An integrated future policy is an imperative
Agriculture in India has a long history and is one of the strongholds of the economy. The sector provides employment to over 55% of the Indian workforce and accounts for 14.6% of India’s GDP, playing a crucial role in the overall socio-economic development of the country.
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Europe crisis could hurt India, warns Pranab
The government on Tuesday attributed higher economic growth projected in the mid-year economic analysis for this fiscal than the Economic Survey to robust economic expansion in the first half.
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Indian Airlines Directed To Publish Tariff Structure On Website For Transparency
New Delhi, India (AHN) – The Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has asked all the Indian airlines to make their airfares public by putting up the relevant information on their respective websites. The airlines have been given a 48-hour deadline to comply with this instruction. The Government wants to ensure transparency in ticket prices because of the fact that the flyers have constantly complained that they feel cheated because of exorbitant prices.
Earlier, in November, the DGCA had also asked the airlines to provide it with a copy of the route-wise established tariff on the first day of the calendar month.
Top officials of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the DGCA held a meeting with the representatives of the major Indian carriers and issued this directive afterwards. On Monday, the government officials met the representatives of full-service airlines like the Air India (the national carrier), Jet Airways and Kingfisher. On Saturday, they met the no-frill carriers like the IndiGo, Spicejet and GoAir.
During the meetings, the airlines were made aware of the provisions under the Rule number 135 of the Aircraft Rules, 1937, which talks of making the tariff public through either websites or daily newspapers.
The meetings and the directive came as a result of the stand-off between the government and the airlines over the latter’s intentions to raise prices further, which the government is opposed to. This was visible in the recent surge in airfares, especially since November 15 this year, despite continuous government instructions to the contrary. It was in the month of November that the airlines actually went ahead with a 200-300 percent hike in fares.
As per the directive, the domestic airlines will have to “upload the route wise tariff across its network in various fare categories commensurate with date of purchase on their respective websites…” The guidelines are expected to help ensure transparency in the tariff structure of the carriers besides allowing the flyers to “enable predictability” while embarking on an air journey.
According to the directive, the airlines have to communicate detail-wise and route-wise fares, besides informing the public of the details involved in each “fare bucket.” Fare buckets are the different categories into which the aircraft seats are divided, depending upon their price.
On their part, the airlines have reluctantly agreed to comply with this directive, though many among them grudge that doing so would take away the competitive edge among themselves.
Meanwhile, Chairman of one of the major carriers, the Kingfisher airlines, Vijay Mallya said during a recent event, “There is no case of capping airfares in a liberalized environment, be it at the upper or lower band. It is a function of demand and supply and there is no exploitation by airlines.”
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The missing link in supply chain
India is trying to expedite capacity addition in the power sector to meet the electricity demand of a fast-growing economy.
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Dubai’s Airport In Overdrive As It Arbitrages Between East, West
Dubai, United Arab Emirates Michael Grubb – Dubai International Airport, the largest in the Gulf, is outpacing the world aviation industry’s recovery this year as it capitalizes on its role as a pivot for business travelers arbitraging between a struggling Europe and the burgeoning economies of Asia. But analysts warn that Dubai’s success makes it a likely magnet for new competition.
Traffic through Dubai International rose by close to 16 percent in the first nine months of the year, well ahead of the 12.9 percent average increase in the Asia-Pacific market, making it the world’s fastest growing, according to Airports Council International. The pace of growth for Dubai continued in October, when traffic exceeded 4 million people for the second time ever, Dubai Airports reported Wednesday.
Aviation is a big and thriving business for tiny Dubai, whose economy is otherwise struggling with some $100 billion of real estate debt. Dubai is home to the world’s 14th busiest airport, just behind New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and ahead of Amsterdam’s Schiphol. The number of people passing through the airport in October alone was equal to more than twice the country’s entire population.
Dubai Airports has ambitious plans for expanding. Annual capacity at Dubai International will grow from 60 million passengers to 75 million next year when it dedicates Concourse 3, the world’s only facility dedicated to servicing the Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world.
Meanwhile, a second airport, the Al-Maktoum International, is under development next door. Al-Maktoum began cargo operations six months ago and will be opening for passenger travel in March 2011.
Dubai Airports is expecting growth to continue at a strong double-digit rate in 2011, with annual passenger traffic jumping 13.1 percent to 52.2 million from a forecast 46.1 million for all of 2010. Dubai’s flag carrier Emirates is counting on its passenger numbers growing 10 percent next year while the discount carrier Flydubai forecasts its traffic doubling.
