by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Investing, News, Politics
The delegation, led by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, comprised of leading Indian CEOs
New Delhi : Invest India Grid was launched in Saudi Arabia during the visit of Niti Aayog delegation with 40 opportunities of investment, trade and business also identified during the visit.
The delegation, led by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, comprised of leading Indian CEOs who took part in discussions with the Saudi Centre for International Strategic Partnerships (SCISP). Discussions were also held with senior representatives from 12 Saudi ministries in Riyadh during the two-day visit which concluded on Sunday.
The delegation’s visit assumes significance as Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is scheduled to visit India on February 19 and 20.
An official release said India’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ahmad Javed accompanied the team of Indian CEOs.
Officials from ministries of tourism, Housing and Urban Affairs, Electronics and Information Technology and commerce took part in the deliberations.
The NITI Aayog-SCISP workshop held wide ranging discussions on the possible opportunities of joint cooperation.
“During the workshop, Invest India Grid was launched in Saudi Arabia. Invest India is setting up a dedicated team for facilitating Saudi investments in India. NITI Aayog and SCISP agreed to provide continuing momentum to the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership,” the release said.
Kant also called on Saudi Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan and discussed ways to strengthen bilateral ties.
“Six working groups have identified 40 investment, trade and business opportunities with vast potential for expansion,” the release said.
India-Saudi Arabia bilateral trade during April to November 2018 reached $23.24 billion.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews, Politics
Rajiv Kumar
By Vishav,
New Delhi : Terming Congress President Rahul Gandhis promise of a minimum income guarantee to poor unimplementable, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar says it is similar in nature to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhis ‘garibi hatao slogan.
He says India neither had the kind of fiscal space, nor the kind of complete data needed to implement the scheme.
Kumar also opposed the idea of Universal Basic Income, often advocated by former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian, saying he favoured incentives for population to work.
The NITI Aayog Vice Chairman said the Congress needed to explain to the country how it can afford a scheme like minimum income guarantee.
“I don’t think it is practical. I think it is more rhetorical. It is similar in nature to ‘garibi hatao’. And I don’t think its implementation will be feasible. We neither have that kind of fiscal space, nor that kind of complete data that you need were you to be able to implement it,” Kumar told IANS in an interview.
“This is why, I think, the Congress has left all details completely unclear and have only made a broad announcement,” he added.
Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has, however, said that the broad contours of the scheme justifying its implementability would be explained in the Congress manifesto.
Rejecting the idea of Universal Basic Income for Indians, Kumar said: “I have not been a supporter of the scheme. For India’s per capita income and its demographic profile, I would much rather have incentives for work rather than incentives for being in on social security.”
“I think a lot of countries, especially something like China, have done very well by empowering their young in employment rather than putting them on doles,” he said.
The economist also defended the government’s newly-launched Rs 6,000 direct income support to farmers and rejected criticism that the amount was too little.
“About it being too less, the average income of a poor or marginal farmer household per month is probably in the range of Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000. And in that context, an additional Rs 500 does not sound so little. It should not be dismissed, neither should it be demeaned.
“This amount can be used (by a farmer) to send his child to school, to buy rations, to buy water from large land-owners, and so many other things. It’s not a small amount,” he said.
“Another way to look at it is that in 10 years, you get Rs 60,000. It’s not a one-time sop. It’s a long-term relief. In terms of government expenditure, Rs 75,000 crore becomes Rs 7.5 lakh crore in 10 years. It’s a fair, significant fiscal burden,” he added.
Kumar said that one can always criticize a measure saying it is too little, but it has to be balanced with fiscal responsibility.
“Having seen poor households, I don’t think the sum is too small. It is a significant percentage of total income, not something that disappears in the decimal as you would tend think.”
He added the criticism that the scheme leaves out a large part of urban poor out of its net was also unfair and said only 13.7 per cent of farmers were tenants even out of which, 80 per cent owned some land or the other.
“So hardly anyone is left out among the agriculture farming households. The only people who are not included are the landless labour. That is only 2.6 per cent of the rural population. That has been left out because for them, there is MNREGA. That is what gives them social security,” Kumar said.
