The measures are part of a package of nine concessions that were suggested by the commerce ministry around eight weeks ago and are awaiting cabinet approval.
Stanchart's plan for 100 rural branches stuck.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his visit to the 13th Asean summit held at Singapore in November 2007, had indicated that India would take a flexible stand in the FTA talks.
Commerce ministry will issue notices to 57 formally approved SEZs. If the notices are not replied to, the approvals will stand cancelled.
"We will write to the Centre to scrap the eight proposals pending for approval while we will not notify the four (SEZs) that are already approved. About the rest three, we will take up the matter with the Centre to denotify them," said Chief Minister Digamber Kamat.
Gems and jewellery exports may have risen over 20 per cent so far this fiscal, but the rising rupee has cost 150,000 diamond workers their jobs in the last one year, the head of the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, Sanjay Kothari, said.
Even as the engineering goods sector, which has the largest share in the country's export basket, registered an export growth of 22 per cent (dollar terms) in the April-July period of this year, a recent study has revealed that the volume of exports has gone down in majority of the products manufactured by the sector, leading to job losses.
The proposed India-Thailand free trade agreement (FTA) will have to wait for some more time to become operational, as there has been no headway in negotiations on the India-Asean treaty on free trading of goods.
Experts say this is a landmark deal that tackles a long-pending issue and will boost Russian investment in India's energy, minerals and defence sectors. The debt, accumulated over several years till April 15, 2007, is parked with the Reserve Bank of India. Explaining the agreement, Indian officials said a Russian company planning to invest in India would deposit rouble funds equivalent to their proposed investment with the Russian central bank.
Some new sectors in which the commerce ministry has proposed to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) are credit information companies and commodity exchanges. The ministry is in favour of allowing up to 49 per cent FDI proposed in both these sectors. In proposing to open up the commodity sector, the ministry has said that FII investment be limited to 24 per cent, with a condition that a foreign investor cannot hold more than 10 per cent equity in the investing companies
As foreign fund flows have lifted the rupee to record highs against the dollar, the commerce ministry has started telling exporters to prepare for the Indian currency rising further to 38 against the dollar by December. The strong rupee is already hurting India's exporters, with companies cutting jobs and scaling back expansions. A further appreciation may have even worse consequences for sectors like textile, infotech and automobile.
Analysts point out that exporters outside SEZs enjoy Cenvat credit against service tax paid on a host of services subscribed to while engaging in export-related activities. In addition, the department of revenue recently permitted service tax exemption on seven services used by exporters.
The Department of Commerce is preparing guidelines for setting up single-window clearance systems in states for special economic zones (SEZs). he move comes after a recent review by the department, in which it was found that the SEZ developers were facing problems in getting approvals in many states.
Since the SEZ Act was notified in February 2006, 22 SEZs have been up and running. In the last financial year (2006-07), these SEZs collectively exported goods worth Rs 33,000 crore (Rs 330 billion) , roughly 6 per cent of India's total exports of Rs 5,71,641 crore (Rs 5716.41 billion). Officials also pointed out that 52,000 people have found employment in the new SEZs set up after 2005.
The finance ministry had strongly opposed the hike announced by the commerce ministry.
Even as India and China give final touches to a joint study group report on enhancing trade ties, the domestic industry, especially the electronics sector, is facing an unprecedented threat from Chinese imports.
India and Australia are soon likely to initiate talks for a free trade agreement.
The highlights of the export package was the increase of drawback rates by an average 2 percentage to 3 percentage points with retrospective effect from April 1.
Even as the SEZ Board of Approval meeting, held in New Delhi on Thursday, deferred taking a decision on Essar's request to link its steel-based zone at Hazira
There was a time when the footwear exporters of Agra used to rue the fact that their export market was predominantly Europe where they could tot up only modest gains.
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