A week after the devastating Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad claimed 270 lives, investigators on Thursday continued to sift for clues to ascertain the cause, while the government said the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau will decide where to decode the black box of the ill-fated Dreamliner.
China on Tuesday retaliated US President Donald Trump's imposition of 2nd round of ten per cent tariffs on its export by slapping an additional 15 per cent tariffs on American goods and initiated legal action against Washington in WTO while leaving the door open for talks to address each other's concerns.
United States President Donald Trump on Sunday criticised the trade deficits that the US has with Canada, Mexico, China, and argued that America should no longer 'subsidise' other countries, and urged businesses to manufacture domestically to avoid tariffs.
The government has approved a Rs 675 crore (Rs 6.75 Special Economic Zone by Finnish telecom major Nokia near Chennai.
Concerned over the fallout of the Red Sea crisis and severe shortage of containers against the backdrop of a steep decline in merchandise exports in August, the Union government is pulling out all the stops to find a solution. To begin with, the government has devised a strategy aimed at boosting container supply and supporting exporters.
US President Donald Trump has proposed a deal to China that would see the sale of TikTok's US operations to an American buyer in exchange for a reduction in tariffs on Chinese exports to the US. The proposal comes amid a trade war between the two countries and follows China's retaliation of Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods. Trump has also said that tariffs are a powerful economic tool and that he is determined to ensure fair trade between the US and China.
The "weaponisation" of economic activity - through tariffs and sanctions - is now a reality, with countries leveraging these tools strategically, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said at the Raisina Dialogue recently.
Industry body to write to commerce ministry, seek regulation for e-tailers.
According to sources the proposal has been scuppered by the British commerce ministry, which was not consulted, and which is the sectoral ministry for trade and investment.
Border haats, to be set up in Tripura and Mizoram, follows the success of two existing border haats near Meghalaya.
Reflecting lack of enthusiasm about the SEZs, 20 more promoters have sought additional time from the government for implementing their projects, taking the number of developers seeking extension to over 200.
In a big push to the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, the government has nearly doubled (increase of 81 per cent) the allocation in five key industry segments from Rs 8,405 crore in the Revised Estimate of FY24 to Rs 15,198 crore in the Interim Budget for FY25. The segments cover over eight PLI schemes, including mobile phones, IT hardware, pharma (PLIs for medical devices, intermediates and pharmaceuticals), food processing, telecom hardware and, auto and auto components. In FY24, DPIIT officials, however, said that the disbursements would be much higher at around Rs 11,000 crore than what has been budgeted for the year.
Government should make it clear as to whether the Duty Entitlement Passbook scheme will continue beyond June.
'We are getting to understand the mind of this generation.' 'Minor tweaks are being made to ease the process as we go along.'
The decision came a day after the resignation of Telugu Desam Party's Ashok Gajapathi Raju was accepted by President Ram Nath Kovind
The measures have been mainly offered to the leather, marine, handicrafts and textiles industries though some global benefits have also been included.
"We are confident that the status quo will be there...the issue has been taken up at the highest level," additional secretary in the Commerce Ministry D K Mittal said.
Even as the government today gave Saurabh Chandra, secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), the additional charge of secretary, Department of Commerce, Dinesh Kumar Mittal has emerged as the front runner for the post.
Union commerce ministry will make efforts to remove hurdles at the Indo-Pakistan border in the way of tea trade, a top government official said in Coonoor on Saturday.
The FM said an announcement with regard to the additional steps will be made after consulting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Trade deficit with China has risen to $40 billion, a cause for worry.
'The race is now on for Indian IT firms to develop their AI prowess and focus on a software-first approach to services as the people element becomes more complicated with Trump's expected new regulations.'
Reserve Bank and the finance ministry on Wednesday asked top management of banks and representative of trade bodies to push exports and import transactions in rupee. It was stressed during a meeting that banks should connect with their foreign counterparts for opening special rupee vastro accounts to facilitate cross-border trade in Indian currency rather than popular mode dollar, sources said. Trade associations and their foreign trading partners should explore opportunities to make use of the framework, sources added.
In a major development, India and the US have agreed to end six trade disputes at the WTO through mutually agreed solutions, while New Delhi will remove retaliatory customs duties on certain American products such as almonds, walnuts, and apples.