“Before the end of the decade passenger numbers will approach 90 million making Dubai International the busiest airport in the world in terms of international passenger traffic,” Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports, said last week.
But Dubai’s airports – and its airlines — are vulnerable to emerging competition because it is entirely dependent on funneling passengers from Europe and Asia through its airports and sending them on to their final destinations, he said. The airport has no domestic market and a tiny regional one. Indeed, measured by international traffic alone, Dubai rises in the world airport rankings to No. 6.
“They will have competition, the dynamics will definitely change,” Philip Butterworth-Hayes, lead consultant of the aviation advisory firm PMi Media, told The Media Line. “I would look at Indian airlines in particular. Once you have a strong home market like India, you have the ability to capture traffic.”
Dubai has not only benefited from huge investment in its airport and carriers but also from low costs, the absence of environmental constraints to airport expansion and its strategic location. Demand for Europe-Asian travel has grown as European companies focus sales on the growing economies of China and the rest of Asia while newly wealthy Asians have the disposable income to travel to Europe for holidays. Dubai is about 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) from London and 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) from Shanghai.
Adding to world-class airports, Dubai’s state-owned Emirates airlines has been an aggressive competitor, taking market share from hobbled European rivals by adding capacity – the airline has the biggest fleet of the giant A380s on order – and is keeping fares and costs low.
But India could match many of these assets. Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital is about 7,200 kilometers (4,500 miles) from London and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) from Shanghai, on top of being a business and tourism destination in its own right.
As India’s economy grows, demand for domestic air travel for its 1 billion people has also increased. Domestic air traffic in India grew 15 percent in October compared with a year ago to 4.6 million passengers, the government said last week. What the country still lacks to take on Dubai is a competitive airline to service an Indian hub, Griffiths said.
“If you were to have an Emirates-like operation in India, you could make it a major hub,” he said. “But they would also benefit from the presence of a huge domestic market.”
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China: No to climate aid and transparency
China said it will not agree to any deal linking rich nations’ aid to its acceptance of tighter oversight of efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. |||
China said on Friday it will not agree to any deal linking rich nations’ aid to its acceptance of tighter oversight of efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The remarks from Huang Huikang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s special representative for climate change talks, laid bare rifts between Beijing and rich countries – especially the United States – that could trouble high-level negotiations in Cancun, Mexico.
China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, will be a key player when almost 200 governments meet in Cancun from late this month to try to agree on a “green fund” for poor countries and other building blocks for a comprehensive new agreement to combat global warming.
Cancun is meant to be the stepping stone to a legally binding deal next year that would lock governments into reducing the greenhouse gas pollution holding more solar heat in the atmosphere and threatening to tip into dangerous global warming.
Even modest gains at the talks appear tough after a year of bickering between China and the United States, the top greenhouse gas emitters that have also sparred over trade and currency ties.
The U.S., European Union and other governments want China, India and other big emerging economies to shoulder firmer international commitments to control and eventually cut their emissions, and to subject those emissions to tighter monitoring.
Huang told reporters that Beijing hoped to see progress in Cancun, but would not yield on what he said was China’s right to make economic growth an overriding priority.
“Recently, we’ve found that some people have always been making a fuss about so-called (emissions) transparency,” he told a news conference.
The key to success in climate negotiations, he said, was advanced economies leading with big emissions cuts and ensuring more aid and clean technology to help poorer nations.
“These are unconditional and should not be linked to anything else,” he said of rich nations’ efforts.
“This is a strong signal. Previously, we haven’t so strongly stressed that as a matter of principle we believe that improving transparency is not an issue.”
China’s emissions would keep growing for some time, Huang added, but he did not specify for how long.
“China’s overriding priority will be to develop its economy, eliminate poverty and raise people’s welfare, and our energy consumption and (greenhouse gas) emissions will experience reasonable growth for some time,” he said.
“In my personal judgement, the peak will not come any time soon,” he said of China’s greenhouse gas emissions growth.
Huang’s comments underscored the hurdles to crafting a climate treaty that will accommodate the competing demands of emerging and advanced economies.
Governments failed to agree last year on a new legally binding deal. A meeting in Copenhagen last December ended in rancour between rich and developing countries and created a loose, non-binding accord with many gaps.
China’s emissions have more than doubled since 2000 and have outstripped the United States’. In 2009 its emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels were 7.5 billion tonnes, or 24 percent of the global total, according to BP .
