By Barun Das Gupta The Union Cabinet has just cleared a Rs. 80,000 crore proposal for modernization of our defence forces. Earlier it had sanctioned another Rs. 40,000 crore for the same purpose. The decision has come not a day too soon. Defence has been the proverbial Cinderella of the Government ever since independence. Even the Chinese aggression of 1962 failed to make us realize the importance […]
India will launch an unmanned crew module in December onboard a heavy rocket to test its re-entry into the atmosphere for the country’s future maiden human space flight, the space agency chief said Thursday. “We will send an unmanned crew module on the experimental GSLV-Mark III rocket in December and test its re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere for a human space flight plan in future,” Indian […]
A tie-up between Malaysian and Hong Kong asset managers aims to market Islamic funds in mainland China, helping expand sharia-compliant investment products outside the industry’s core centres in southeast Asia and the Middle East. The asset management arm of Malayan Banking Bhd and Hong Kong-based Bosera International will jointly develop Islamic investment products, Nor’ Azamin Salleh, chief executive of Maybank Asset Management Group Bhd, told Reuters. The […]
BEIJING Fri Oct 31, 2014 2:56pm IST Visitors use their smarts phones underneath the logo of Tencent at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing May 6, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon/Files Related Topics Stocks Photographs from India which caught our eyes this week Pics BEIJING (Reuters) – Tencent Holdings Ltd said on Friday it would collaborate with International Business Machines Corp (IBM) on a new […]
NEW DELHI: In line with the government’s plans to boost domestic output of coal, India’s largest thermal power producer, NTPC Ltd, could soon become one of the major coal-producers of the country as well. NTPC plans to produce up to 300 million tonnes of coal within the next four to five years, chairman and managing director Arup Roy Choudhury told Hindustan Times. “As we expect […]
New Delhi: The geopolitical wrangling and heartburn over India’s mother of all defence deals, the lucrative $20 billion MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) project, is still not over. First, it was the Americans, then the Europeans and now, the Russians. Even as India and France inch forward to stitch up the contract for acquisition of 126 Rafale fighters for the IAF, Russian ambassador Alexander Kadakin last […]
NEW DELHI: ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp, on Tuesday signed an agreement to pick an up to 50 per cent stake in PetroVietnam’s two exploration blocks in the South China Sea. OVL will take a 40 per cent stake in Block 102/10 and 50 per cent in 106/10 that lie outside the sea territory claimed by China. PetroVietnam, […]
Mumbai: In the first big boost to the government’s “Make in India” initiative, aimed at making India a manufacturing hub, Airbus Defence and Space and Tata Advanced Systems (TASL) on Tuesday announced a joint bid for a government contract to supply military aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF). The IAF is looking to replace its fleet of Avro aircraft and the joint venture will supply Airbus’ […]
By Harihar Swarup Will Congress fade away? Will the 128-year old party, whose leaders fought for independence, a party having deep roots, just wither away? Judging by its performance in the Lok Sabha elections in May this year and, its dismal performance in the state assembly elections, latest being Maharashtra and Haryana, the future of the Congress looks gloomy. But it is not as gloomy as prophets […]
By Ashis Biswas Thanks to an improved relationship among neighbouring countries in the Indian sub continent, goods transport and power connectivity is gradually getting better. Recently, Union Power Minister Mr. Piyush Goyal pressed for a seamless power connectivity among SAARC countries, at a meeting in Delhi. There has been a positive response from Nepal and Bangladesh, apart from valuable co-operation extended by both Nepal and […]
China reduced oil imports from Saudi Arabia even as the world’s largest crude exporter cuts prices to lure Asian customers amid intensifying competition from Colombia to Oman. Oil deliveries from Saudi Arabia fell 2.7 percent to 4.74 million metric tons last month from a year earlier, according to data released today by the General Administration of Customs in Beijing. Shipments from Colombia surged 389.6 percent, while Russian […]
NEW DELHI: Eighty-eight infrastructure and industrial projects, involving investment of nearly Rs 3 lakh crore – which is more than the Centre’s budgeted income tax collections for the current financial year – have become operational over the past few months. This will help in adding jobs and easing pressure on banks, which had lent to the projects that got stuck due to lack of government clearances. […]
