Category: Economy

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.

Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s biggest producers of palm oil, have agreed to work together to fight “discrimination” against the commodity. Indonesian President Joko Widodo said this after meeting Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Indonesia on Monday. Anwar was visiting Indonesia on his first overseas tour since taking office in November.

Joko Widodo said the two countries would also strengthen cooperation through the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries to address concerns.

During their bilateral meeting, Anwar and Jokowi signed eight memorandums of understandings covering shipping, export-import financing, green energy, the development of battery industry, which they said they hoped would deepen cross border trade and investment.

In recent years, concerns over the mass clearing of tropical rainforests, destruction of endangered wildlife habitats, land conflicts with indigenous communities, and labour rights abuses have fuelled consumer campaigns against products containing palm oil.

The Asian leaders also discussed the development of Indonesia’s planned new capital, Nusantara, located in the Indonesian port of Borneo. Anwar gave 11 letters of interest from Malaysian companies related to possible investment in the new city. He said that the new capital could boost regional development, as the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak are located in the Malaysian part of Borneo Island. 

Under its Group of Twenty (G20) presidency, India is set to host the foreign ministers’ meet in Delhi in March 2023.

The 2023 G20 Delhi summit is the upcoming eighteenth meeting of G20. Scheduled to take place in Pragati Maidan, it is expected to host leaders from member countries.

India’s G20 presidency will see more than 200 meetings across 55 locations, culminating with the annual G20 summit on 9-10 September. The first G20 meeting — the Sherpa meet — was held in the first week of December in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

The 55 locations for the meetings span big metros to smaller cities, including those rich in history and scenic beauty such as Hampi and Khajuraho. The locations will also include Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities that have picturesque landscapes and are rich in cultural heritage. These cities will get spruced up as part of the preparations for the G20 meetings.

In an earlier statement, MEA said the Presidency is also a chance for the G20 Secretariat to provide the country’s citizens with the unique opportunity be a part of India’s G20 story. The Indian G20 presidency has also planned a year-long ‘India Experience’ for G20 member countries, special invitees, and others.

Dubai on January 4 announced an ambitious plan aiming to boost foreign trade and investment, and double the size of its economy by 2033.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, unveiled in a series of tweets, the Dubai Economic Agenda, dubbed “D33”, with targets totalling 32 trillion dirhams ($8.7 trillion). The plan would “double the size of Dubai’s economy in the next decade and consolidate its position among the top three global cities,” Sheikh Mohammed said in a post. The objectives would be achieved through “100 transformative projects,” he tweeted.

The new economic agenda would also add 400 cities to Dubai’s list of trading partners, increasing foreign trade in the coming decade by 44% to 25.6 trillion dirhams. According to Sheikh Mohammed, it would also see foreign direct investment in Dubai exceed 650 billion dirhams within 10 years.

Despite its warning that a third of the world’s economy will slip into recession in 2023 amid slowing growth in the United States, the European Union and China, the International Monetary Fund in November predicted “robust” economic growth in the UAE, with projected GDP growth of 6% in 2022. Dubai’s GDP stood at 307.5 billion dirhams during the first nine months of 2022, showing a 4.6% rise year-on-year from 2021.

In 2022, the sales of domestic passenger vehicles (PV) in India increased by 23% to 37.93 lakh units to become the highest ever sales in the industry for a calendar year. Last year’s record sales beat the sales of 33.3 lakh in 2018.

The sales were led by Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai and Tata Motors, which recorded their best sales on the back of pent-up demand and better semiconductor chip supply. The 2022 sales are 23.1 per cent more than that of 2021. The 2022 figure is about 14 per cent higher than the previous highest.

The highest growth in annual domestic PV sales was witnessed by Tata Motors, Kia India and Toyota Kirloskar at 58.2 per cent, 40.2 per cent and 22.6 per cent, respectively, according to the companies’ data. The biggest carmaker of the country, Maruti Suzuki posted a 15.4 per cent growth in annual domestic PV sales at 1.579 million units. The manufacturers count wholesales, the units dispatched to dealers, as sales.

On the basis of price, about 40% of vehicles sold in the industry were in the bracket of Rs 10 lakh or above, the carmakers said in a statement.