Piyush Goyal urges exporters to adopt uncompromising stance on quality

 

Stating that the new Trade Agreements endorsed with UAE and Australia were very generally welcomed and didn't get a solitary negative reaction from any area, Union Minister Piyush Goyal encouraged exporters to embrace a firm position with regards to guaranteeing quality.

Conveying a feature address at the 51st National Export Awards of Engineering Export Promotion Council of India in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Goyal said that the product local area had made India glad with heavenly accomplishments in sends out.

Bringing up that products have been the foundation of India's economy, the Minister said that it was significant to respect our exporters and perceive their commitment in country building.

He added that the honor capacity could never have comes at a superior time when India is commending its lucky products execution. He saluted all the honor champs and hailed their greatness in business venture, difficult work, arranging and the board abilities.

In a proclamation, Goyal likewise said that Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) India had accomplished exceptional work and was a model Export Promotion Council. He valued EEPC India for reliably working with the business in limit building including innovation upgradation, quality, affirmations, other than trades advancement.

Coronavirus scare forces cancellation of Mobile World Congress in Spain

Current Affairs
Coordinators of the world's greatest versatile innovation reasonable are reassessing over stresses over the viral episode from China. GSMA said Wednesday that the current year's release of Mobile World Congress will never again be held as arranged in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb 24-27.
John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA, said "worldwide concern in regards to the coronavirus episode, travel concern and different conditions, make it unthinkable for the GSMA to hold the occasion." The choice comes after many tech organizations and remote transporters dropped out, with the most recent cancelations by Nokia, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Britain's BT on Wednesday. Other huge names that have just dropped out incorporate Ericsson, Nokia, Sony, Amazon, Intel and LG. The organizations refered to worries for the security of staff and guests.
Coordinators had looked to hold out against developing strain to drop Mobile World Congress, a yearly tech party that had been required to draw in excess of 100,000 guests from around 200 nations, including 5,000 to 6,000 from China.
The GSMA, the remote exchange body that arranges the reasonable, had said it was observing the infection circumstance intently, incorporating meeting normally with worldwide and Spanish wellbeing specialists and its accomplices to guarantee the prosperity of participants.

Nokia said Wednesday it had chosen to pull back from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain "after a full appraisal of the dangers identified with a quick moving circumstance." The organization said "the wellbeing and prosperity of workers was an essential center" and that dropping its association was a "judicious choice." Phone organization Vodafone said it was dropping out "after cautious thought" while Britain's BT said dropping was "the most mindful choice."...READ MORE

Won't survive this disaster: Kashmiri entrepreneurs share lockdown pains

International News

Haji Mohammed Ghani, 74, squatted at the border of his apple orchard, sporting a neatly trimmed, white beard, and a frown. Around him were trees laden with apples ripe for picking.
At this time of year, his orchard--in a state that produces two-thirds of India's apples, earning Rs 6,500 crore ($903 million) in exports in 2016-17, contributing to a 10th of the state’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employing 3.3 million workers--should have been buzzing with pickers and packers readying the fruits for shipment across India.
On September 8, 2019, when we visited his orchard, there was no activity.
Ghani owns five acres of land in an area famous for apple orchards, a village called Choora near the town of Sopore in Baramulla district, 55 km northwest of Srinagar. The trees yield 5,000 boxes of fruit every year, fetching Ghani a profit of Rs 5 lakh.
This year, he will settle for whatever he gets.
Since August 5, 2019, when the Centre snapped all communication lines in Kashmir--as it abrogated Section 370, which gave Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) special constitutional status--Ghani has not been able to speak to traders in Delhi, Kolkata and Patna to negotiate prices. Several traders used to come to Kashmir to collect the fruit, but they cannot make the trip this year.Some of Ghani’s apples were being sold at the Sopore fruit market but after a September 7, 2019, attack on a trader family by unknown gunmen, even that is not an option.

