Category: Economy

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the National Green Hydrogen Mission with an allocation of ₹19,744 crore, aimed at producing 5 million tonne of green hydrogen annually by 2030.

Out of the total allocation, the Centre would provide incentives worth ₹17,490 crore for production of both electrolysers and green hydrogen for five years. The other outlays are ₹1,466 crore for pilot projects, ₹400 crore for R&D, and ₹388 crore towards other Mission components, said an official statement. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) will formulate the scheme guidelines for implementation of the respective components.

The government expects the mission to attract investments worth ₹8 trillion by 2030 and create 6 lakh jobs. Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur said that the mission would also result in reduction in greenhouse gas emission by nearly 50 million tonne annually and save India ₹1 trillion in its fossil fuel imports.

The mission is aimed at making India a hub for both manufacturing and exports of green hydrogen. It will have wide-ranging benefits apart from creation of export opportunities for green hydrogen and its derivatives, such as decarbonisation of industrial, mobility and energy sectors, reduction in dependence on imported fossil fuels and feedstock, development of indigenous manufacturing capabilities, job creation and development of cutting-edge technologies.

India has now overtaken China in terms of number of visitors to Singapore, becoming the second highest number of visitors arriving in the island nation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, China had the highest number of tourists visiting Singapore.

According to Singapore Tourism Board (STB), 6,12,300 visitors from India arrived in Singapore till November 2022. These tourists also stay the longest with an average length of stay of 8.61 days compared with an average of 5.19 days.

Indonesia is the largest source of foreign visitors to Singapore with 9,86,900 visitors up till November, while Malaysia is in third place with 495,470, followed by Australia (476,480) and the Philippines (325,480).

The Indians stay much longer compared to visitors from these four countries. Indonesians on an average stay for 4.66 days, while Malaysians stay for 4.28 days, and Australians for 4.05 days. Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and the Philippines together account for 48% of total arrivals to Singapore.

In 2019, Singapore was the fifth most visited city in the world, with over 19.1 million visitors. It then had over 3.6 million visitors from China, making Chinese tourists Singapore’s largest tourism source. The reopening of China could bring more tourists to Singapore.

The Uttar Pradesh government has signed Memorandums of Understandings (MoUs) with six UAE-based companies worth Rs 18,590 crore, according to the statement released by the state government. The MoUs will help in creating more than 20,000 employment opportunities.

Astha Green Energy Venture and Shree Siddharth Infratech and Services will invest Rs. 4,480 and Rs. 8,000 crore, respectively, in the renewable energy sector, and create 2,560 and 4,800 new jobs. Sharaf Group and Hindustan Port will invest in the Logistics Park sector. Their investments will be Rs. 1,300 crore and Rs. 210 crore, respectively, and generate 1,500 and 1,000 jobs, the statement added. Lulu Group will invest Rs 4,500 crore in retail and food processing sectors, creating 10,000 jobs, while Sobha Realty will invest Rs 100 crore in education and CSR and create 250 jobs.

The UP Government has received investment proposals worth over Rs 7.12 lakh crore ahead of the Global Investors Summit (GIS) scheduled in Lucknow in February. Ahead of the GIS 2023, eight teams of the Uttar Pradesh government visited 16 countries, receiving investment proposals totalling more than Rs 7.12 lakh crore. The largest share of investment proposals worth Rs. 4 lakh crore has been received from the UK and the USA.

National Skill Development Corporation of India and TakaMol Holding of Saudi Arabia have launched the Skill Verification Program (SVP) in India. The SVP aims to verify Indian professional workers for the required qualifications and skills for their professions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Under the SVP, a competency-based exam (theoretical and practical) across 17 benchmarked occupations such as welding, electrician, HVAC, and plumbing will be held to assess and raise the quality of skill and productivity in the Saudi labour market. Five professions, such as plumber, electrician, welder, refrigeration/air conditioning technician, and automobile electrician, are selected for the skill testing in the first phase, say reports from Saudi Arabia. The tests of skilled workers will be carried out for the Indian workers before they could apply for a Saudi work visa.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development of Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation, launched the SVP in March 2021. The SVP is an effort to improve the professional competence of the skilled workers in the Saudi employment market, enhance their productivity, improve the quality of their professional services, bring down the influx of unqualified workers into the market, and contribute to developing their skills according to international standards.

India is aiming to double the size of its automobile industry to Rs 15 lakh crore by the end of 2024, making it one of the world’s top countries in this sector, said Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday. Currently, India’s automobile industry is Rs 7.5 lakh crore.

Speaking at a virtual session of Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Nitin Gadkari said that his ministry will carry out project works worth Rs 5 lakh crore in 2023, of which Rs 2 lakh crore will come from the government and the rest will be raised from the capital market. The union minister said the majority of automobiles in the country will run on alternative fuels by 2030, and the government is working on developing alternative, clean and green fuels such as bio-ethanol, bio-CNG, bio-LNG and green hydrogen.

In his address, Nitin Gadkari highlighted the success of the listing of Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT), which drew huge interest from investors. He also underlined his focus on reducing the cost of construction with improved quality with greater use of recycled materials such as plastics, rubber, and others.

