News related to
trade

By T N Ashok The passage by the US Congress of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 has confronted India with a problem that is simultaneously diplomatic, economic and strategic. The immediate headline is stark: the legislation creates a statutory pathway allowing President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of up […]

The article India’s Graham Act Dilemma: Energy Security Meets US Tariff Weapon appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

Ramesh Khandelwal, who represents Madhya Pradesh on the government-constituted board, said on Wednesday that the 0.4 per cent merchant discount rate, or MDR, on UPI transactions above Rs 2,000 was at odds with the government’s stated emphasis on ease of doing business. The charge is due to take effect on October 15.

Khandelwal said he would raise the issue at the next meeting of the National Traders’ Welfare Board and sought an immediate rollback in the wider interests of merchants and customers. He argued that businesses operating on thin margins could struggle to absorb the additional transaction cost and that some of the burden might ultimately feed into retail prices.

The National Payments Corporation of India has said the revised framework will apply to specified person-to-merchant UPI payments above Rs 2,000. The fee will be borne by merchants rather than consumers and will be capped at Rs 300 for transactions of Rs 75,000 or more.

Person-to-person transfers, including payments between friends and family, will remain free. Merchant transactions up to Rs 2,000 will also continue without MDR, while small merchants receiving up to Rs 1 lakh a month through UPI QR payments are exempt under the framework.

Specified categories including railway tickets, fuel, agriculture, utilities, telecom, insurance, credit-card dues and tax payments will attract a lower flat charge of Rs 5 on eligible transactions above Rs 2,000. The government has also advised banks to ensure that merchants do not directly pass the MDR on to customers.

The opposition from Khandelwal adds to broader concern among traders over the return of merchant charges to UPI after more than six years of a zero-MDR regime. A nationwide LocalCircles survey of more than 32,000 merchants and businesses across 242 districts found that only 17 per cent of respondents were willing to bear a 0.4 per cent MDR on payments above Rs 2,000, while 41 per cent said they were unwilling to pay any such fee.

Merchants have raised particular concerns about sectors where high-value digital payments are common but margins are comparatively narrow. Textile traders in Surat, for example, said the levy could affect smaller businesses and workers who use UPI extensively for salaries, purchases and other routine transactions.

The policy change also marks a significant shift in the economics of the UPI ecosystem. Banks, payment applications and payment aggregators have long argued that the rapid expansion of transaction volumes requires greater spending on infrastructure, fraud prevention, cyber security and system capacity. The new MDR is intended to create a revenue stream to support those costs while keeping small-value and personal transfers outside the charging structure.

UPI has become the dominant retail digital payment system, with billions of transactions processed every month. That scale has increased the cost of maintaining the network even as users have become accustomed to making payments without a visible transaction fee.

The government’s approach seeks to confine the charge to larger commercial payments and to limit the exposure of small merchants and customers. Under the announced structure, a Rs 5,000 eligible merchant payment would carry an MDR of Rs 20, while a Rs 50,000 payment would cost the merchant Rs 200. Payments of Rs 75,000 and above would face the Rs 300 ceiling.

Khandelwal’s intervention puts the focus on whether traders will accept those costs or seek alternatives such as cash, bank transfers or other payment methods. His position is that even a small percentage charge, when repeated across large transaction volumes, can become a meaningful operating expense.

The dispute is likely to centre on merchant margins, enforcement and whether businesses can absorb the levy without changing prices or payment preferences. Traders also want clarity on how exemptions will be identified at the point of payment, particularly where a business accepts UPI through multiple bank accounts, QR codes or payment service providers across different locations.

Press Conference: For Greener Cities, NOW!

On Press Day, 14 September, JAC Motors held a press conference at its booth under the theme “For Greener Cities, NOW!,” presenting four electrified models to the European market. Partners, fleet operators, and trade media from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, and other countries attended.

At the press conference, Oscar Yu, General Manager of JAC International, stated that Europe is a key market in the company’s global expansion. JAC commercial vehicles are already present in Germany, Spain, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland, with a target of full European coverage by 2028. Since IAA Transportation 2024, JAC has established one subsidiary in Europe and built a localised marketing and service system covering 13 countries, including 8 regional strategic partners, over 50 authorised sales outlets, and more than 100 after-sales service outlets. In Spain, JAC holds a 41% market share in the medium-duty electric truck segment, ranking first. (Source: Spanish Directorate-General for Traffic (DGT) registration data, Jan–Jun 2026.)

The solutions JAC offers European customers go beyond the vehicles themselves. JAC’s subsidiary in Italy serves as a regional parts centre, covering warehousing, service and technical support, customer operations, and marketing. On financing, JAC has partnered with Santander and others to offer finance leasing, operating leasing, PCP (Personal Contract Purchase)/TCM (Trade Cycle Management), and flexible instalment plans, covering needs from fleets to individual users. On complete vehicle solutions, JAC works with bodybuilder partners such as Infore Environment to cover refrigerated transport, municipal sanitation, rescue, and other specialist applications.