New Delhi: The government on Monday allowed private companies in the defence sector to sell equipment to state-run entities without prior approval of the defence ministry, a move that could attract investments in the sector. The decision came after the government opened the sector for higher foreign direct investments (FDI) and relaxed compulsory licensing for a number of equipment. “The licencee shall be allowed to sell […]
Saudi Arabian Airlines plans to raise at least 10 billion riyals ($2.7 billion) through the sale of shares in its ground-handling, cargo and maintenance units. An initial public offering of the ground-handling unit valued at 2 billion riyals will take place “in weeks,” Saudi Arabian Airlines’ Chief Financial Officer Muhammad Albakri told reporters in Dubai. The sale of shares in the cargo unit is planned for next […]
There were six in contention; four were dropped, and one became the Chosen One: The Rafale. In French, ‘Rafale’ poetically means a ‘sudden gust of wind.’ It was one of the six fighter aircraft in competition for the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft, MMRCA, when the Indian Air Force wanted to acquire 126 polyvalent fighter planes. In April 2011, the IAF shortlisted two birds — […]
By Barun Das Gupta KOLKATA: One of the first priorities of the NDA Government on coming to power was to address the task of speedily narrowing down the asymmetrical gap in India’s defence vis-à-vis China along the entire Himalayan border. In fact, this should have begun in right earnest more than half a century ago, immediately after India’s disastrous military defeat at the hands of the […]
New Delhi: Shortly after 10 am on Friday, while the prime minister was exhorting an annual meeting of top military commanders from the Army, Navy and Air Force to be ready for any call to arms, India’s newest missile blasted off from a canister at the Chandipur test range on the coast of Odisha. This was the Nirbhay long-range cruise missile, which can hit a target […]
By Subrata Majumder Paradoxically, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi succeeded in persuading the Japanese and Chinese investors, he failed to influence the big American investors. Instead, his political wave and speech impelled the Indian Diaspora only. While a number of billion dollar projects were signed during his visit to Japan and the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India, no major deal was signed during his […]
Hyderabad: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan has said the central bank is in talks with the Centre to set up a financial resolution authority (FRA). “We really need a financial resolution authority so that we can close financial institutions in trouble, without necessarily merging those and taking the losses. We need to clean institutions…while resurrecting those functioning well. FRA will be the entity that […]
New Delhi: Oil companies’ gains on diesel sales jumped 87 per cent within a fortnight on a historic slide in global crude prices. Their profits from diesel, recorded for the first time ever, continue as the government delays a decision on deregulating its price. “The over-recovery on high-speed diesel (HSD), applicable for the second fortnight effective October 16, is now Rs 3.56 per litre. The over-recovery […]
NEW DELHI: DRDO is developing an air-launched version of the 1,500-km-range Nirbhay sub-sonic cruise missile which would be capable of being fired from the Air Force’s frontline Su-30MKI combat aircraft. “This Nirbhay missile would be capable of being used from air, land and ships and submarines. An air-launched version of the missile is also being planned,” DRDO chief Avinash Chander told PTI here. He said […]
NEW DELHI: To expedite infrastructure projects — road and rail — along the border with China for strategic reasons and also for better connectivity, principal secretary to Prime Minister has called a meeting of top officials of key ministries such as defence, rail and road, head of Border Roads Organization (BRO), national security adviser and others on Thursday. Sources said the agenda of the meeting to […]
By Nantoo Banerjee Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Defence Minister Arun Jaitley may not be fully aware how the United States made India play a pawn under the UPA’s 10-year-long Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh regime in America’s psychological war against the People’s Republic of China, trying to contain the latter’s geo-political ambition and keep control of the vital South China Sea that handles $5.5-trillion-worth global cargo movement […]
By Ashok B Sharma India’s foreign trade has badly suffered since the beginning of the global financial crisis in August-September 2008 and the subsequent shock of the sovereign crisis in Eurozone added to the problem. Over dependence on markets in the developed countries was the cause for shrinkage in Indian exports. As the recovery in developed countries and increase in demand is slow, India should […]