Beijing has made a domestic vow to reduce “carbon intensity” – the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each dollar of economic growth – by 40-45 percent by 2020 compared with 2005. But it says that goal will not be turned into a binding international target that could hinder the country’s choice. – Reuters
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Citadel strategist has bullish view of US consumers
The US economy is in better shape than most analysts think, according to Dave Mohr, Citadel’s chief investment strategist. At a presentation yesterday, he said US consumers were not a spent force. After paying back $600 billion (R4.2 trillion) in household debt since mid-2007, they were ready to spend again. |||
The US economy is in better shape than most analysts think, according to Dave Mohr, Citadel’s chief investment strategist. At a presentation yesterday, he said US consumers were not a spent force. After paying back $600 billion (R4.2 trillion) in household debt since mid-2007, they were ready to spend again.
The US economy grew only 2 percent in the third quarter, with consumption spending still relatively subdued. And unemployment remains close to 10 percent.
But Mohr has a different perspective on the job situation. He points out that more than 90 percent of the workforce is employed. Companies only start to hire when a recovery gathers momentum. In other words, jobs are in the pipeline. Wage increases at about 2 percent are ahead of inflation of 1 percent. A sign that household balance sheets have improved is that the US savings rate is now 6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In early 2007, it was reported at less than 2 percent.
Mohr believes US consumers are regaining their confidence. Also data released earlier this week showed US retail sales rose in October for the fourth consecutive month and the rise was twice the rate expected. As the US remains the world’s largest economy, contributing 40 percent to global output, this more upbeat take on its prospects should make people feel better. If Mohr is correct we don’t have to worry about a second leg to the recession.
On a slightly less upbeat note, emerging market growth, which has been driving the global recovery, is likely to moderate as countries like India and China take steps to cap inflation. Despite the slower growth in these regions, Mohr supports the International Monetary Fund’s forecast of 4 percent global growth next year.
He forecasts growth in South Africa of more than 3 percent next year.
Waiting for Xi
Journalists were told to gather at 1.30pm yesterday to attend a photo opportunity at 3pm at Tuynhuys after Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and the People’s Republic of China Vice-President Xi Jinping ended their bi-national commission talks.
At Tuynhuys journalists were told to go to 120 Plein Street to get their entry cards – even though most parliamentary journalists have high security parliamentary precinct accreditation. Then the journalists were herded to a sunny spot outside the Tuynhuys gates.
Next it was a body check at the glass-fronted new entrance. Most of the journalists had to pass their goodies through an infra-red machine and walk through a metal detector. They then had to turn around, pick up all their goodies, and go back outside – to join the journalists who had held back from being body checked.
Finally, an hour and a half later the journalists were taken into the main meeting room in Tuynhuys through a side entrance – where a grumpy policewoman said that if “you are outside you may remain outside”. Then the 10 minute report back – in which nice things were said about fruitful talks, Cape Town and Xi.
Nearly two hours later a signing ceremony in a neighbouring conference room of some unexplained memorandums of understanding was held for energy, trade and banking between the two countries. Deputy ministers from both sides signed the documents and bowed before the two deputy heads of state. No questions were allowed from the media.
As South Africa rushes headlong towards meaningless secrecy, no doubt China will show it the way.
eNatis
The disclosure by the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA (Naamsa) that the threat by the administrators of the Electronic National Traffic Information System (eNatis) to temporarily terminate manufacturers’ access to the system had been withdrawn is heartening and prudent.
It defies logic that Tasima, the administrators of eNatis on behalf of the national Transport Department, could introduce new subscription and user charge fees for manufacturers for providing information.
If Tasima had been allowed to proceed with the implementation of the new charges and enforce its threat, there was a risk motor manufacturing production would have ground to a halt. This the country can ill afford, particularly as the motor manufacturing industry is a major employer and important contributor to the country’s economic growth.
The termination of manufacturers’ access to the eNatis system would have made it impossible for vehicle dealerships to register new vehicles and finalise sales, threatening vehicle production.
Correspondence from Tasima and the Transport Department to Naamsa and comments by departmental spokesmen to the media were contradictory. Tasima also refused to recognise and meet Naamsa.
A former transport minister said it had been calculated that the R36 registration fee would cover the cost of managing and maintaining eNatis. Deputy director-general for transport regulation Zakhele Thwala confirmed in a letter to Naamsa it was not the government’s intention to make money out of usage of the eNatis system.
It is difficult to reconcile these facts, particularly when manufacturers did not previously have to pay to provide data, but a volume producer under Tasima’s new fee structure would have had to pay about R250 000 a month, which it would have had to pass onto consumers.