The press conference also showcased JAC’s progress in Europe: JAC Motors Italy is now operational, the German dealer network is taking shape, and the parts logistics system already covers all of Germany. As JAC’s European business gradually moves from building its footprint to day-to-day operations, the atmosphere of conversations at this year’s booth has changed noticeably compared with 2024. Conversations at the booth now go straight to operations: Is the range enough? How long does charging take? Can this vehicle save the fleet money?

Looking ahead, JAC will continue to advance product introduction and channel expansion, targeting full coverage of the European market by 2028, participating in Europe’s urban green logistics transition with a complete electrified product portfolio and localised service capabilities.

Hashtag: #JACMOTORS

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

The 2026-2030 plan, released on Wednesday, calls for an integrated gold ecosystem covering storage, trading, clearing, refining and related financial services, while encouraging more renminbi-denominated commodity products. The government said it would strengthen links with mainland exchanges and attract international investors as it develops the city’s role as a global offshore renminbi centre.

It describes gold as an asset and envisages a one-stop storage, trading and clearing centre.

The strategy gives formal five-year backing to a gold-market expansion already under way. Hong Kong began trial operations of a central clearing and settlement system for gold in July and plans to launch the system formally in the first quarter of 2027. The administration is also seeking to expand storage capacity, improve refining capability and support more gold dealers and financial institutions in establishing operations in the city.

The plan says Hong Kong will explore renminbi-denominated gold and commodity markets and deepen co-operation with the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Shanghai Futures Exchange. It also aims to increase the range of products priced in the Chinese currency and encourage the use of renminbi for pricing and settlement in spot commodity transactions.

Chief Executive John Lee’s administration has framed the programme as part of a broader effort to strengthen Hong Kong’s position as an international financial centre while aligning more closely with China’s national development priorities. The five-year plan also seeks to enlarge the city’s offshore renminbi business, improve liquidity support and expand the range of renminbi bonds and other financial products.

Hong Kong remains the world’s largest offshore renminbi market. The government said offshore renminbi lending reached a record 935 billion yuan in 2025, while renminbi bond issuance reached 1 trillion yuan for a second consecutive year. The new plan proposes a dedicated offshore renminbi liquidity provision mechanism and wider use of the currency in trade, investment, financing and government expenditure.

Gold is intended to provide the first platform for a wider commodities push. The government said Hong Kong would use its status as an approved delivery point in the London Metal Exchange’s global warehousing network to develop trading, risk-management and financing services across additional commodities.

Since Hong Kong joined the LME warehousing network in 2025, approved storage space has exceeded 60,000 square metres and metal inventories have risen above 20,000 tonnes, according to the government. Authorities plan to facilitate more LME-approved warehouses in the Northern Metropolis and introduce a half-rate tax concession for physical commodity trading to attract additional market participants.

The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing group also plans to announce details this year for new renminbi-denominated, physically settled gold futures contracts. The government said the contracts are intended to strengthen the currency’s role in precious-metal pricing and provide another channel for international investors to gain renminbi exposure.

Other measures include possible tax concessions for qualifying gold and commodity activities, additional insurance capacity for gold storage and trading, and support for an industry-led trade association. Officials are also examining tokenised warehouse-receipt financing and blockchain-based systems that would allow commodity inventories to be used more flexibly as collateral.

The administration has set a target of lifting Hong Kong’s gold storage capacity to more than 2,000 tonnes within three years. It is also encouraging internationally qualified refiners to establish or expand local operations, with government agencies assisting interested companies in identifying sites and navigating regulatory requirements.

Closer integration with mainland markets is another element of the strategy. The plan calls for wider market access between Hong Kong and mainland gold markets and further collaboration with the Qianhai Mercantile Exchange, including development of renminbi-settled commodity futures, options and spot products.

The regulatory relaxation allows fund managers more room to adjust the cash and futures legs of arbitrage trades while participating in the Closing Auction Session, people familiar with the change said. The move is intended to encourage funds that collectively manage a large pool of equity-linked assets to place orders in the auction rather than largely completing transactions beforehand.

The change addresses a central weakness that has emerged since the auction system was introduced on August 3 for shares with futures and options contracts. Trading during the closing window has at times been thin, leaving prices vulnerable to sharp moves when large buy or sell orders enter a relatively shallow order book.

Arbitrage funds are viewed as a potentially important source of balancing liquidity because they hold shares in the cash market while maintaining offsetting short positions in futures. That structure can enable them to sell stock when the closing auction is dominated by buyers, or buy when supply is heavy, without necessarily taking a directional market view.

SEBI has not issued a public circular detailing the latest operational flexibility. Existing mutual-fund rules require arbitrage schemes to maintain at least 65% of assets in equity and equity-related instruments, while their strategy is built around offsetting positions designed to capture differences between cash and derivatives prices.

