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egNEW DELHI: The government will bring a Bill, amending the Central Electricity Act, in winter session of Parliament to improve the tariff policy and regulations in the power sector. The power ministry is working out different tariff structure for different times of the day for easy availability of power for maximum hours in electricity deficit areas. It will soon consult states over the issue as the tariff matter comes under the states’ domain.

 

Besides, the government has decided to promote domestic power companies to help increase solar power generation in the country. Announcing these decisions in Rajya Sabha, power minister Piyush Goyal said the government will allow only 100% indigenous domestic companies to participate in the

ogMUMBAI: The Adani Group and Indian Oil Corporation are in talks to build a Rs 30,000-crore joint venture refinery at Mundra, which would give Gautam Adani an entry into the oil sector while the state-run company would get land port facilities for the proposed export-focused unit.

 

The proposed 30-million-tonne refinery at Mundra will make Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s native state, Gujarat, a bigger energy hub. It already has refineries of Reliance Industries, Essar Oil and Indian Oil, apart from two LNG terminals and the country’s biggest city-gas distribution network.

 

Industry sources said Gautam Adani has held initial talks with top executives at IOC and offered around 3,500-4,000 acres of land for th

defNEW DELHI: The Obama administration will push for the stalled mega deals for M-777 ultra-light howitzers and Javelin anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) when US defence secretary Chuck Hagel comes visiting from Thursday.

 

There will be talks on ways to further bolster the already expansive strategic partnership, ranging from sharing of intelligence and cooperation on counter-terrorism to joint combat exercises, but the cornerstone will remain the US offer to provide India with “ground-breaking” weapon technology on par with its closest allies.

 

Having bagged defence deals worth over $10 billion over the last decade, the US is obviously hungry for more. Of the different co-development and co-prod

A return to an era of higher interest rates could derail attempts by Islamic finance to create alternatives to a short-term funding instrument that has dominated the industry, but which some scholars and regulators want to see replaced.  Islamic finance has been trying to diversify away from so-called commodity murabaha, a common cost-plus profit arrangement, in an attempt to reduce reliance on a single tool, stop money […]

|By TAP Staff| A Dubai-based company has launched the UAE’s first offline business directory for Smart phones, named Call UAE, which can work without an internet connection or a mobile network. With over 400,000 listings and more than 5,000 search categories, Call UAE is claimed to be the only “patented” offline Search Engine for Business Data in the UAE. can work without an internet connection or a mobile […]

|Dianne Depra|Tech Times| A couple of days shy of closing its acquisition of the company, Apple is reportedly laying off 200 employees from Beats Electronics. Job cuts are standard in mergers and it looks like Apple is not taking a different route. In the latest round of tech company layoffs, Apple will be doing some restructuring and 200 positions are in its line of sight. Like any effort […]

inThe finance ministry is likely to put out a note soon, detailing its road map to capitalise state-run lenders while explicitly stating the government’s intent to maintain control over public sector banks with at least 52% stake.

 

This marks a shift from the previous UPA government’s decision to keep 58% shareholding in state-run banks. It is in keeping with the Narendra Modi-led government’s stand articulated in the Budget 2014-15 that it would encourage banks to raise capital from the market.

 

The government will push banks this way to the point of its own stake falling to 52%, to reduce reliance on the budget.

 

It has set aside only Rs 11,200 crore for bank capitalisation this f

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fsNEW DELHI: The central government’s worries on the Insurance Bill aggravated on Tuesday with Congress accusing it of adopting double standards on the issue and dismissing threats from the treasury benches that a joint session may be convened, forcing BJP ministers to knock on the doors of parties like SP and BSP to muster the numbers in the Rajya Sabha. Congress sources maintained the government was reportedly keen on passing the insurance bill in Parliament in this session so that Prime Minister Narendra Modi can showcase it to the US during his visit in September and hence wants to hurry through the process without sending it to a select committee of the Rajya Sabha. BJP leaders, on the other hand, alleged Congress was playing politics on

egNEW DELHI: The power ministry plans to create a fund to provide long-term finances to hydropower developers, and aims to play an active role in resolving state level sues that are blocking such projects.

 

“Hydropower did not get the desired attention as concerned ministries and departments were working in silos, and problems with states and central authorities could be resolved.

 

However, the new government is working in tandem as a team and we are hopeful to resolve pending issues to give conducive environment to hydropower sector,” power, coal and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday.

 

He said one of his first projects Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated was the

ogJAIPUR: The Rajasthan government while censuring previous Congress government for ignoring state’s interests while signing memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), has banked on the HPCL’s own consulting firm, SBI Caps’ report.

 

Chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, during her budget speech, said that based on appraisal report, the project will earn revenue of more than 68,000 crore within 15 years, from the day of production.

