Talking to PTI Amarjeet Kaur, General Secretary of All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), said, "The two-day nationwide strike by the joint forum of central trade unions has begun this morning". About the impact of the agitation, she said that the entire coal belt (mining area) is affected in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. She also said that there is a good response in industrial areas of Assam, Haryana, Delhi, West Bengal, Telangana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Bihar, Punjab, Rajasthan, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. The AITUC official noted that the banks and insurance sectors are affected all over India, while steel and oil sectors are also seeing partial impact due to the strike. Kaur said that she has got preliminary reports that markets are closed in Odisha.
The Centre received 5.59 lakh public grievances against various government departments in the first half of this year, with the Department of Financial Services (DFS) getting most of such complaints, according to an official report.
About 53 million homes in the country are yet to get electricity and many industries depend on diesel generation sets to meet their requirements.
However, production of coal, crude oil and natural gas declined in April this year.
Narendra Modi had stressed need for shifting focus from port development to 'port-led development' model to maximise gains
The list mostly contains PSUs which were up for sale in the last fiscal.
'This country has become cynical, the country has lost hope. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is getting back hope in this country.' 'We are deconstructing the past which had corruption, inefficiency, policy paralysis, a tottering economy where investors had lost confidence, and people had become cynical. We are changing that, we are bringing confidence back to the people of India.'
Focuses on meeting non-traction demand through renewables.
Exports declined for the fourth-consecutive month by 10.3 per cent year-on-year to $34.98 billion in May, while the trade deficit widened to a five-month high of $22.12 billion. According to the data released by the commerce ministry on Thursday, key export sectors recording negative growth include petroleum products, gems and jewellery, engineering goods, ready-made garments of all textiles and chemicals. Imports also declined 6.6 per cent, six-month in a row, to $57.1 billion against $61.13 billion in the same month last year, the data showed.
E-commerce players may soon rent out drones, so you can use them the way you book a cab on an app, and test viable use-cases for last-mile delivery.
Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday pitched for policy guidelines to utilise scrapped vehicles as raw material for steel production, saying there are close to about one crore such vehicles in the country. Scindia, who also holds steel portfolio, said the time is not far away when the country will have to move towards green steel, and therefore, the option of iron ore and coking coal will not be available. Green steel is manufactured without using fossil fuels.
In a first, the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) officers reached out to several ministries in the last week of April as part of a confidence-boosting measure. The meeting brought the CAG officials and those from the ministries across the table to discuss the pain points in their relations. CAG of India Girish Chandra Murmu took this novel step because of growing tensions between those audited and the auditor.
'India Inc has been afraid to criticise the government of the day for many years now, and it is perhaps unfair to blame the current one alone,' says Shyamal Majumdar.
On the back of rising crude oil purchases, India's bill for imports from sanctions-hit Russia jumped 3.5 times in a year in April to $2.3 billion, showed data from the commerce ministry. In April, India's crude oil imports from Russia were valued at $1.3 billion, 57 per cent of India's total inbound shipments from Russia. Other major imported items during the month included coal, soybean and sunflower oil, fertilisers, and non-industrial diamonds. That month, Russia was also the fourth-largest crude petroleum supplier to India, after Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
E-auction or e-tendering moves the process of bidding for government contracts completely online, removing most manual procedures and, therefore, creating an accountability trail.
Contracting for the third month in a row, India's exports declined by 8.8 per cent to $33.88 billion in February due to slowdown in global demand, even as the trade deficit touched about a year low of $17.43 billion during the month, according to official data released on Wednesday. Imports also declined by 8.21 per cent to $51.31 billion as against $55.9 billion recorded in the corresponding month last year. Cumulatively, however during April-February this fiscal, the country's overall merchandise exports rose by 7.5 per cent to $405.94 billion.
Dr Manmohan Singh's role in the sordid saga of the Coal Allocation Scam was always Delhi's worst-kept secret; calls for his interrogation will mushroom after he was named by P C Parakh, says T V R Shenoy.
Anil Swarup, who conceived the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana -- a scheme the United Nations Development Programme and the International Labour Organisation recognised as among the finest -- speaks to Anjuli Bhargava.
Sectors which attracted maximum foreign inflows during April-June 2019-20 include services (USD 2.8 billion), computer software and hardware (USD 2.24 billion), telecommunications (USD 4.22 billion), and trading (USD 1.13 billion), the commerce and industry ministry data showed.