The regulator’s intervention comes as it separately reviews the mechanics of the Closing Auction Session after volatile expiry-day moves raised concerns over price discovery and derivatives settlement. A consultation paper issued on September 12 proposed changes to the way settlement prices are determined when futures and options expire.

One option under consideration would blend the volume-weighted average price from the final 30 minutes of continuous trading with prices established in the closing auction. Another would temporarily retain the earlier 30-minute volume-weighted average methodology for derivatives settlement while the auction develops deeper liquidity.

SEBI has also proposed restrictions on order cancellations outside a specified range around the reference price, a shorter post-auction derivatives trading window and changes to the publication of indicative index closing levels during the auction. Public comments on those proposals are open until October 3.

The Closing Auction Session replaced the previous method of setting closing prices for eligible stocks through the volume-weighted average of trades during the last 30 minutes of normal trading. Under the new framework, eligible cash-market stocks move into an auction process late in the session, while equity derivatives continue trading until 3.40 pm.

The auction is intended to concentrate end-of-day orders and produce a closing price based on the level at which the greatest quantity of shares can be matched. Similar mechanisms are used in several major global markets, particularly for large institutional orders and benchmark-tracking flows.

Early trading under the system, however, produced unusually wide gaps between cash-market closing prices and futures values on some days. Those differences caused sharp one-day movements in the net asset values of arbitrage funds because the cash and derivatives legs of their portfolios were marked using prices generated under different trading conditions.

Fund managers and market participants have argued that broader institutional participation is essential if the auction is to deliver stable price discovery. Arbitrage funds, with assets of roughly ₹3.5 trillion according to industry estimates, represent one of the largest pools capable of supplying two-way liquidity without relying on outright directional bets.

The mutual-fund industry has also examined changes to futures valuation that would better align derivatives prices with the auction-determined cash close. One proposal would derive a theoretical futures closing value from the final cash-market price and the prevailing cash-futures spread, reducing temporary valuation mismatches in arbitrage portfolios.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Monday that artificial intelligence was a consequential technology for humanity and should be developed openly and inclusively. Asked about calls from Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk for companies to slow frontier development, Guo warned that “fear-mongering, confrontation and vicious competition” would hinder sound global AI governance.

The response came as Washington’s debate over AI safety widened into a strategic argument about China. Anthropic chief executive Amodei has urged tougher safeguards for advanced systems and has argued that a Chinese lead in frontier AI could create national security risks for the United States. OpenAI chief executive Altman and Musk have also called for stronger precautions as systems become more capable.

Trump, however, has resisted proposals that could materially slow US development. He said this week that America already had tools to police the industry and stressed the importance of maintaining leadership over China. House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly rejected a moratorium, saying any pause could hand Beijing a competitive advantage and create national security risks.

The dispute places AI governance among the issues likely to shadow the Trump-Xi meeting scheduled for September 24 in Washington. The leaders are also expected to confront trade disputes, semiconductor restrictions and China’s controls on rare-earth exports, all of which affect the broader contest over computing capacity and advanced manufacturing.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is due to meet Vice-Premier He Lifeng before the summit.

China has presented a different framework for AI governance, emphasising access, development and multilateral rules while opposing measures it regards as technological containment. At the BRICS summit this month, Xi proposed an open-source and inclusive AI initiative and said China would help establish a BRICS AI open-source community and digital ecosystem platform.

Beijing has nevertheless acknowledged the risks posed by increasingly powerful systems. Chinese officials have called for stronger global governance and risk awareness, while arguing that safety should not become a justification for blocking technological diffusion. The government has also supported the establishment of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, whose founding agreement was signed in Shanghai in July by 29 countries.

The argument over safety is closely linked to semiconductor controls. Washington has maintained restrictions on the export of advanced computing technology to China, although the Commerce Department in January shifted applications for Nvidia H200, AMD MI325X and comparable chips to case-by-case review under specified security conditions. Beijing has repeatedly criticised US technology restrictions as discriminatory and has threatened countermeasures when Chinese companies are targeted.

China’s Commerce Ministry last week also challenged a US cybersecurity advisory accusing China-based AI companies of using distillation campaigns against American models. The ministry said China was prepared for an intergovernmental AI dialogue with the United States but would respond if Washington used such allegations to suppress Chinese firms.

That exchange underscored the difficulty of separating AI safety from the strategic rivalry. US officials and technology executives increasingly frame advanced models as both commercial assets and national security capabilities, while China portrays broad restrictions as attempts to preserve US dominance.

There are areas of overlap. Both governments have said advanced AI presents risks requiring governance, and the two sides have agreed to launch an intergovernmental dialogue on the technology. Informal discussions among researchers and policy specialists have also continued, though official positions remain far apart on access to chips, model controls and the balance between safety and development.

The September 24 summit follows Trump’s May visit to China, when the two leaders agreed to pursue what the White House described as strategic stability and set up new bilateral trade and investment mechanisms. Artificial intelligence was not the centrepiece of those agreements, but it has since moved higher on the bilateral agenda as concerns over model capabilities, export controls and industrial competition have intensified.