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By Praful Bidwai The Mumbai session of the national executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party will go down as a Hindutva watershed for anointing Narendra Milosevic Modi as its supremely important, indispensable leader and its likeliest Prime Ministerial candidate in the next Lok Sabha elections. Mumbai thus takes forward...
NEW DELHI:China’s growing assertiveness, especially in the contentious South China Sea, and the volatile AfPak region will figure high in the bilateral defence and strategic cooperation talks betweenIndiaand theUSon Tuesday and Wednesday. Indiawill also convey toUSsecretary of defence Leon Panetta, on his first visit toIndiaafter taking over from Robert...
MUMBAI: US private equity giant Warburg Pincus has agreed to buy a controlling stake in financial services firm Future Capital Holdings for about Rs 800 crore. The move is part of its strategy to tap opportunities in India’s capital-starved micro, small and medium enterprises sector. Warburg will pay 162...
NEW DELHI: aced with difficult times, the government today took a few more steps to soothe investors and “stay course”, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stepping in to form a ministers’ panel to thrash out problems in the coal sector and convening a meeting on Wednesday to review the...
NEW DELHI:Indiais hoping to secure oil and gas exploration blocks inAfghanistanon the basis of its goodwill with the country, while it may also participate in the upcoming auction of six blocks to the north of Mazar-i-Sharif, officials said. An Indian delegation, including officials from state-run explorer Oil & Natural...
NEW DELHI: The government is drawing up plans to ease the foreign direct investment norms for single-brand retail, including the condition that global firms will have to source 30% of their requirements from local small firms and artisans. This is seen as a clear sign that the Centre is...
NEW DELHI: State-owned CoalIndiahas directed its subsidiaries to enter into fuel supply pacts with power units that are coming up between January 2012 and March 2015, bringing a respite to fuel-starved power companies. The development comes in the wake of the coal ministry, last month, directing the public sector...
NEW DELHI:India’s beleaguered mobile phone companies are set for a Rs. 1,20,000-crore shocker. A Cabinet note prepared by the telecom department proposes to make it compulsory for all operators to match the auction-determined price for their existing 2G airwaves for the remaining period of their licences. Industry calculations show...
MUMBAI: Dismal growth numbers may force the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to cut interest rates and soften its monetary policy stance. While a diesel price hike by the government will make the central bank’s job simpler, RBI Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn on Monday hinted that there was some...
NEW DELHI: The row over the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy for the pharmaceutical sector refuses to die down. Ministries have again locked horns over who will regulate brownfield foreign investment in the sector, forcing the Prime Minister’s Office to advise a group of ministers (GoM) looking at the...
MUMBAI: The power ministry’s guidelines for short-term procurement of electricity for less than or equal to one year is likely to bring cheer to cash-strapped distribution companies. The new rules are expected to reduce power cost. The ministry had noted that the guidelines are aimed at promoting competitive procurement...
NEW DELHI: State-owned oil companies have vehemently denied that they are making huge profits and asserted that only the government subsidy helped them to report a net profit of less than 1% of their turnover in 2011-12. This profit is reported in order to maintain creditworthiness, the companies said...
The extensive modernization ofIndia’s navy represents its desire to become not only a major regional player, but a major global one as well. Throughout most of the 20` century,India’s naval priorities were essentially focused on containingPakistanand securing the maritime approaches to Indian territorial waters. This keptIndia’s naval outlook confined...
NEW DELHI: The government is set to remove the legal hurdle in the entry of banks into commodity futures trading, despite the Reserve Bank ofIndia’s reservations on the issue. Banks can now trade in shares, bonds and currencies, but Section 8 of the Banking Regulation Act prohibits them from...
New Delhi: The controversial provision to retrospectively tax indirect transfer of Indian assets through deals executed overseas is likely to spare a large number of transactions by excluding those where the Indian assets account for less than half the total deal size. The retrospective amendment to the Income-Tax Act,...
By Nitya Chakraborty The threat to the UPA-2 government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh is now real. The growth data released on May 31 showing all round decline of the Indian economy has only accentuated the crisis in the centre. It has come at the worst possible time for...
By B.K. Chum in Chandigarh Can the rot that has pushed Punjab’s economy to its terminal stage be stemmed? The question has gained importance because of the latest revelations about the growth rates. According to states 2011-12 growth data submitted by the Union ministry of statistics to the Planning...
By Anjan Roy India’s economy is now faring worse than during the global financial melt-down of 2008. That speaks a lot about the reverse turn in the fortunes of Indian economy in a short time. It reflects the policy drift that we have been witnessing for the last couple...