Kuwait’s privately owned Jazeera Airways is preparing to bid for a big stake in state-run flag carrier Kuwait Airways, Jazeera’s chairman told Reuters. If the deal goes through, it will be a sign that the business scene is changing in the Gulf. For several decades, Gulf Arab economies have been dominated by the heavy hand of the state. Governments’ huge oil revenues have eclipsed private sector activity. […]
Kuwait Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund which started as a Bank of England account dedicated to receiving oil money, will sell stakes in three local companies worth 1.56 billion dinars ($5.4 billion). The KIA, as the fund is known, will sell its Kuwait Investment Co. holding in a public offering in the first half of next year, according to a statement on the website of the […]
News Analysis By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK October 24, 2014 CAIRO — The British police arrest four men accused of plotting a bombing on the scale of the Mumbai hotel attack six years ago. The Australian authorities arrest a ring of 12 accused of plotting daring murders, including a public beheading. In Canada, a gunman assaults the Parliament building and kills a soldier guarding a war memorial, and a motorist strikes […]
Dubai is racing ahead to dominate the Middle East’s plastic surgery market with plans to attract half a million medical tourists in six years. Where cosmopolitan Beirut was once the region’s best known city for going under the knife, turmoil in Syria and violence often spilling into Lebanon is driving away wealthy Arab tourists. After splashing out on medical infrastructure over the past years, Dubai already ranks […]
MUMBAI: Foreign funds are buying more Indian corporate bonds as there is no sign that the $25-billion limit on government securities — close to being exhausted — is going to be raised. Overseas portfolio investors have used up nearly half the overall investment limit in corporate bonds compared with 37 per cent four months ago. But foreign portfolio investors, or FPIs, can invest another Rs 1,23,580 crore […]
The bear market in oil has analysts reassessing the U.S. shale boom after five years of historic growth. The U.S. benchmark price dropped to $79.78 a barrel on Oct. 16, the lowest since June 2012. At that level, one-third of U.S. shale oil production would be uneconomic, analysts for New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. led by Bob Brackett said in a report yesterday. Drillers would […]
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 […]
By S. Sethuraman As the slow-grinding economy enters the second half of fiscal 2015, a tinge of optimism pervades policy-making circles in Modi Government that recovery would now begin to gather some steam to hit at least a minimum of 5.5 per cent GDP growth, in a distinctly improving macro-economic environment. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now put in place a new economic team to […]
NEW DELHI: After announcing several labour reforms last week, the Narendra Modi government is considering allowing workers to participate in board decision of state-run firms such as Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Coal India, NTPC, Indian Oil Corporation and BHEL. The policy proposal, an initiative of the labour ministry, is expected to be initially confined to state-run enterprises, but its scope could be enlarged later to include […]
This was not the first time something had gone wrong with the car Photo: ALAMY (POSED BY MODEL) There are some experiences that you know shorten your life, even if only by tiny increments. One of them is dealing with car trouble and car dealerships. On Monday I took our Citroën – groovy in design but prone to unreliability – to the main dealer for a minor service. […]
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 […]
MUMBAI: At one of the customary premonetary policy meetings with industry, former Reserve Bank of India governor Duvvuri Subbarao wanted to know how many of those present would benefit from an interest rate cut. Almost all hands went up. The next question was how many would pass on the lower cost to customers. Almost no one raised their hands. Subbarao kept interest rates unchanged. The voice of […]
NEW DELHI: India Friday called for building the SAARC power grid so that excess power produced in one region of South Asia can be used to meet deficits elsewhere. Addressing the fifth South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation energy ministers meet here, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said that with the implementation of such a grid, hydel power generated in India’s northeast, for instance, could be transported […]
NEW DELHI: India is likely to next month sign a deal to lay an oil pipeline to Nepal for supply of petrol, diesel and ATF, said Sunil Kumar Thapa, Commerce Minister of the Himalayan nation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Nepal in August had “assured that India will assist in putting up a pipeline,” he told reporters after meeting Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan […]
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 Rashidul Bari| When I was writing Grameen Social Business Model, a book detailing the search for a weapon to use against poverty and terrorism, Malala Yousafzai played a key, but kind of secondary, role, a supporting character. But I kind of found, when I was writing another article, “Why do they Hate Obama?” that the force of Malala kept trying to take over, kept trying to […]
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 […]
NEW DELHI: Having proved himself as a ‘rock star’ abroad and a vote-getting machine at home, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now going to do what people are telling him to do: Take policy decisions that cannot be put off any longer. The first of these is a Cabinet reshuffle likely by the end of this month – after Diwali. A brace of decisions on economic […]
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 […]
An advertisement by the highway outside Dubai’s massive Jebel Ali Port tells firms they don’t need to ship goods through the Strait of Hormuz, the traditional gateway to the Gulf. Instead they can have goods delivered to a port in Oman, outside the Gulf, and bring them into the region by road. “Why go through the Strait when you can go straight to the Gulf,” the billboard […]
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 Raju Kumar BHOPAL: Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chauhan is over excited after the fourth Global Investors Summit organized at Indore. His excitement can be ascribed to two reasons. First, the Prime Minister came to join the Summit and he appreciated Mr Chauhan a lot for the development of the state. Second reason is the quantum of investment promised during the Summit which […]
By Pratik Deb Salman M has made it to the headlines recently as the 25-year-old student from Kerala facing life imprisonment following his refusal to stand up during the national anthem in a theatre. His arrest and subsequent denial of bail garnered a lot of controversy as he was charged with sedition for, reportedly, ‘sitting and disrespecting’ the national anthem. Beyond the bizarre and disturbing decision […]
Iran will sell its oil to Asia in November at the biggest discount in almost six years, matching cuts by Saudi Arabia as global crude benchmarks slide deeper into a bear market. State-run National Iranian Oil Co. cut official selling prices of its crude to buyers in Asia for November, two people with knowledge of the pricing decision said yesterday. The decrease came a week after Saudi […]