 “We survived the hailstorm this year but we will not be able to survive this disaster,” Ghani told IndiaSpend. Now, Srinagar’s fruit hawkers stock his apples but they pay half the normal market price...Read More

Revenue foregone to service Asean FTA more than doubles to Rs 26,000 crore

International News

India's revenue foregone due to the trade agreement with Asean has more than doubled to nearly Rs 26,000 crore in 2018-19.
The free trade area with the 10-nation Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) bloc came into effect on January 1, 2010. Exports to the 10 economies stood at $37.4 billion in 2018-19, up by 9 per cent on year. On the other hand, imports were higher at $59.31 billion, up by 25 per cent from the previous year's $47.13 billion. The figure is expected to strengthen calls for a more stringent review of existing free trade agreements (FTAs) with South Korea and Japan, which haven't been able to reduce India's trade deficit with these nations.
On the other hand, the government fears the figure for revenue foregone may be as high as Rs 60,000 crore for the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) deal once it goes live, the Times of India has reported. RCEP is India's most ambitious trade pact currently under negotiation. Based on India's existing FTA with Asean, the RCEP will include all the nations with which the Asean has trade deals — New Zealand, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea.
New Delhi has consistently focused on services trade norms, such as those allowing the free movement of trained professionals across national boundaries. This would effectively allow Indian professionals — such as chartered accountants, teachers and nurses — to practice in other RCEP nations without the need for bilateral mutual recognition agreements.
Where things stand

 Under planning since 2012, the talks have seen little movement since partner nations have been unwilling to concede on crucial issues. This includes the market access for foreign goods and reduction of import duties on them, discussion areas where India is gravely cautious since...Read More

Trade mis-invoicing cost India $13 bn in tax revenues in 2016, says report

Current Affairs

India is estimated to have lost $13 billion potential tax revenue in 2016, equivalent to a staggering 5.5 per cent of total government revenue collections back then, due to simple trade invoicing.
The findings, part of a report by Washington, DC-based think tank Global Financial Integrity (GFI), are set to worry policymakers who have increasingly tried to crack down on fraudulent tax practices.
Trade misinvoicing involves both exporters and importers deliberately misreporting the value, quantity, or nature of goods or services in a commercial transaction and is treated as one of the most common forms of tax fraud by the government.Of the lost revenue, approximately $4 billion was due to deliberate misinvoicing of exports, while $9 billion was due to the same being done for imports.
The lost revenue on the import side can be further broken down by uncollected value-added tax worth $3.4 billion, uncollected Customs duties costing $2 billion, and uncollected corporate income-tax worth $3.6 billion, GFI said.
Released on Monday, the report also pointed out this trade gap for misinvoiced goods may be as high as $74 billion, equalling 12 per cent of the country’s total trade of $617 billion in the same year.
A report by the UN had earlier warned New Delhi that valuable earnings, mostly in commodity imports, were regularly vanishing and had suggested updating trade policy to counter the issue.

India should also encourage other countries to adopt a beneficial ownership registry, to fully implement financial action task force’s anti-money laundering recommendations, country-by-country reporting, tax information exchange initiatives and the Addis Tax Initiative, GFI said.Back in 2017, a similar report by GFI pegged the total illicit inflows into India between 2005 and 2014 at $770 billion.

Glycine from India, China hurting US biz, anti-dumping duty to be issued

International News

Import of glycine from India, China and Japan is hurting the US industry as the product is sold at less than fair value in America, a federal trade body has claimed.
The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) said it had determined the US industry was materially injured by imports of glycine from India and Japan.
It also determined that glycine was sold in the US at less than fair value and imports that are subsidised by the governments of China and India.
As a result of the USITC's affirmative determinations, US Department of Commerce will issue antidumping duty orders on imports of this product from India and Japan and countervailing duty orders on imports of it from China and India, an official statement said on Wednesday.
USUITC Chairman David Johanson and Commissioners Irving Williamson, Meredith Broadbent, Rhonda Schmidtlein and Jason Kearns voted in the affirmative, according to an official statement.
US import of glycine from China, India, and Japan in 2017 was valued USD 18.6 million. Its import from Thailand was USD 4.6 million and from all other sources was USD 480,000.China, India, Japan and Thailand are the leading source of import of glycine.

 Glycine, also known as aminoacetic acid, is a nonessential amino acid. The organic chemical is produced naturally by humans and other organisms as a building block for proteins.Commercial production of glycine uses traditional chemical synthesis. Glycine is commonly sold in its dry form as a white, free flowing powder.Available in various grades, glycine is used in industrial applications, as well as pharmaceutical and food applications.