 

According to government officials, the data was cited from the report prepared by HPCL-appointed consulting firm, SBI Caps. Riding on these figures, the government is firming its stand on renegotiating the terms. “These facts came

By Gemstone Equity Research: The tobacco industry is suffering from sluggish demand, stricter regulations, and heavy tax duties. Although smoking is injurious to health there is still a large population of people around the world who smoke tobacco. The number of smokers and cigarettes produced are on the rise due to population growth. The number of smokers around the world is projected to rise to 1.64 billion […]

Samsung Electronics, the global leader in mobile-phone sales, is being outflanked in the two biggest markets by newcomers catering to domestic tastes. Xiaomi Corp. became the largest smartphone vendor in China during the second quarter, while Micromax Informatics Ltd. topped Indian mobile-phone shipments, according to data from research firms this week. In both cases, Samsung fell to No. 2. Earnings and shipments at Samsung are shrinking as […]

By Vikas Shukla Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock has rallied more than 44% over the last 12 months. Despite its strong performance, Bernstein Research senior analyst A.M. Sacconaghi believes that the stock remains relatively inexpensive. Its EV/FCF multiple is just 9x, in line with Western Digital Corp (NASDAQ:WDC) and Lexmark International Inc (NYSE:LXK), which are currently facing questions about secular outlook for their businesses. Apple stock worth $121 […]

When Saudi Arabia started to seriously tackle its labor market problems a few years ago, it had to take decisions that made it quite unpopular with both businesses and the general public. The government argued that some tough measures must be taken even if they are painful. After decades of depending on low-paid foreign workers, it was clear that fixing the labor market would be difficult and […]

inNEW DELHI: The government is working on developing a bankruptcy framework to offer easier exit routes to sick companies while helping revive those with viable options, said Kalraj Mishra, the new minister for micro small & medium enterprises (MSMEs).

 

Another issue the ministry is dealing with is availability of land for industrial units. It is asking states to create land pools by listing out all unused land available with them.

 

“Entrepreneur bankruptcy framework will be developed to enable easy exit of sick units,” Mishra told ET. “It has been a major demand of the MSME sector for a very long time. The details will be worked out soon.”

 

SMEs employ close to 40 per cen

fsNew Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said the government was open to accommodating minor modifications to the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2008, so that it could be passed in the current session of Parliament. He also said calling a joint session of Parliament was a real option if the Bill was defeated in one of the Houses. After an all-party meeting failed to break the deadlock on the issue between the government and Opposition, Jaitley on Monday reached out to the Congress. But the Congress continued to insist the Bill be sent to a select committee of Parliament, as it now was much changed from the one the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had tabled in the Rajya Sabha. The party added it would be willing to support the legisl

ogNEW DELHI: In a move aimed at ensuring India’s energy security, the Narendra Modi-led government plans to import huge volumes of natural gas from Russia. The Centre is working out the contours of a $40-billion (Rs 2.4 lakh-crore) mega onland pipeline project carrying gas from Russia to India, in one of India’s biggest energy projects till date.

 

Top government officials told HT that the move follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Brazil on the sidelines of the Brics summit.

 

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) along with the ministry of petroleum and natural gas are preparing a blueprint to examine the feasibility of this new project, they added.

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Op-Ed Contributor Eight Days in Gaza: A Wartime Diary By ATEF ABU SAIF August 4, 2014 Sunday, July 27 For the last two hours we’ve heard nothing but sonic booms and the sound of rockets and mortars. Shells have fallen on our street a few hundred yards from my father-in-law’s house, where my wife and I, and our five kids, are staying, and on the street behind us. My wife, […]

Abdul Rahman Qayed’s hands are smooth for a man who works in the construction trade. The reason, he says, is simple. For much of the past 28 years they’ve been covered in clay. Along with the date palm, coral stone, gypsum and straw, clay is one of the key materials with which Abdul Rahman, 52, and his 58-year-old brother, Mohammed Saleh, ply their trade. “We use the […]

| TAP Special| A slowdown in the sales of Emaar Properties in the previous quarter may be attributed to Dubai properties becoming unaffordable to many potential buyers due to a general price escalation in the property market. Emaar sold properties in Dubai worth 3.12 billion dirhams during the quarter, down from 3.29 billion in the same quarter last year. Obviously, the slowdown had an impact on revenue, […]

Women walk out of a branch of HSBC at Dubai Internet City in Dubai. Reuters With the largest presence of any international bank in the Middle East, HSBC’s results usually serve as a good indicator of the health of the region’s financial services industry. Going by the bank’s results for the region published on Monday, that outlook looks encouraging: the banking giant posted a 8.8% rise in […]

inThe government is proposing a major overhaul of its foreign direct investment (FDI) policy as part of the Narendra Modi-led administration’s plan to woo overseas investors and improve ease of doing business in India, which ranks at a lowly 134 out of 189 global economies in this respect, according to the World Bank.

 

The government is looking to adopt the international practice of linking policy with industrial codes to ensure foreign investors won’t have to wade through complicated press notes or circulars to decipher the policy for a sector.

 

“Discussions are on. There is merit in seeding the industrial codes with the FDI policy,” said a government official aware of the deliberations. The mov

egNEW DELHI: The Centre is looking to move amendments to the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 to enable the licensing of three joint ventures proposed by state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd — with NTPC Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation and National Aluminium Company Ltd (Nalco) — to set up new atomic power projects in the country.

 

Amid concerns over India’s nuclear liability provisions holding up the deployment of imported Light Water Reactor-based projects in collaboration with global vendors, the proposal by NPCIL to strike joint ventures with cash-rich PSUs is being seen as an alternative strategy to tide over the paucity of funds and ramp up execution capability for new projects using the indigenous pressurised heavy water react

ogNEW DELHI: Stung by Reliance Industries’ alleged bid to “influence” the foreign third arbitrator appointed by the Supreme Court in the KG-D6 block case, the government is set to approach the court with a plea that the relevant arbitration be done strictly within the country sans a foreign umpire.

 

Armed with a law ministry opinion conveyed to it recently, the petroleum ministry will also take the firm stand that RIL’s foreign partners, BP and Niko, should not be made a party to the arbitration, which was initiated by the Indian company, sources familiar with the matter told FE.

 

The government’s move would escalate the conflict between it and RIL over the alleged suppression of gas production at the once-pro

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