“The coverage is not narrow. It covers 12 crore households – around 60 crore people. It is much bigger than any farm loan waiver would cover, which are by nature skewed or biased towards larger land-owners.”
In a sharp criticism of loan waiver schemes announced by the newly-formed governments in the Hindi-heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, he said it was not the answer to agricultural distress.
“Farm distress can be sorted out through true modernisation of the sector – convert farmer from mere producer of commodities to a producer of agricultural value products. The second part of solving the crisis is to connect the farmer to the market – get logistics in place.
“And finally, you have to lower the cost of production in agriculture. At the moment, Indian agriculture products are higher-priced than global prices. There I think, one has to move away from the model of increasing doses of chemical inputs into agriculture, resulting in higher cost, higher debt and higher distress. We need to shift to bio pesticides, bio-fertilizers,” Kumar said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Amitabh Kant
New Delhi : NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Friday said there should be no road tax on electric vehicles to bring the ownership cost of electronic vehicles at par with combustion vehicles.
He said the NITI Aayog has suggested the states do away with road tax and issue green permits for electric vehicles.
“We have proposed to the chief secretaries that there should be no road tax for electric vehicles and green permits,” said Kant at Energy Storage India, 2019.
“When the electric vehicle revolution happens, India would be impacted in the biggest way. These initiatives are being taken to bring the ownership cost of electric vehicles at par with combustion vehicles.
“For India to successfully move away from fossil-fuel dependence, oil companies should become the energy companies of the future,” he added.
He said the government think tank had proposed a ‘pay per kilometre’ model for buses to transform the public transportation system. He said energy storage and battery manufacturing presented a huge opportunity for the country since India would be driving the growth of the auto sector in the future.
NITI Aayog Director General Anil Srivastava said there was a genuine question about the implementation and usability of the electric vehicles, but there was a massive disruption that would happen “fairly soon”.
He said even with over 20 favourable policies in place, not a single part used in electric two-wheelers was being made in India.
“A lot of policies have been made to accommodate advance products and systems, but success cannot be achieved till we reach the scale our country has to offer. With over 20 favourable policies in place, not a single part used in electric two-wheelers is being made in India,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Commodities, Commodities News, Opinions
By Vivek Puri,
The Indian government wants to double the income of farmers by 2022. A roadmap prepared by NITI Aayog outlines the rationale, strategy and action plan for achieving this commendable milestone. We believe that such a plan needs a separate set of measures that focus on mustard farmers — and promotes mustard as a crop.
The agricultural, economic and nutritional importance of mustard is enormous in the Indian context. It is the country’s most important winter oilseed crop. The area under mustard cultivation is significant — close to 70 lakh hectares — producing 6.82 million tonnes in 2015-16, with the estimate for 2016-17 being 7.9 million tonnes. And millions of farmers and their families derive their livelihood from it.
To give these figures some perspective, consider the other oilseed crops. Groundnut is grown on just 6.39 lakh hectares — or less than a tenth of mustard’s acreage — linseed on 4.01 lakh hectares, sunflower seed on 1.74 lakh hectares, sesame seed on 0.68 lakh hectares and safflower on 0.62 lakh hectares.
Also, mustard oil is an innately Indian cooking medium, having been around for thousands of years. This means that mustard and mustard oil are already aligned with the government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative.
The importance of mustard is a strong reason for evolving a National Mustard Policy to promote it at all levels — as an agricultural commodity, as cooking oil, as a nutritional intervention and as a means for promoting health in general and cardiac health in particular.
Currently, the government does not have a policy focused on promoting mustard as an attractive cash crop for farmers. Ideally, such a policy should expand the area under mustard cultivation, reduce the gaping demand-supply gap by increasing domestic production of mustard oil, and ease the dependence on edible oil imports which are, on an average, around 15 million tonnes each year — that’s a forex outgo of a whopping Rs 77,000 crore. (Although, this year’s data indicates a significant drop for the first time in decades.)
The proposed policy should look at ways to make the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX) more farmer-friendly. Earlier this year, the Finance Ministry flagged off a modality that offers agricultural commodity options which would enable farmers to protect themselves against adverse price changes and minimise their risks. However, farmers — in particular, mustard farmers — have not been able to get minimum prices and remunerative returns despite assurances.
