|By Arabian Post Staff| Buoyed by sharp fall in gold prices globally, India is likely to see a jump of 11 per cent in imports of the metal to 1,000 tonnes this year, according to the All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation. The world’s second-biggest gold consumer imported around 900 tonnes in 2014. “Gold import is estimated at around 1,000 tonnes in 2015 calendar year, compared […]
Oil speculators are buying options contracts that will only pay out if crude drops to as low as $15 a barrel next year, the latest sign some investors expect an even deeper slump in energy prices. The bearish wagers come as OPEC’s effective scrapping of output limits, Iran’s anticipated return to the market and the resilience of production from countries such as Russia raise the prospect of […]
|By Matein Khalid| In retrospect, the last six years were a unique period in global central banking, an epic monetary experiment that averted a Great Depression after Lehman’s failure and interbank/credit contagion plunged the world into recession in 2008-9. Yet the Fed (and later Bank of Japan, ECB and even PBOC) quantitative easing also led to asset bubbles, credit market excesses, currency wars and the mispricing of […]
The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) today approved a new HTTP error code — 451 — that can be used to identify online content that is unavailable for legal reasons, such as government-enforced censorship. Taken from “Farenheit 451,” the title of the classic Ray Bradbury novel about book burning, the error code has been championed for several years by former Google engineer and XML specification author Tim […]
The use of broadband Internet in U.S. homes is starting to drop, according to a report released Monday by the Pew Research Center. In fact, just 67 percent of U.S. homes have broadband connectivity, down from 70 percent in 2013 — the first significant decline in the number of homes with broadband connections, according to Pew’s new Home Broadband report. The reasons? Mobile technology, to name one. […]
In 1977, Rick Hoyt told his father Dick he would like to participate in a 5 mile run. It was a benefit for a Lacrosse player who had become paralyzed. Rick was diagnosed at birth as a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, and was unable to walk or speak naturally. Running a race seemed impossible but there are always ways to surpass those boundaries. Dick ran the race […]
CHINESE SLOWDOWN HAS TO BE MONITORED
By Anjan Roy
At long last the US Federal Reserve – America’s central bank—has raised the interest rates, albeit hardly. This is the first hike in interest rates by the US central bank in over a decade.
The US Fed rate hike has been by a very small margin – from zero to just about 0.25% to 0.5%. It was so gradual and soft that the rate hike did not cause the disruptions in the global financial markets that everyone expected from such a decision.
The first question here is how will it affect India? It should not, and this has been borne out by what happened in the day after the Fed rate hike. The stock market remained more or less flat. The exchange rate also remained stable. The fund managers did not immediately think of taking money out of India and that left the financial markets unruffled.
But then w
Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell PLC on Thursday called for tougher regulation of the Dubai crude benchmark, the Middle East’s most important oil-pricing mechanism, which has pushed up the region’s prices relative to other grades. “Regrettably, there have been times in recent months where the price of Dubai (crude) was assessed well in excess of the fundamental refining value of other comparable Middle Eastern crudes,” Shell […]
|By Lawrence Williams| The initial reaction to the Fed’s first interest rate rise in nine years has been marginally positive for gold. Only time will tell if, on reflection by the market, its initial post-hike performance can be maintained, or improved upon. It has already come down a little this morning trading in the mid to high $1060s after mid $1070s immediately post the announcement. This fall from the […]
IMMEDIATE DIALOGUE NEEDED TO RESTORE HARMONY
By Kalyani Shankar
Differences of opinion between the Centre and the states are quite common in a federal structure. This is more so if different political parties rule in the state and at the Centre. It is not uncommon that some Chief Ministers have even walked out of the National Development Council or Inter State Council protesting against the Centre’s treatment of their states. Chief Minister accusing the Centre of using the CBI as a weapon against him or her is also not new. In fact the CBI director Ranjit Sinha even described the agency as a ‘caged parrot.’ Whether this is true or not, the CBI is not an autonomous agency and the party in power has some control over it.
Therefore Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s tantrums about the over-enthusiastic CBI raid in his office on Tuesday is not surprising. Althoug
SNDP BOSS’S LOSS IS CHIEF MINISTER CHANDY’S GAIN
By P. Sreekumaran
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There is no mistaking it. Narendra Modi’s maiden visit to Kerala as the Prime Minister was a damp squib though the State BJP unit would have us believe that it was a roaring success.
Despite the strenuous efforts of the BJP to put a positive spin on the controversy-marred Modi visit, the stark reality is that it has defeated the very purpose for which Modi undertook the much-hyped visit.