India's recent move to remove additional 'retaliatory' duty on eight products from the United States (US), including apples and walnuts, would not have any negative impact on the domestic producers, the government clarified, even as the issue threatened to snowball into a political slugfest between the ruling and Opposition parties. The move would, in fact, result in competition in the premium market segment, ensuring better quality at better prices for consumers, especially for apples, a senior government official said. "There were certain concerns that were being raised on the mutually agreed solution that has come in, more specific to seven-eight agriculture products where we had levied additional import duties in retaliation to the steel and aluminum measures (imposed by the US)," Peeyush Kumar, additional secretary in the commerce department, told reporters in a briefing.
Without making big-ticket changes in the economic ministries, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday shifted Law Minister M Veerappa Moily to the ministry of corporate affairs and inducted young Milind Deora in his council of ministers.
Proliferation of home chargers of around 7 KWh and above, which take six to seven hours to fully charge a car depending on the model, bring running costs down by a third or so. That, coupled with the increasing range of modern electric cars, can lead to a massive increase in sales.
Wholesale inflation fell to a 4-month low of 1.31 per cent in August due to a decline in prices of vegetables and fuel, even though onion and potato prices spiked, according to official data released on Tuesday. Wholesale price index-based inflation fell for the second straight month in August after it hit a high of 3.43 per cent in May. Inflation in July was 2.04 per cent. In August last year, WPI inflation was (-) 0.46 per cent.
The two countries also signed a 'Memorandum of Agreement regarding the Assignment of Liaison Officers', which will facilitate the posting of one military officer from each country with the military of the other.
Nobel laureate Prof Mohammad Yunus, the designated head of Bangladesh's interim government, on Wednesday fervently appealed everybody 'to stay calm' and 'refrain from all kinds of violence' as the country witnessed a major reshuffle in the security establishment after the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government.
Kumar, a 1992-batch Indian Administrative Service officer of Tamil Nadu cadre, is currently an additional secretary in the ministry of electronics and Information Technology.
Also considered as a green initiative, it would help the units reduce transaction cost and time.
The Centre is unlikely to offer new direct tax incentives for units operating in special economic zones (SEZs) and may instead allow the grandfathering of previous exemptions that such units were entitled to, according to proposed amendments to the SEZ Act, 2005, people aware of the matter said. The amendments, proposed by the commerce department, will soon be considered by the Cabinet for approval. This represents a departure from the department's earlier plan to introduce these changes through the Development Enterprises and Services Hubs (DESH) Bill, 2023, which faced strong criticism from the ministry of finance.
Indian Railways has managed to improve its freight volumes each year since the pandemic. However, its inability to add new industries and goods will pose a challenge for the national transporter in the wake of it setting an ambitious target of 45 per cent share in the national logistics by 2030. According to officials, the ministry of railways achieved 114 million tonnes (mt) of miscellaneous goods (classified as balance and other goods) in 2023-24.
Commerce ministry monitoring remedial measures to promote exports in key markets.
The country's exports rose by 23.69 per cent to $34.06 billion in January on healthy performance by engineering, petroleum and gems and jewellery segments even as trade deficit widened to $17.94 billion during the month, according to provisional data of the commerce ministry. Imports in January grew by 23.74 per cent to $52.01 billion, the data, released on Tuesday, showed. Trade deficit widened to $17.94 billion during the month as against $14.49 billion in the same month last year.
The government has constituted a high-powered committee, headed by Planning Commission Member NK Singh, to set new guidelines for regulating film financing.
Negotiators from the two sides will meet in July either at Brussels or Geneva, additional secretary in the commerce ministry D K Mittal told PTI.
The Centre on Monday directed cooperatives NCCF and NAFED to sell tomatoes at a reduced rate of Rs 50 per kilogram from Tuesday in view of the decline in prices in the wholesale markets. Since July, both NCCF and NAFED have been selling tomatoes at a discounted rate on behalf of the consumer affairs ministry in Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar to boost domestic availability and contain price rise. Initially, the ministry had asked the two cooperatives to sell tomatoes at a subsidised rate of Rs 90 per kg and later reduced the price to Rs 80 per kg. Further, the price was cut to Rs 70 per kg.
