by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate finance, Corporate Governance, Large Enterprise
New Delhi : Streamlining taxation along with healthy competition among states to attract domestic and global investors will help India break into the top 50 in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry C.R. Chaudhary said on Thursday.
“We need to think about providing incentives to the industry and we have been simplifying the procedures,” Chaudhary said here while inaugurating an Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) Ease Doing Business Summit.
He said that it is due to the efforts of all the stakeholders that India leaped 30 spots to 100th rank in the World Bank’s latest global rankings.
“Our target is to come at 50th place and that will happen when we facilitate industrialists and investors.
“Without encouraging the manufacturing sector and without foreign direct investment (FDI), we cannot develop and come in the category of developed countries,” he added.
He urged the industry to take steps to improve the quality of their products thereby adhering to “zero defect and zero effect” policy.
“We need to maintain quality otherwise it will become very difficult for us to sustain in the international markets.”
In this regard, he referred to the European Union’s ban on India’s basmati rice exports because of certain “technical points”.
“We had sought time in our last meeting with representatives of France, President of Czech Republic as we need to spread awareness among farmers about not to sprinkle such pesticides.
“It is a very positive thing for our private players and entrepreneurs who are now directly collaborating with foreign companies and getting investments in the country which has been facilitated through ease of doing business,” Chaudhary said.
Lauding the government’s efforts in attracting a record $60 billion worth of FDI in a single year, he invited the domestic and global investors to reap dividends by investing in the infrastructure and logistics sector that provide huge scope.
He also said that the government’s main focus is on enhancing production of quality material, attracting domestic and foreign investments in large numbers, enhancing exports and creating more employment opportunities.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Commodities, Commodities News, Large Enterprise
New Delhi : The government is keen to make the gold market transactions more transparent, Manoj Kumar Dwivedi, joint secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Industry said here on Friday.
“The government’s objective is to make the gold industry transparent throughout the value chain. We still need to do a lot to reach that benchmark of transparency,” Dwivedi said while addressing at the 10th International Gold Summit by Assocham.
He said the government is looking at how to provide easy availability of gold to the industry stakeholders, facilitate ease of doing business and give financial support.
Similarly, on the consumer front, it is looking at how to ensure quality and standard gold and fair, transparent price.
Despite various effort of the government to diversify Indians’ interest from gold into other financial products, people still heavily invest in gold.
Somasundaram PR, Managing Director-India, WGC said: “We have been importing 900 tonnes of gold a year. India has stock of 24,000 tonnes of gold valued at $1 trillion. If we include gold available with banks, value goes up to $1trillion. Industry has gone through fast-paced changes and we cannot set the clock bank. We have to sit with the government to see what gold can do for India.”
Former Reserve Bank of India Governor C. Rangarajan said despite various gold schemes introduced by the government, people still remain attracted towards the yellow metal.
“People often buy gold to hide unaccounted money. Gold transactions have to become transparent.”
Welcoming government’s decision to furnish PAN card for high value gold purchase, Rangarajan asserted that Goods and Services Tax of 3 per cent on gold is low and should not be objected.
“It is completely justified,” he said.
He also said import duty of 10 per cent is not stark.
“These are justifiable. Some minor modifications can be made by the government. Perhaps import duty can be decreased and GST can be increased,” he suggested.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Business Summit, Commodities, Commodities News, Commodity Market, Economy, Events, Finance, Investing, Markets, News, Politics
Former RBI Governor C. Rangarajan
New Delhi : Former Reserve Bank of India Governor C. Rangarajan on Friday said the package the government is looking at to revive the economy should be partly to raise capital expenditure and look at problems preventing private investments from rising.
“The package in my opinion should be partly to raise capital expenditure of the government, but suited in a way in which it will stimulate private investments,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the 10th International Gold Summit by Assocham.
He said the fall in growth rate was also accompanied by a fall in investment rate.
“More critically, it is the private investment rate that has fallen. In fact public expenditure on capital has shown some slight rise. Therefore, the most important thing is to address the problems that may be preventing private investment from rising,” Rangarajan said.
He suggested that two things can be done. “There are a number of stalled projects. The low hanging fruit is to ensure that these stalled projects are activated. Secondly, the banking system needs to be recapitalised so that it can provide additional credit for investment as well.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Economy, Emerging Businesses, Markets, News
New Delhi : The Indian industry is still not ready to hand over complete management control of companies to independent boards and professional managers, business chamber Assocham said on Sunday.
“An overwhelming majority of 78 per cent of the 155 CEOs both from professional and promoter-driven firms, answered in the negative when asked whether the promoters are willing to cede complete control of the corporate India to independent boards and CEOs”, an Assocham survey of chief executives said.
Against the backdrop of a tussle between the board and promoters of the Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys, Assocham said that the India Inc. was “not yet ready to give complete management control to professional boards and managers, as majority of the corporate firms have promoters’ holding well over 50 per cent and even those with much lower stake are not willing to bet fully on professionals”.
“Trust deficit and the family pre-dominance were the two of the main plausible factors coming in the way of transformation of India Inc where the day-to-day operations are insulated from the principal shareholders or group of shareholders,” it said.
“Sixty-seven per cent of the respondent CEOs said trust deficit between the promoters and the professionals creeps in even among the few promoters who have taken a lead for handing over their companies to the professionals.”
“On the other hand, over 75 per cent of the CEOs in the survey said the family dominance is a major factor for keeping the professionals away from the top managements,” Assocham added.
Assocham’s Secretary General D.S. Rawat said: “One must give credit to N.R. Narayanmurthy for continuing with his belief that Infosys must be run by the professionals despite the fact that the experiment has failed once.”
“His firm belief in shareholders democracy and high standards of corporate governance would be bearing fruits again now that an iconic Nandan Nilekani has taken charge as the Executive Chairman.”
According to the industry chamber, the Indian economy is yet to catch up with developed nations, as a large part of it is still to join the formal sector.
“Even those joining the formal sectors from the informal segments would take time to adopt to the global standards.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Economy, Emerging Businesses, Markets, News, SMEs
Thiruvananthapuram : Kerala is second only to Karnataka in terms of manufacturing excellence across the country, according to a study conducted by the apex industry body Assocham, which was released on Friday.
“Kerala has second highest ratio in terms of road density, third highest ratio in terms of efficiency and fourth highest capacity utilisation ratio denoting state’s performance in these parameters during the course of past five years, said the study titled ‘Manufacturing Excellence and Emergence in India: The state level analysis’.
Besides, Kerala also has recorded third lowest ratio in terms of employee cost and sixth highest manufacturing process ratio.
The study considered various parameters like number of factories, output value, working capital, net fixed capital formation, fixed capital, finished goods, capital invested, total inputs and others to ascertain the states’ performance in terms of manufacturing sector.
The study also pointed out that, Kerala needs to work towards improving its performance in areas like growth of industries (13th rank), capital structure (16th) i.e. improving the ratio between invested and fixed capital. Besides, the state also needs to register improvement in terms of brining down input cost as it ranks 16th in total input cost as a proportion of value of output (lower ratio is better).
“The central government must address issues relating to poor product quality, infrastructural bottlenecks and inadequate efforts at research and development from a holistic macro perspective as they have collectively taken a toll on India’s manufacturing competitiveness,” the study said.
—IANS