India's exports rose marginally by 1.62 per cent to $33.92 billion, while trade deficit more than doubled to $27.98 billion in August due to increased crude oil imports, commerce ministry data said on Wednesday. The revised data showed that imports rose by 37.28 per cent to $61.9 billion in August this year. The preliminary data released by the ministry on September 3 had shown a 1.15 per cent decline in exports to $33 billion in August.
The intensity of power crisis this season has hit a new high with average coal stock dipping to less than eight days. The first of a pan-Indian series, based on a ground report, shows how the Manesar industrial hub is coping with the challenge. As the scorching heat wave and the lengthy power cuts intensify in Haryana, the usually bustling labour chowk of the Industrial Model Township (IMT) of Manesar wears a deserted look.
Punjab has sent an email saying that four deaths suspected to be due to lack of oxygen have been reported in a private hospital in Amritsar district, Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in a written reply.
Both were rescued from the Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express that derailed near Bahanaga Bazar Station on June 2 that had claimed 275 lives and left around 1,200 injured.
In 2021, the Railways boasted of a historic feat -- no passenger deaths in train accidents in two years. However, the derailment of the Bikaner-Guwahati Express in 2022 brought the Railways back to its forgetful past.
'The days when less government, more governance were spoken of are well and truly behind us.' 'More government, it is now believed, means more governance,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
A looming global shortage of diesel in Europe presents India with more than one opportunity to profit from strong margins. A shortage of the fuel, a key contributor to inflation, has been exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine, and western sanctions on Russian fuel supplies. The slowdown in natural gas supply means the West needs diesel to heat their homes this winter.
India's steel imports from China, the world's biggest producer of the alloy, doubled in April-September from a year ago though the country has enough capacity to meet its demand.
Piyush Goyal is leading a delegation to deliberate with Australia.
The investment bank also says no ministries were merged even as some ministers were given more than one portfolio.
Total foreign direct investment into India rose 2 per cent to the "highest ever" $83.57 billion in 2021-22 on account of various measures like policy reforms and ease of doing business taken by the government, the commerce and industry ministry said on Friday. Total FDI comprises equity inflows, reinvested earnings and other capital. In 2020-21, the inflow stood at $81.97 billion. It was $74.39 billion in 2019-20 and $62 billion in 2018-19. "India has recorded the highest ever annual FDI inflow of $83.57 billion in 2021-22," the ministry noted in a statement.
But critics caution that over-centralisation can lead to new bottlenecks
The strike notices were given by workers' unions of various sectors such as coal, steel, oil, telecom, postal, income tax, copper, banks and insurance.
India's ambitious plans to generate an additional 180,000 Mw of power in the next seven years will face hurdles if Indonesia, the second largest supplier of thermal coal, goes ahead with plans to cap coal exports to serve domestic demand.
The CIL disinvestment has been hanging fire because of opposition from the trade unions. Mayaram's statement that the coal major will have to pay a higher dividend comes as the government makes efforts to meet its Rs 40,000 crore (Rs 400 billion) disinvestment target.
Indian companies are keenly waiting for reforms on rules related to land acquisition, labour, coal and power sector, and foreign direct investment in insurance sector.
In a bid to protect the domestic paper industry, the commerce and industry ministry on Thursday said it has decided to make registration compulsory for importing major paper products such as newsprint, handmade paper, envelopes, among others. All imports arriving on or after October 1 will be governed by the Paper Import Monitoring policy that aims to put an end to dumping of such products and address the issue of re-routing of goods through other countries in lieu of trade agreements. "The import policy of major paper products has been amended from 'Free' to 'Free subject to compulsory registration under Paper Import Monitoring System," an official statement said.
India's exports contracted 12.2 per cent to $34.48 billion in December 2022, mainly due to global headwinds, and the trade deficit widened to $23.76 billion during the same period, according to official data released on Monday. Imports in December 2022 also declined 3.5 per cent to $58.24 billion as against $60.33 billion in the year-ago period. In December 2021, exports stood at $39.27 billion and the trade deficit was at $21.06 billion.
Changes in global oil and gas rates matter more to India's economy than other major economies because the country imports around 87 per cent of its oil, half of its gas in the form of LNG, and over 60 per cent of its LPG.
The BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices have performed better than the front-liners
The Finance Ministry is considering a proposal to rope in professionals from the private sector for appointment of chairman and CEO-cum-managing director in state-owned financial institutions as it looks for talent from a wider pool of applicants.