Articles From FICCI

 The new banking secretary R. Gopalan will meet state-run bank heads in February to further discuss the Finance Ministry's recommendations and its implications especially as major
 as there are no current or future capital infusion issues for the banks, especially in light of the $3.1-billion loan from the World Bank, which will be disbursed to banks short on capital.
 D. Subbarao that the central bank may have to tighten the accommodative monetary policy has contributed to the rise of the rupee.
 The two sides signed five agreements while India gave a $1 billion line of credit to Bangladesh, the largest assistance given by India to any country.
 Additionally, Dr. Singh has also agreed to the proposal to give Dhaka 250 megawatts of electricity from the central grid. India had earlier agreed to supply 100 mw of power.
 reached to a high of over a year in December, at 7.31%, primarily due to higher food prices. The December figures were greater than the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) forecast of a 6.5%-level inflation by the end of the fiscal.
 October 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had, in its bi-annual report on the world economy, forecasted that consumer price inflation in India will average 8.7% in 2009 and 8.4% in 2010
 The textile industry has requested the Central government to specifically allocate Rs. 4,500 crore in the Union Budget for the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS).
 The Indian economy is the fourth largest economy of the world on the basis of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).
 Steel Minister Virbhadra Singh has said that the Centre is leaving no stone unturned to see that South Korean steel major Posco's Rs 54,000-crore project in Orissa is kicked off after all the regulatory clearances in the 4-5 months
 Japan:-
 PM, Dr. Manmohan Singh referring to the country's impeccable record as a responsible nuclear power and the joint-target set by the two nations to cross $20 billion (Rs.93,400 crore) in trade by next year from only around $12 billion in 2008-09,
 To further these ties the two countries signed on a project development fund that will finance feasibility studies for a $90 billion (Rs4.2 trillion) Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project, to be built on both sides of the 1,480km of rail track between Delhi and Mumbai across seven Indian states
 Investors who found themselves swindled by the scam-hit IPOs of 2003-2005 finally found themselves in a position to recover their losses and be compensated as well. IDFC, NTPC, TCS, YES Bank and Suzlon Energy were some of the companies identified by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), among a list of 21 such IPOs.
 There has been a significant 13% drop in remittances at $22.8 billion during the first half of the year (January-June) 2009, as opposed to $26.2 billion in the same period in 2008.
 The domestic automobile industry has seen a rise in its sales in December, bringing the year to a close with a whopping 18.7 per cent jump year-on-year.
 Free Trade Enters the Indian Market
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 Week Ending 2 January 2010
 Beginning with the New Year India is all set to give effect to the free-trade-agreements (FTA) it has signed with South Korea and the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc. For now, India will liberalise its trade with three key ASEAN countries (Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia) by slashing duties on several items such as fish, apparel, cheese, tyres and construction equipment, with the remaining seven ASEAN members requesting more time as the trade pact needs to be internally approved or ratified by their parliaments.
 Under the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between India and Korea, Indian professionals from as many as 163 sectors, including IT, English teaching, consultancy and engineering, would be eligible for temporary visas up to one year in Korea. The agreement also aims for an eventual duty free trade of goods and services between the two countries by reducing duties on as many as 90 per cent of Korean products which include tyres, electrical goods, vehicle parts and petroleum products.
 The CEPA negotiations had started in March 2006 and were concluded in September 2008 with the Indian approval being granted by the Union cabinet at its meeting presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 2, 2009. The CEPA comprises six agreements relating to opening up of trade in goods, services and customs, and trade facilitation. Also important is the fact that the agreement is South Korea's first free trade accord with one of the fast growing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations and also India's first comprehensive trade agreement with a major economy. Although the bilateral trade between the two countries amounted to just $2.6 billion in 2002, it reached $15.6 billion (Rs74724 crore) last year, and has been steadily growing.
 In contrast, India is the seventh largest trading partner of ASEAN, with trade between the two close to $48 billion in 2008-09, but still it took six years for the two to appreciate each others' sensitivities before the Comprehensive Economics Cooperation Agreement (CECA) was inked in 2009. Also, only three ASEAN countries are implementing the agreement with India from January 1, but they account for the bulk of the India-ASEAN trade at around $40 billion. Myanmar, Brunei and Vietnam are also expected to implement the trade pact by March 2010, with the rest of the countries joining in from June. Both the sides have agreed to reduce or eliminate tariffs on 95% of the commodities in the trade basket over the next nine years, opening-up a 1.7 billion people market in a phased manner, with India to do this in three phases, beginning 2010 and ending around 2018. By 2016, duties of bulk trade would get eliminated or drastically reduced on about 4,000 products.
 Analysts hope that India's 'Look East Policy' would give a quantum jump to its annual bilateral trade with the rest of Asia. Despite the global economic slowdown, it is believed that India can maintain its policy of opening up at a rapid rate, as trade agreements look for long term gains and by the time the impact of the CECA/CEPA comes into effect, the current global downturn should be over.


 A task force of the 13th Finance Commission has proposed a single 12 per cent rate for GST which would consist of a 5 per cent tax imposed by the Centre and 7 per cent by the states
 Rural tele-density is 20 per cent as compared to over 100 per cent for towns and cities. It is therefore essential to double rural tele-density over the next few years, by exploiting to the fullest extent, the opportunities offered by mobile telephony for purposes of promotion of financial inclusion.
 In this context, the Reserve Bank's permission to telecom companies to use external commercial borrowings to fund bidding for the 3G spectrum auction slated for January 14 is rather intriguing.
 Bilateral trade between Israel and India has increased consistently from US$ 200 million
 in 2001 to US$ 1.4 billion in 2008.
 In this environment, Mr. Maran said that the Ministry has fixed a growth target of 12% to reach a market size of US$ 115 billion in the next five years and a global trade share of 7%. “If we have to sustain and grow, we need to reorient not only our policy goals by the entire production system,” he declared.
 The Cabinet decision to import sugar at zero duty up to December 31 this year should similarly bring down prices of sugar.
 Addressing captains of trade and industry here at a meeting organized jointly by FICCI, CII and ASSOCHAM, Mr. Razak said, “I will reiterate to the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the imperative need to conclude the Malaysia-India CECA by this year end and invite him to Malaysia to the sign the bilateral agreement.”
 India-ASEAN trade, which was US$ 2.5 billion in 1993-94, stood at US $ 39.06 billion in 2007-08 and is expected to reach US $ 50 billion by 2010. Total trade during April-December 2009 was US$ 34.01 billion.
 These complementarities and the imperatives of realizing the full potential of India’s ‘Look East’ and ASEAN’s ‘Look West’ policy will be discussed threadbare at ‘The Delhi Dialogue-II, on January 21-22, 2010.
 The ASEAN region is a net importer of services and it imported nearly $180 billion worth of services in 2007.
 The top sectors attracting FDI inflows (from April 2000 to September 2009) are: services (34%), Petroleum & Natural Gas (13%), Computer Software & Hardware (10%), Telecommunications (7%) and Construction Activities (4%).
 The proposed India-ASEAN Green Fund, with a corpus of US$ 5 million, would promote adaptation and mitigation technologies in the area of climate change.
 Mr, Singhania said that India-ASEAN bilateral trade has crossed the US$ 45 billion mark and we will top the US$ 50 billion mark in 2010. “While our next immediate target for bilateral trade is US$ 70 billion, FICCI would like to propose that the two sides aim to achieve US$ 100 billion in trade by 2015”, he said, adding that with the first essential step towards this already taken – India – ASEAN FTA is now operational – this target is certainly achievable.