Hundreds of Indian Muslim women Johannesburg have come out in support of Muslim women's right to wear 'Hijab,' a traditional headgear, worldwide.
India's first formula-one driver Narain Karthikeyan expressed his desire to participate in the inaugural 2011 Indian Grand Prix 'if he gets a good team.'
Industry observers were anticipating further divestment in the two public sector companies. The government has already divested about 13 per cent of its stake in aluminum producer Nalco and 0.41 per cent in the copper firm Hindustan Copper. Both, the companies are listed on the bourses.
The country's largest private lender, ICICI Bank, on Monday said it expects lending rates to go up after September as credit offtake is likely to pick up in the second half of the current fiscal.
Corporate India is on the path to recovery after having been pummelled around in the global recessionary storm, with companies showing optimism on hiring and salary increases, says a joint Mercer-CII survey.
Amidst the slowdown and the freeze on recruitment, there is some good news for students graduating next year: Infosys is planning to begin campus recruitment across the country from January 2010.
"What has changed in the last two quarters is that the markets have improved and deals are coming back. We see more deal-flows," Infosys' CEO and managing director, S Gopalakrishnan, told reporters on the sidelines of a CII meet in Mumbai on Wednesday.
Andhra Pradesh ranked No.1 with regard to the total number of investments made in textile projects this year, a study conducted by Confederation of Indian Industry-Southern region said.
India Inc on Friday expressed the hope that the robust 17.6-per cent industrial growth in April will help the economy grow by 8.5 per cent in this fiscal, even though factory output growth may moderate after June.
Over 70,000 patent applications are in the pipeline for examination and may need at least 3-4 years for approval under the Intellectual Property Rights Act due to shortage of examiners, a senior government official said.
India on Tuesday said conscious fostering of terrorism from across the border was not helping Indo-Pak ties and asked the neighbour to contain it.
The six-member board -- comprising HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, former Nasscom president Kiran Karnik, former Sebi member C Achuthan, CII chief mentor Tarun Das, renowned chartered accountant TN Manoharan and LIC nominee Suryakant Balakrishnan -- met in Hyderabad on Thursday for the third time after it was constituted January 12.
The Confederation of Indian Industries has joined hands with the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee to host business promotion meets across all the 71 Commonwealth countries before the event commences in October. "The CII will organise business promotion weeks in all the countries where the baton relay of the Games takes place," according to a senior official of the Organising Committee.
Distinguished scientist and Director of Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), K Jayaraman said Bharat Dynamics Limited, a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Defence, is currently producing 50-60 indigenously-developed Akash missile per month.
Hit by the new drug pricing policy and regulatory interventions, growth rate of the Rs 72,069-crore Indian pharmaceutical market has slowed down to 9.8 per cent in 2013 as compared to 16.6 per cent in 2012, says a report.
The government plans to invest up to 10 per cent in the sector and would encourage more private and foreign participation.
A low EDI has a direct correlation with low-skilled employment. Manifestation of the low index is also evident in the low enrolment and high dropout profiles of students in northern states.
This will help significantly reduce the clearing time required for high-value transactions, besides minimising related risks, Gopinath said at a CII-organised seminar in Mumbai. On an average, India's central bank handles around 60,000 real time gross settlement and about 50-lakh (5-million) cheque clearing transactions per day, Gopinath said.
The government on Monday said that the stimulus packages to perk up the economy during the slowdown are not likely to be withdrawn this fiscal and the exit when it happens will be a gradual one.
The issue was raised by the visiting CII's CEO Mission led by Bharati enterprise chairman Sunil Bharati Mittal, who among others met Lawrence Summers, Director of the National Economic Council, at the White House on Wednesday. During the meeting, the delegation comprising top Indian CEOs brought to the notice the concerns about the recent developments in the US with regard to H-1B work visa programme and certain provisions in the stimulus bill.
India remains very far behind China not just in terms of the old-style physical infrastructure of roads and power output, the difference is very stark when it comes to the information and communications technology sector.
CII president K V Kamath, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry president Rajeev handrasekhar and Assocham President Sajjan Jindal held discussions with Chidambaram immediately after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had interacted with a larger industry group. The government as also the Reserve Bank of India have taken a number of steps since beginning of October to ward off the Indian banking system from the global financial contagion.
A cabinet note for setting up a fund, with initial corpus of Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion), to provide credit to businesses in the unorganised sector has been prepared, a senior government official said.
On Wednesday, the finance minister expressed concern about the high fiscal deficit of about 6.8 per cent this year. He said some international rating agencies -- S&P, Moody's and others -- can think of downgrading India.
the Confederation of Indian Industry Business Confidence Index (CII-BCI) has predicted a return to better business conditions than before the downturn. The index for the period between October 2009 and March 2010 surged by a robust 7.4 points to 66.1 points, against a mere 2.4 point increase during the first half of the financial year.
The government on Wednesday said the country needs investment to the tune of Rs 361,000 crore (Rs 3,610 billion) to meet the shortage of nearly 25 million housing units.
India Inc on Wednesday said it looked forward to the new RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan initiating cut in interest rates and improving credit flow to crucial sectors like infrastructure to put economy back on high-growth path.
'Most probably we will be going to campuses in January after we assess the situation. Since there is a slowdown and if the situation improves, we will be going to campuses,' says Infosys CEO and Managing Director S Gopalakrishnan.
Since independent directors are not involved in the day-to-day management of the company, their liabilities should be distinguished and made less onerous than liabilities of the executive and non-independent directors, said a CII statement.
India must take urgent measures like issuing sovereign guaranteed bonds and exempting FIIs from short term capital gains tax to stem the rupee's slide, India Inc said.
Already two stimulus packages have been rolled out by the Centre to neutralise the impact of the global financial meltdown on the country and the Reserve Bank of India, through a series of monetary steps, released about Rs 3,20,000 crore (Rs 3,200 billion) in the system. Nath said that India is likely to receive foreign direct investment of about $30 billion during 2008-09. The government had set a FDI target of $35 billion for the fiscal.
However, in recent times, the clout that trader bodies such as CAIT and other organisations like Swadeshi Jagran Manch and Laghu Udyog Bharati has is steadily increasing. Earlier this year, trader bodies were able to convince the government not to extend the deadline for implementation of the new norms in FDI policy on e-commerce.
The data centre will act as a disaster recovery platform.
'Instead of doing reforms and restructuring, the present government is busy with the perception that everything is fine and the economy is hunky-dory.' 'Such hollow perceptions are very dangerous for the Indian economy in the long run.' 'The real risk to India is the lack of decent employment opportunities for youth in general and educated youth in particular.'
Asked about US President Barack Obama's proposal on tax restructuring, Chowdhry said he does not expect the move to affect Indian companies.
Former US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill on Thursday said India faced the threat of more 26/11-like terror attacks and one of the reasons would be the lacklustre response by its government towards such crises.
Fast food chain McDonald's India is planning to continue with its expansion and will open 40 more restaurants across the country during 2009-10.
"We have already put up draft rules of the IT (Amendment) Act on the website and have also received comments ... We are trying to finalise the rules within a month," Department of Information Technology (DIT) Secretary R Chandrashekhar told reporters on the sidelines of a CII conference in New Delhi on Monday.
"We had two meetings with the Sebi and couple of more is required (to decide on final guideline on IPO)," IRDA chairman J Hari Narayan said at a CII event.
The new Foreign Trade Policy announced a slew of tax concessions to boost exports, which have been on the downslide since October 2008.