PE fund AION fully exits Varun Beverages, walks away with 2x returns

Company News

Nearly three-and-a-half years after it invested $90 million in Ravi Jaipuria-promoted Varun Beverages, the bottlers for beverage giant Pepsi, private equity fund AION has decided to completely exit the company.

In a block deal, AION has sold its 4.5 per cent stake in the company at Rs 850 a share, a slight premium over the stock’s closing price of Rs 844.75 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Tuesday. According to sources, this translates into a 25 per cent return on equity per year in dollar terms, or 2x returns over the holding period. The fund generated 2x on equity invested in the company. When contacted, Parth Gandhi, senior partner and managing director of AION, declined to comment on the transaction.

AION, a joint venture between Apollo Global Management and ICICI Venture, had invested $90 million in Varun Beverages — half of that in debt and half in convertible debentures.
In 2016, Varun Beverages came up with a Rs 1,100-crore initial public offering (IPO), which was subscribed 1.8 times at Rs 445 a share. After the company was listed, AION sold its stake in various tranches.

AION has so far invested in a number of Indian companies, the latest being Monett Ispat, the steel company it acquired as part of a consortium with JSW through the insolvency route, paying Rs 2457 crore for the deal. This year, it also acquired information technology (IT) and back-office operations of InterGlobe Technologies, the Rahul Bhatia company that runs IndiGo Airlines, for $230 million. In 2016, it also bought — along with partners like former Genpact chief executive Pramod Bhasin and GE commercial finance business head Anil Chawla — the commercial lending and leasing business of GE Capital for $360 million.


 Varun Beverages, the flagship company of the Ravi Jaipuria group, in February this year cemented its long-term relationship with PepsiCo.

China purchases could undercut Donald Trump's larger trade goal

International News

At the heart of President Trump’s negotiations with China is a troubling contradiction: The United States wants to use the trade talks to encourage the country to adopt a more market-oriented economy. But a key element of a prospective deal may end up reinforcing the economic power of the Chinese state.

Negotiators are still working out deal terms, but any agreement seems certain to involve China’s promise to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of American goods. For Mr. Trump, this is an essential element that will help reduce the United States’ record trade deficit with China and bolster farmers and other constituencies hurt by his trade war.

But those purchases will be ordered by the Chinese state, and most will be carried out by state-controlled Chinese businesses, further cementing Beijing’s role in managing its economy and potentially making United States industries even more beholden to the Chinese.

“It seems like those types of really simplistic purchasing commitment type of arrangements would actually reinforce state ownership rather than discourage it,” said Rufus Yerxa, the head of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents the United States’ largest exporters.

After months of talks, the two sides are inching closer to an agreement. Robert Lighthizer, Mr. Trump’s top trade negotiator, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, discussed the remaining sticking points with their Chinese counterparts on Thursday evening and Friday in Beijing. Mr. Mnuchin, in a tweet on Friday, said the talks had been “constructive.”


 Both sides are trying to iron out an agreement by this week, to coincide with a visit to Washington by Liu He, the Chinese special envoy charged with negotiating the deal...Read More

Mark Zuckerberg's call to regulate Facebook, explained

International News

Facebook has faced months of scrutiny for a litany of ills, from spreading misinformation to not properly protecting its users’ data to allowing foreign meddling in elections.
Many at the Silicon Valley company now expect lawmakers and regulators to act to contain it — so the social network is trying to set its own terms for what any regulations should look like.
That helps explain why Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post on Saturday laying out a case for how he believes his company should be treated.

In his post, Mr. Zuckerberg discussed four policy areas — harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability — which he said the government should focus attention on.
Here’s an annotated analysis of Mr. Zuckerberg’s post and what he is seeking to do with each area.

Harmful content

First, harmful content. Facebook gives everyone a way to use their voice, and that creates real benefits — from sharing experiences to growing movements. As part of this, we have a responsibility to keep people safe on our services. That means deciding what counts as terrorist propaganda, hate speech and more. We continually review our policies with experts, but at our scale we'll always make mistakes and decisions that people disagree with.


 So-called harmful content across Facebook is an enormous category, spanning abuse and bullying to the recent live-streamed shootings at two mosques in New Zealand...Read More

Trump's trade deal with China may relieve Huawei from espionage charges

International News

The US-led campaign against Huawei Technologies Co., China’s telecom giant, has attracted a lot of attention for the indictment of the company’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. On Thursday, Huawei’s lawyers pleaded not guilty in a New York federal court to 13 counts of fraud involving an elaborate scheme to violate US sanctions against Iran.

