.
- Low crude oil recoveries in
- Our recovery rate for crude oil is reported to be at 28%. Experts feel that the recovery factors of public sector oil companies could easily be raised to 40% through technology intervention. In fact ONGC has plans to this effect.
- The Ministry of Petroleum has almost warned ONGC that either it should improve its recovery rates or allow the foreign partners to bring in advanced technology.
- Steel sector contribution to improve usage of steel
- Every steel company in
- The money would be used to launch a nationwide campaign aimed at building awareness about the usage of steel.
- Average annual per capita incomes of developed countries
- Countries like US and
- The same figure for poorer half of the world’s population is about $6000.
- When did NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) make an entry into the WTO in a formal way?
- At the
- Wah Taj!!!
- Indian Hotels which operates the Taj group of hotels in
- Some other notable properties that the Taj group has acquired include – Pierre in
- Competition Commission of
- It is expected to be operational fully from September 2007.
- The Commission will have 6 members instead of the originally proposed 10 members. In addition, it will have a chairman.
- It was constituted in 2002 and has currently only one member.
- It could not become fully operational as there were some legal challenges on the selection of members.
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