The main purpose of the Modi mission was to unveil at Kollam the statue of former Congress Chief Minister R Shankar with the avowed objective of appropriating the legacy of Shankar like the way the BJP tried to hijack Sardar Vallabbhai Patel. However the effort came a cropper in a most resounding manner. The most visible sign of the failure of the visit was the snu
As South Africans endure their deepest economic crisis since 2009, it’s not just President Jacob Zuma they blame. There’s a family whose name is increasingly the target of protest: the Guptas. As tens of thousands marched in October in South Africa’s biggest wave of nationwide anti-government protests since the African National Congress came to power, one poster, broadcast on the nation’s television channels, captured the public anger: […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Gold prices were trading higher in afternoon dealings and holding on to early gains in the aftermath of the first interest rate increase from the U.S. Federal Reserve since 2006. The gains were explained as a move by traders to get a jump on the possibility of Fed rate hike, on the firm belief that the gold market would exhibit a “sell the rumor, […]
FOREIGN INVESTORS MAY GET SOME RELIEF
By G. Srinivasan
For the country’s corporate sector apprehensive of long pendency in courts and protracted litigation on commercial disputes for resolution, help is on hand at long last. The NDA government has set off a flurry of activities on this front to give a whiff of long-felt comfort to assuage investors’ enduring worries on this count. In the ongoing winter session of Parliament, the Law Commission of India’s report with its draft bill on Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts and Commercial Courts Bill, 2015 was tabled. Subsequently, the House Panel on Personnel, Public Grievances , Law and Justice under the chairmanship of Mr. E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan also submitted its report, which also took due note of the Ordinance promulgated by the Government on October 23, 2015 making certain improve
|By Arabian Post Staff| AstroLabs, Google -backed technology hub, is helping regional entrepreneurs to grow their startups. AstroLabs opened in October, with 42 startups picked from among 250. The facility features a device lab designed by Google is equipped with iPhones, Android smartphones, tablets and computers, which can be used by startups to test their mobile applications and content. One of the aspiring entrepreneurs is Lamia Tabbaa-Bibi, creator of IReadArabic.com, […]
SUSHMA’S TALKS IN KABUL HAVE POSITIVE NOTE
By Harihar Swarup
Kashmir always remains the core issue whenever India-Pakistan dialogue is resumed or breaks down. This time also, in the breakthrough in Islamabad with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit and the decision to resume of a comprehensive bilateral dialogue, Kashmir remained the key issue. The Manmohan Singh Government had tried to kick-start stalled discussion through “the resumed dialogue” process, which met with the same fate of the composite dialogue following the killing of Indian soldiers almost three years ago. In the past, every time there was forward momentum in India-Pakistan ties, particularly on Kashmir, there were attempts by militants or the army to derail the process.
India and Pakistan were in striking range of an agreement on Kashmir in 2007 when Pervez Musharraf was swept from power
Oil declined to the lowest level since 2008 in London amid estimates that OPEC’s decision to scrap production limits will keep the market oversupplied. Brent futures capped the biggest weekly decline in more than a year. The global surplus will persist at least until late 2016 as demand growth slows and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries shows “renewed determination” to maximize production, the International Energy Agency said Friday. […]
BARWANI EYE-CAMP DISASTER IS A WAKE UP CALL
From L.S. Herdenia
BHOPAL: Negligence and indifference by the concerned officials and failure to enforce relevant rules and procedure caused another tragedy in Madhya Pradesh. A few days ago about 80 persons lost their lives following a massive blast caused due to careless storage of explosive material. Explosion took place in Petlavad, which was part of Jhabua-Ratlam parliamentary constituency, was lost by the BJP. Petlavad explosion was one of the causes, which led to BJP’s defeat in the by-election.
The same factors which caused Petlavad tragedy are responsible for another tragedy in which more than fifty persons nearly lost their eyesight, after they underwent surgery at a cataract operation camp organised by the government from November 16 to 24 in Barwani. The affected persons were later referred to the MY
POLITICS HOLDS PARLIAMENT TO RANSOM
By Kalyani Shankar
After a cordial meeting between the Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, it was expected that the Winter Session of Parliament might run smoothly and the reform bills might go through. Modi began with a conciliatory note not only in his speeches in Parliament but also made a rare gesture of inviting the Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for tea to break the ice. The Congress too climbed down and showed signs of supporting the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill, which the Modi government desperately wants to push through this session. A week later, the Congress leaders are now talking of a “touch and go” scenario even though the government has responded positively to the Congress demands.
So what has happened to change this scena
|By Lawrence Williams| The ‘Nobody Cares’ quote was the theme of Grant Williams’ polished performance at Mines & Money London last week. Grant (no relation) is a Senior adviser to Vulpes Investment Management in Singapore – but is perhaps better known as the author of the always entertaining and enlightening Things that make you go hmm… newsletter. This has been published since 2009 and has become one […]
MODI GOVERNMENT HAS TO BOOST SKILL DEVELOPMENT
By K.R. Sudhaman
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced from the ramparts of Red Fort on the Independence Day that the two mantras of his government’s economic strategy would be job creation and to tackle farmers’ woes. In a country, where 10-12 million enter job market every year, no government can ignore this fact and rightly Modi from the day he assumed office in May 2014, has been laying emphasis on job creation. This is all the more important as 65 per cent of the vast 1.25 billion population in the country are below the age of 35.
If India were to cash-in on this demographic dividend, it needed to give a fillip to labour intensive technology, infrastructure and micro, small and medium enterprises. The make-in-India campaign, the digital India coupled with Skill India launched by Modi is aimed at cr
INDIA IS NOT MAKING ENOUGH FOR ITSELF
By Nantoo Banerjee
Notwithstanding the GDP growth projection of 7.5 per cent for the current fiscal, India’s $350-billion export manufacturing is fast shrinking. The export downtrend continued for 11 months in a row toll October. There is no immediate sign of improvement. Making in India does not seem to make much sense at least for Indian exporters at this moment. With export orders shrunk and prices falling in the global market, India’s export manufacturers are in a quandary. The loss of exports during this financial year could be close to $80-90billion. The export earnings could at best reach $270 billion. This could mean a massive loss of production and jobs in the export sector. The country would be lucky if it ends 2015-16 with a 20 per cent loss of export earnings compared to the last year.
Unfortunately, around 4
OPEC has seemingly dropped any attempt at trying to fulfill its founding mission and manage the global oil market. For Saudi Arabia’s Ali al-Naimi, the most powerful and longest-serving of the group’s oil ministers, it may have seemed like history was repeating itself. There are several striking parallels between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ current situation and the period from 1997 to 1999, when the group lost […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller and Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch met with officials of the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) in Doha on Sunday amidst newspaper reports suggesting that Qatar has demanded curtailing the role of unions in the automobile company. Qatar is the third largest shareholder of VW. Volkswagen, however, denied QIA made such a demand, but Reuters reported the meeting discussed the state of […]