That case is no doubt important, not only because of the possibility that Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, could face incarceration. It is also a major irritant in US-China trade talks.
That said, the case is a sideshow. Of greater consequence is a renewed US campaign to pressure and persuade America’s allies to keep Huawei technology and equipment out of the next generation of wireless networks, known as 5G. The stakes in this campaign are much bigger than U.S. market share or the effectiveness of Iran sanctions. If Huawei’s chips and routers find their way into this new network, everything from digital privacy to intellectual property could be at risk.

US intelligence agencies, along with those of many of its allies, have concluded that Huawei’s equipment provides China’s military with a backdoor into the telecom systems that use it.
“Huawei is a spy agency for the Communist Party of China, thinly veiled as a technology company,” says Senator Ted Cruz in a March 14 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.


 The U.S. intelligence community has been sounding this alarm for years. Only recently, however, have these worries begun to inform policy. Pompeo himself has been the public face of it, warning last month on a tour of Eastern Europe that it would be “difficult” for the U.S. to partner with countries that use Huawei equipment...Read More

China blocks UN action against Masood Azhar; India expresses disappointment

Current Affairs

India Wednesday expressed disappointment soon after China blocked yet another move at the United Nations to designate Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed's chief Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist".
In its reaction, the External Affairs Ministry said India will continue to pursue all available avenues to ensure that leaders of terror groups involved in heinous attacks on Indian citizens are brought to justice.

"We are disappointed by this outcome. This has prevented action by the international community to designate the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a proscribed and active terrorist organization which has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir on February 14," the MEA said.

Without naming China, it said the UN's 1267 Sanctions Committee was not able to come to a decision on the proposal for listing Azhar on account of a member placing the proposal on hold.
The JeM had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attacks in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed.


 In yet another setback to India's bid to designate Azhar as a global terrorist, China put a technical hold on the proposal in the UN Security Council to ban him.

Explained: Impact of Donald Trump's attack on preferential trade with India

Current Affairs

United States president Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a plan to end preferential trade treatment for India, withdrawing benefits under a nearly 50-year-old programme for up to $5.6 billion worth of New Delhi’s exports to America.

The move comes after over a year of back-and-forth between the two countries, and pressure exerted upon the Trump administration by the American dairy export and medical devices lobbies.

“I am taking this step because, after intensive engagement between the United States and the government of India, I have determined that India has not assured the United States that it will provide equitable and reasonable access to the markets of India,” Trump said in a letter to Congress representatives on Tuesday early morning.

According to World Bank data, India is currently the largest beneficiary of the ‘generalised system of preferences’ (GSP) programme, a trade initiative that was first started back in the 1970s.

India’s commerce ministry, however, has downplayed the impact of the move, saying that withdrawal of GSP benefits will have a “minimal and moderate impact”.

“The total GSP benefits amount to about $190 million on overall exports of $5.6 billion between the two countries,” commerce secretary Anup Wadhawan said at a press conference on Tuesday morning.

 “We had worked out a meaningful package that covered the US’ concerns but they made additional requests which were not acceptable at this time,” he added. “The GSP system is envisaged as a non-reciprocal benefit to developing countries.”..Read More

US-China talks to resolve trade war will resume in Washington today

International News:

A new round of talks between the United States and China to resolve their trade war will take place in Washington, with follow-up sessions at a higher level later in the week, the White House said .
The talks follow a round of negotiations that ended in Beijing last week without a deal but which officials said had generated progress on contentious issues between the world's two largest economies.

The talks are aimed at "achieving needed structural changes in China that affect trade between the United States and China.

The two sides will also discuss China's pledge to purchase a substantial amount of goods and services from the United States," the White House said in a statement.

The higher-level talks will start and be led by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, a strong proponent of pressing China to end practices that the United States says include forced technology transfers from US companies and intellectual property theft.

China, which denies that it engages in such practices, confirmed that Vice Premier Liu He will visit Washington on Thursday and Friday for the talks.

The White House said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, economic adviser Larry Kudlow and trade adviser Peter Navarro would also take part in the talks.

 US tariffs on $200 billion in imports from China are set to rise to 25 percent from 10 percent if no deal is reached by March 1...Read More