Category: Economy

The Gautam Budh Nagar Industrial Department said on Friday that it has signed investment proposals worth ₹5,87,000 crore in the past two months with businesses interested in setting up units in Noida, Greater Noida and under the jurisdiction of the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (Yeida).

The department now hopes that at least 33% of these investment proposals materialise within the next one or two years so that new opportunities can be created and employment generated. “We are making efforts so that all of the proposals are realised and the district performs better,” said Anil Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of the District Industries Centre (DIC), Gautam Budh Nagar.

The Noida and Greater Noida authorities and Yeida, on the direction of the Uttar Pradesh government, organised road shows and events to attract investors to the district last year. The government has engaged all departments and industrial bodies to attract investors in the run up to the global investors’ summit to be held in the state on February 12, said officials.

The DIC said 884 proposals for various departments have been submitted by domestic and international investors so far. Of these, 294 are for medium, small and micro enterprises and export promotion. The other proposals include 199 for Noida, 88 for Greater Noida and 45 for Yeida; 67 proposals are IT related, 41 are for handloom units, and one is for a food supply unit.

Maharashtra government signed memorandum of understanding (MoUs) with six companies at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Davos, Switzerland, for a total investment of ₹25,000 crore in the Pune region. The proposed investment is in various sectors, including pharmaceuticals, automobiles, data, electric vehicles and food processing.

A delegation led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde represented Maharashtra at the WEF this year. The six MoUs signed in Davos carry the potential of generating more than 8,500 jobs, said Maharashtra Industries Minister Uday Samanth.

The six MoUs signed include a MoU worth ₹1,650 crore with Nipro Corporation, Japan, for a glass tubing production facility that will make Maharashtra a hub of pharmaceuticals’ production and create 2,000 job opportunities. Mahindra Electric Vehicle Automobile Limited is expected to start an electric automobile manufacturing unit at Chakan, Pune, estimated to create 3,000 employment opportunities, for which it has promised an investment of ₹10,000 crore, Samanth said. Pune is set to see an increase in food processing capabilities with the signing of a MoU with Rukhi Foods, which is likely to set up a ₹250 crore greenfield food processing plant near Pune.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Thursday said India has extended a concessional $40 million Line of Credit for developing sporting infrastructure in the Maldives.

The line of credit is part of India’s efforts to bring Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship projects such as “Fit India” and “Khelo India” into the ambit of the Neighbourhood First Policy. The projects of Fit India and Khelo India were introduced by the Indian government to revive sporting and fitness culture at the grassroot level in the country.

S. Jaishankar was on a three-day visit to the Maldives and Sri Lanka to further expand bilateral engagement with the two key maritime neighbours of India. He also inaugurated the community centre in Shaviyani Foakaidhoo with his Maldivian counterpart Abdulla Shahid. The community centre is part of 45 high-impact projects that New Delhi is partnering with the Maldives government, of which 23 have been completed.

New Delhi’s cooperation in the areas of sports and youth development has expanded rapidly, through the gifting of equipment and training of Maldivian athletes in India, Jaishankar said. “We have undertaken grant projects for setting up youth centres, strengthening sports infrastructure and establishing open-air gyms on 64 islands, including in Foakaidhoo,” he added.

The ministers also agreed to extend a further MVR 100 million as grant to the Maldives to undertake more projects towards the creation of local island infrastructure and socio-economic development of island communities.

The Centre’s public procurement initiative, Government eMarketplace (GeM) has registered over 1.44 lakh Udyam-verified women-led micro and small enterprises (MSEs) under the Womaniya programme launched in 2019.

Women MSE sellers have fulfilled over 14.76 lakh orders worth ₹21,265 crore in gross merchandise value since the beginning of the programme. They now have a share of 74% in the order value of products sold on GeM and 26% in the order value of service categories, informed the Union Commerce Ministry in a recent data shared.

The Womaniya programme encourages women entrepreneurs and self-help groups (SHGs) from the informal sector to sell via GeM. Its other objectives are to help them access public procurement markets, and work towards achieving gender-inclusive economic growth of under-served seller groups such as women-owned and led MSEs, tribal entrepreneurs, divyangjan, start-ups, SHGs, artisan and weavers.

Procurement worth Rs 42,564 crore was made by government departments and CPSEs from MSEs in financial year 2022-23 so far, of which 0.96% share – worth Rs 1,205 crore – came from women MSEs against a 3% annual target, said the official data.

The top product categories with the maximum number of women entrepreneurs were desktop computers, smartphones, special purpose telephones (smartphone for Integrated Child Development Service – ICDS), and hopper tipper dumper. The top service categories were manpower outsourcing services – minimum wage, custom bid for services, human resource outsourcing service, monthly basis cab and taxi hiring services, and manpower outsourcing services – fixed remuneration, according to the government data.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is set to launch its first thematic centre on healthcare and life sciences in Hyderabad, in collaboration with the Telangana government. The collaboration agreement was signed by Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director, World Economic Forum, and Shakthi Nagappan, CEO, Telangana Life Sciences Foundation – Government of Telangana, at the World Economic Forum’s 53rd annual meeting on Monday.

C4IR Telangana is the 18th centre to join the World Economic Forum’s Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) Network, which is spread in four continents. C4IR Telangana is the second C4IR centre in India after Mumbai. The Hyderabad centre will be an autonomous, non-profit organisation, leading on policy and governance for healthcare and life sciences, said the release issued by the WEF.