Women entrepreneurs have been benefited the most under the government’s Stand-Up India scheme, with 80.2% of bank loans sanctioned till early December going to women-led businesses since the scheme’s launch in April 2016, said the government data shared in Parliament.

According to the data shared by the Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad in the Rajya Sabha recently, 1,59,961 loans under Stand-Up India were sanctioned to entrepreneurs as of December 2, 2022. Of these, 1,28,361 loans were sanctioned to women entrepreneurs, while 23,797 loans were sanctioned to scheduled caste (SC) entrepreneurs and 7,803 to scheduled tribe (ST) entrepreneurs.

The scheme was launched to promote entrepreneurship among the SC, ST and women by facilitating bank loans between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore to at least one SC/ST borrower and one woman borrower per bank branch for setting up greenfield enterprises in manufacturing, services, trading sector and activities allied to agriculture. As of March 2022, Rs 30,160 crore were sanctioned under the scheme to 1,33,995 beneficiaries since the inception of the scheme, of which Rs 24,809 crore was sanctioned to 1,08,250 women entrepreneurs, Rs 3,976 crore to 19,310 SC beneficiaries, and Rs 1,373 crore to 6,435 ST entrepreneurs.

India has emerged as a leading investment destination for billionaires worldwide, says UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report 2022. The report, released early December, said that 58% of the billionaire respondents chose India and Southeast Asia as their chosen markets for investment. Only 42% of the participants picked China.

The UBS report is based on surveys, questions and information from the UBS Evidence Lab on more than 2,500 billionaires across 75 markets. The report says, billionaires are looking to put more of their money in India due to the strong growth of the region’s economy. Among the sectors, they prefer energy, probably led by supply constraints and rising transition to renewable energy sources.

Compared to the rest of the world, the billionaire population thrived in India, surpassing the United Kingdom to become the fifth-largest economy in 2022. India, with a younger labour force, also overtook China as the fastest-growing major economies. The number of Indian billionaires grew from 140 in 2021 to 166 in 2022 with their aggregated wealth expanding by 25.7% to $749.8 billion. In March 2022, there were 2,688 billionaires worldwide worth $12.7 trillion, down from 2,755 individuals with $13.1 trillion in 2021. Asia-Pacific was the region with the largest billionaire population with 1,084 with a total wealth of $4.2 trillion, in comparison to 1,143 individuals and $4.7 trillion a year ago. UBS report noted that the total wealth and number of billionaires is likely to have reduced further since March due to declines in asset prices.

The Rs 10,683-crore production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme of Centre has attracted investments of Rs 1,536 crore, with approval letters issued to 56 applicants who met the eligibility criteria, an official statement said on Monday.

Applications under the PLI scheme for textiles — launched to enable the industry to achieve size and scale and become competitive — were received online from January 1, 2022, to February 28, 2022. The government launched the scheme to promote the production of MMF apparel, MMF fabrics and Products of Technical Textiles in the country.

The Ministry of Textiles said that domestic cotton cultivation has increased by 5% to 125.02 lakh hectares as against 119.10 lakh hectares during last year. A brand for Indian cotton, Kasturi Cotton India, has been launched to encourage mechanised harvesting of cotton, improving its quality of cotton and reducing labour cost.

In addition, 74 research proposals amounting to Rs. 232 crore have been approved under National Technical Textile Mission (NTTM) for speciality fibre and technical textiles, the ministry said in the year-end review. A total of Rs. 621.41 crore subsidy was released in 3,159 cases under Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme and Special campaigns organised at major clusters for settling backlog cases.

India will become the third economic superpower by 2037 and a $10 trillion economy by 2035, says a Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) report released on Monday.

CEBR, a London-based consultancy, however, said that the annual rate of GDP growth in India is expected to average 6.4 per cent over the next five years, followed by an average of 6.5 per cent over the next nine years.

The report added that billionaires are looking to invest more of their money in India due to its strong economic growth. While the COVID-19 pandemic had a particularly devastating effect in absolute terms, the economy of India, a country with the world’s third-highest death toll, recovered. The report downplayed concerns about high inflation, claiming that it has remained lower than in the majority of other large economies. According to CEBR, a large portion of India’s current inflation rate reflects higher food prices.

Research also predicts that the world will enter a recession in 2023 as higher borrowing costs to combat inflation have contracted many economies.

In 2022, the global economy crossed $100 trillion for the first time, but will decline in 2023 amid rising prices, according to the annual World Economic League Table of CEBR.

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on Friday said that electric buses can help reduce ticket prices for passengers by as much as 30%. The minister also urged banks to give loans at lower interest rates to those keen to buy vehicles that run on clean energy, such as flex fuel, electricity and hydrogen.

Speaking at the golden jubilee celebrations of a cooperative bank in Kalyan in Thane, Maharashtra, the minister said the cost of operation of a non-air conditioned electric bus is Rs 39 per kilometre, while it is Rs 41 per kilometre for an AC electric bus. ”All buses in cities like Thane, Kalyan can be converted into electric ones, which will help reduce ticket prices for passengers by as much as 30 per cent,” he emphasised.

Nitin Gadkari said that it was his dream that vehicles running on diesel and petrol get phased out in the next four to five years. He suggested that banks must rate industries based on the performance on various parameters over the past five years and give the industries scoring high marks loans within 24 hours.