This is suspicious, particularly as initial plans to transfer the management of eNatis to the Road Traffic Management Corporation were shelved; Tasima from 2008 only had a month-by-month maintenance and development eNatis contract; and the Transport Department claimed in September this year that Tasima’s services were being phased out when the DA claimed the department had unlawfully renewed Tasima’s contract for five years.
Edited by Peter DeIonno. With contributions from Ethel Hazelhurst, Donwald Pressly and Roy Cokayne.
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Car Loan Luxury at Convenience
India’s economic situation is at a rapid growth. After the boon of outsourcing the power of spending of today’s generation suddenly shot up. Employment was on a rise, youngsters just out of college or some even while pursuing their education have gotten addicted to this irresistible power and freedom of spending where they no longer want to rely on the budgeted pocket money from their parents. In a way this was good but also bad as the economic conditions were on a downfall due to the dependency on unreliable businesses. In spite of this the spending has reduced however it still persists.
Owning a Car at one time was like achieving a high target goal in one’s life. Getting a home was like the purpose of life. But today all of this has become a click away. Of course nothing comes for free. This is all a click away to living on credit. But then again it’s for the individual to make the best of the credit or a burden. Like I said before today it’s not difficult to get a car, just go online and figure out your budget verses the car you want to buy. Then approach a bank online and apply for your loan. You can not only loan out a brand new car but also a used car. That concept has hit it off very well too.
Car that have been confiscated from owners for nonpayment of installments or the owner just decided to sell it can be bought at reasonable price and with the assurance of no fraud. There are lots of websites online that offer services to avail a Car Loan. These work like agencies, all you have to do is enter your contact details and the banks tied up with this agency will be sent your details. Posts which a representative will get in touch with you and complete all your formalities for you while you are sitting at home. All you have to do is submit certain documents to the representative to process your loan. Apart from this he will also help work out the Mount and your affordable installments. So go Online and get yourself a car.
Mahindra Satyam Q2 profit narrows over Q1
Mahindra Satyam saw its current fiscal second quarter profit narrow from the first quarter as wage hikes squeezed margins, as it released quarterly results for the first time since it was hit by India’s biggest corporate fraud in 2009.
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India To Name Pakistan As Fake Currency Offender In FATF, IMF
New Delhi, India (AHN) – India is going to launch a diplomatic offensive against Pakistan for the latter’s alleged involvement in printing fake Indian currency notes (FICNs) to “overthrow” the Indian economy.
The Indian government is soon going to take up the case of FICNs with various financial agencies around the world, starting with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body set up to curb money laundering and terror financing. Subsequently, the country will also, for the first time, name Pakistan as an offender as it claims to have encountered concrete evidence against the neighboring country in this respect.
Official sources have claimed that after approaching the FATF, India is likely to go further and raise the matter with agencies like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Interpol as well.
It was a while ago that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India had hinted at the prominent role played by Pakistan in “printing and circulation of fake Indian currency” in a chargesheet in one of the FICN cases. The chargesheet had said, “After thoroughly examining the FICN, it can be concluded that the notes have been printed on highly sophisticated machines which a common man cannot acquires since such machines involve huge capital investment. The perfection of window and watermarks formation indicates the manufacture of FICN paper on regular currency making machines which can only be owned by a country/state.”
Emboldened by the evidence collected by various agencies like NIA and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India is having a detailed dossier, which points out, among other things, that the FICNs are being printed in the Quetta city in Pakistan’s Balochistan tribal belt. The agencies claim that “sophisticated machines” and “currency paper” were being diverted from the Pakistani mint to print fake Indian currency notes.
The Indian government believes that Pakistan is behind all this because through “willful circulation of such high quality FICN printed abroad and smuggled into India,” its traditional rival wants to weaken the economy and sovereignty of India.
It is believed that annually, Pakistan allegedly pumps in USD 1 billion worth of FICNs into India, which is evident in the seizures made by the Indian investigating agencies so far.
According to recently intercepted conversation by Indian security agencies, FICNs worth millions of US dollars was ready to exchange hands between Pakistani and Indian agents.
After the CBI busted a gang operating in various States like Delhi, Haryana, Bihar and West Bengal, fake currency notes worth USD 10 million were found in their possession. A senior official associated with the investigation informed that all the FICNs were procured from Pakistani agents. It is believed that the Indian currency notes were illegally printed on imported currency paper from European countries, which is actually meant to print Pakistan currency notes.
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