Telangana is regarded as a leading life sciences hotspot in Asia. It accounts for one-third of global vaccine output, and contributes to about 35 per cent of India’s pharmaceutical production. “Known for its strength in life sciences, Telangana is uniquely positioned to lead this effort, and the new Centre will play an important role in transforming the regional, national and global healthcare sector, and improving patient access and outcomes. It will accelerate product development and delivery innovation within the overall Indian healthcare system,” said WEF’s Head of Healthcare, Dr. Shyam Bishen.

The international community counts a lot on India’s leadership of the G20 (Group of 20) at a time when the world is faced with the continued economic slowdown and social distress, said the chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva.

“India, which is the president of G-20 countries, remains among the countries that perform better than the global average and by a good percentage,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters during a media roundtable on Thursday.

Lauding India for embracing digitization, Georgieva said, “What we see working extremely well for India is how the country has taken digitisation that was accelerated by COVID-19 to be a strong comparative advantage, both for public policy and for private sector growth.”

According to the IMF MD, one of the priorities in the G-20 is how to make digitisation built on a public platform that allows everybody to plug in and significantly reduces costs of digitization, and can be a source of growth and employment. She added that India has implemented some difficult reforms that are now paying off. She also pointed out the difficulties the country faces on the climate front and situations in Asia, primarily Sri Lanka and Pakistan that are volatile. Also, the fact that China has slowed down so dramatically, has had an impact for the whole of Asia, she added.

A consortium led by Adani Group has completed the purchase of Port of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea in northern Israel for 4 billion shekels ($1.15 billion), said Israel’s Finance Ministry on Tuesday.

The Adani Group outbid Chinese and Turkish companies for the right to purchase the port. Israel announced in July it would sell the port in Haifa, a major trade hub on the Mediterranean, to winning bidders Adani Ports and local chemicals and logistics group Gadot.

Haifa Port is one of Israel’s main seaports. The sale of the port has taken five years, and culminates the nearly two-decade reform of an underperforming sector disturbed for years by labour strikes. The country has been selling its state-owned ports and building new private docks to bring down costs and cut above-average waiting times for vessels to unload. About 99% of all goods move in and out of Israel by sea and port upgrades are needed to maintain economic growth.

China’s Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG) last year opened a new port across the bay in Haifa. The entry of SIPG and the Adani-led group is expected to boost Israel’s standing as a regional trade hub.

India handed over 75 passenger buses to Sri Lanka on January 8 as a part of assistance to strengthen the public transport infrastructure of the debt-ridden country.

Under the Neighbourhood First policy, India has been extending multi-pronged assistance to pull Sri Lanka out of the worst economic and humanitarian crisis it has seen since its independence in 1948. The island nation, with a population of about 22 million, has been battling shortages of essentials, from fuel to food, for months. In May 2022, the country declared that its foreign exchange reserves had dropped to a record low, and had a debt default of over $51 billion in foreign loans for the first time in its history. Extending a much-needed lifeline to its neighbour, India gave an aid of nearly $4 billion to Colombo.

The Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka, in a statement, said that 500 buses will be supplied to Sri Lanka through Indian assistance towards strengthening public transport infrastructure. Earlier, India had handed over 125 SUVs to Sri Lanka Police under the line of credit to resolve the mobility restriction issues faced by the police.

The Neighbourhood First Policy of India focuses on peaceful relations and collaborative co-development with its South Asian neighbours.

India’s wheat production is set to make a record in the current fiscal as all-time high prices prompted farmers to expand planting areas, and opt for high-yielding varieties. The experts suggest that production could rise to 112 million tonnes because of the higher area and favourable weather.

Scientists and traders have projected good weather conditions to be another factor for the bumper wheat production. India is the world’s second largest wheat producer. Led by the higher output, the country may consider lifting a ban on exports of the staple. It will help ease concerns over persistently high inflation in food prices.

In addition to being the world’s second largest producer, India is the world’s second-biggest consumer of wheat. In May 2022, the country banned exports of wheat after a sudden rise in temperatures cut output and exports picked up to meet the global shortfall led by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This year, news agency Reuters in a report said that the weather in key wheat-producing states of Uttar Pradesh, Madya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana has been favourable with temperatures hovering below normal levels. Farmers have planted the staple crop on 33.22 million hectares since 1 October, the beginning of the sowing season, nearly 1% higher from last year.

Remittances from overseas Indians increased by 12 per cent in one year, taking it to $100 billion for the year 2022, said Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas convention in Indore on Tuesday.

Calling the NRIs as the “real ambassadors of India,” the Union Minister appealed to them to use Made in India products and services as far as possible.  “Within a year, which was post-pandemic, people thought Indian workers will not go back abroad again; they have not only gone back, but more have gone for very useful employment and the remittance numbers have gone up by 12% within one year,” she said.

She further stated that the government is strongly presenting India to multinational companies as a country where they can set up their factories apart from China and the EU. The union minister also asked the Indian diaspora to partner with small and big businessmen of the country so that the entrepreneurial skills of NRIs can be harnessed in the next 25 years during the ‘Amrit Kaal’ of independence. “In the Amrit Kaal of independence, an aspirational India will focus on four “I,” which include infrastructure, investment, innovation and inclusion,” she said.