A comprehensive National Mustard Policy would also need to establish clearly-defined norms and guidelines for the introduction of GM (Genetically Modified) varieties of mustard (if that were to happen in the imminent future). Such norms should include upgrading our food-testing facilities which are, at present, not geared to detect and identify GM varieties. This would also facilitate effective labelling norms for GM products.
Mustard and mustard oil have always been an integral part of the ancient Indian healing science of Ayurveda. The government has already established an apex body to develop this domain — the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy). This ministry could play a key role in the evolution and implementation of the proposed policy, and in promoting “nature’s gift to India” all over the world.
At a broader level, the evolution of an effective National Mustard Policy must include infrastructure and supporting systems. For several years now, we have been recommending the establishment of an apex body by the government — a Mustard Oil Development Board, along the lines of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, the American Soybean Association and Spain’s International Olive Council.
The proposed Board could go a long way in ensuring an integrated approach to the development and promotion of the mustard industry as a whole, helping mustard farmers obtain remunerative prices, increasing per acre productivity, and enhancing value addition.
Moreover, like its counterparts in the US, Malaysia and Spain, the proposed Board could also promote mustard oil overseas, and lobby for the removal of unfair (and unscientific) constraints that exist in the US and certain EU countries where Indian mustard oil must statutorily be labelled “For External Use Only”. What palm oil is for Malaysia, olive oil for Italy and soya oil for the US, mustard oil can indeed be for India. And, therefore, like these countries, India can become a significant foreign exchange earner through the robust export of mustard oil.
There is, admittedly, a lot of work to be done to actualise an initiative as ambitious and wide-ranging as a National Mustard Policy. But as with all plans, one must begin somewhere. The coming financial year offers excellent prospects for giving mustard — and mustard farmers — an opportunity to establish new benchmarks as one of India’s leading edible oils.
(The writer is the Managing Director, Puri Oil Mills Ltd. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vpuri@purioilmills.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Economy, Markets, News, Politics
New Delhi : Indian stock exchanges need to further reconcile their regulatory functions with market interests in order to protect and promote the interest of retail depositors, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE)’s silver jubilee celebrations here at which the NSE unveiled its new logo, Kumar also urged domestic capital markets to bring about better reconciliation between the Indian spot and derivative markets so as to win the confidence of small investors.
“Our exchanges perform regulatory functions and here they need to consider if there is a trade-off between that and profit maximisation,” he said.
“This is required to protect the interests of retail depositors, so that the markets can go ahead with the work of inorganic growth.”
The NITI Aayog Vice Chairman said that a reflection of the situation is seen in the fact that despite best efforts of the NSE, only two per cent of Indian households have come into the capital market.
“In the common Indian mind, the stock market is still a ‘satta’ (gambling) bazaar over which they have no control … a place controlled only by the big players,” Kumar said.
“The NSE should aim like it is in the US, for instance, where 40 per cent of the households are involved in the capital market.”
Kumar noted in this regard that the size of derivatives trading in India is more than 40 times the “underlying equity trading” and called for better reconciliation between the two to boost retail investors’ confidence in the stock markets.
“While the stock exchanges have done a great deal to bring the SME segment of the economy into the capital markets, the bourses need to do more to integrate more small and medium enterprises with the capital market,” Kumar said.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was the Finance Minister when the NSE was established in 1994, was also present on the occasion, along with Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal.
As per the World Federation of Exchanges, the NSE is 3rd largest exchange in the world in terms of volume of trades, while it is ranked No. 1 on index options contracts and No. 2 on currency derivatives contracts.
The NSE’s new logo is a reworking of its earlier one with the addition of marigold, yellow, red and blue, symbolising integrity, excellence, trust and commitment.
“The multiple colours capture the multifaceted nature of the business, with red denoting NSE’s strong foundation, yellow and orange being inspired by the marigold flower that signifies prosperity and auspicious ventures, and the blue triangle is a compass, always future-oriented and helping us find our true North,” an exchange statement said.
“The new brand identity reflects NSE’s multi-dimensional nature: multiple asset classes, multiple customer segments and its multiple roles including that of an exchange, regulator, educator and market developer,” it added.
—IANS
