by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Vishal Gulati,
New Delhi : The Trump administrations decision earlier this year to pull out of the historic 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, saying the Obama-era deal was an attempt to diminish the US economy and take jobs away, has not stopped incredible global momentum to curb global warming.
Environmental advocates believe that, amidst the shadow of the US decision, 2017 has seen progress in new climate action, ranging from the World Bank announcing it won’t fund upstream oil and gas projects after 2019 to a range of commitments from brown to green investments by companies joining the Global Big Shift campaign.
In a major initiative, the World’s No.1 polluter, China, this week announced plans to start a market-based carbon-trading system, initially in over 1,700 power-generating firms, to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius and aiming to cut greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
Taking the lead, French President Emmanuel Macron this month called “The One Planet” summit in Paris — the birthplace of the Paris Agreement — to mark its second anniversary, to speed up development of decarbonisation pathways by nations and to do something serious about climate mitigation and adaptations.
Observers say the summit was both a celebration of the historic achievement of the Paris Agreement and an opportunity for the countries that are willing to go further and faster in transitioning their economies to demonstrate the action they are taking.
“President Macron deserves a lot of credit for marking the second anniversary of the Paris Agreement by getting world leaders together. The climate challenge needs more than a single champion, but President Macron is certainly doing his bit,” British charity Christian Aid’s Senior Climate Change Advisor, Mohamed Adow, told IANS.
At The One Planet summit, more than 200 civil society organisations from nearly 60 countries released a letter calling on multilateral development banks, including the World Bank Group, and G20 governments to end public financial support for fossil fuels by 2020 at the latest.
With the US government withdrawing funds to deal with climate change, such as the $2 billion pledge to the Green Climate Fund, the European Union announced nine billion euro climate finance contribution at The One Planet summit to achieve climate goals.
In a related announcement at the summit, 225 of the most influential global institutional investors, with more than $26.3 trillion in assets under management, launched a new collaborative initiative to engage with the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to step up action on climate change.
The Paris gathering took place less than a month after the successful conclusion of the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn (COP-23) in November and was the first in a series of international summits to help countries to raise the bar and bolster their national climate action plans — crucial to achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals.
Interestingly, Trump is continuing support to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, one of the most successful international environmental treaties that celebrated its 30th anniversary in Montreal last month.
India, a signatory to the Protocol since 1992, has been proactive in compliance and played a key role in achieving the historic Kigali Amendment last year for phasing down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change.
The parties to the Montreal Protocol committed $540 million for the developing nations during the joint 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Vienna Convention and the 29th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol that were held in Canada last month.
And the US alone will take a nearly 25 per cent share of the total funding.
“We’ve seen incredible support for the Kigali Amendment, and much of this is due to the fact that we’ve also had strong support from businesses,” UN Environment head Erik Solheim told IANS.
“The process is proceeding very well and financial support for the mechanism has also been very strong. As such, I’m optimistic that this trend will continue,” Solheim added.
At the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, India reiterated provisions for finance — both for adaptation and mitigation – and technology transfer for climate actions from the developed nations.
A day after a major victory for India and developing countries on climate action before 2020 that the developed world agreed to discuss in subsequent two years, Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Harsh Vardhan told IANS that provisions for finance, technology transfer and capacity-building support to developing nations are critical.
Stressing that COP-23 was crucial as it would set the stage for the 2018 Facilitative Dialogue, accelerate pre-2020 action and firm up the modalities for implementing the Paris Agreement, he said India has undertaken ambitious mitigation and adaptation action.
The Centre for Science and Environment’s Deputy Director, Chandra Bhushan, however, believes this year was a damp squib as far as global environmental negotiations and actions are concerned.
“There is a big gap between the global action required and the collective action of countries to address issues like climate change. In 2017, this gap was further widened with the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement; 2017, therefore, was a damp squib as far as global environmental negotiations and actions were concerned,” Bhushan, who was given the Partnership Award by UN Environment last month for providing policy and research support to the negotiations during the Kigali Amendment, told IANS.
(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Aroonim Bhuyan,
New Delhi : Though the personal chemistry between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and new US President Donald Trump was the highlight of India-US ties in 2017, what has come as a huge boost to bilateral relations towards the end of the year is the key strategic geopolitical role for India in the new US security strategy.
At the same time, New Delhi made it clear that its foreign policy remains independent when it went with the rest of the world in voting in the UN General Assembly against Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Despite a change of guard in Washington, the India-US global strategic partnership remained strong as ever and a warm hug marked the first-ever meeting between Modi and Trump at the White House in June this year.
While Trump said that bilateral ties have “never been stronger”, Modi said that both the countries were “committed to such a bilateral architecture that will take our strategic partnership to new heights”.
According to a joint statement, the two leaders “resolved to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between the countries and advance common objectives”.
“President Trump and Prime Minister Modi expressed confidence that, together, the United States and India will provide strong leadership to address global challenges and build prosperity for their citizens in the decades to come,” the statement said.
And that is exactly what got reflected in the New Security Strategy (NSS) that Trump announced this month that sees India being mentioned no less than seven times.
“We welcome India’s emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defence partner,” the NSS states. “We will seek to increase quadrilateral cooperation with Japan, Australia, and India.”
This comes in the wake of the meeting between officials of India, the US, Japan and Australia in the Philippines last month in which the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region were discussed.
“We will expand our defence and security cooperation with India, a Major Defence Partner of the United States, and support India’s growing relationships throughout the region,” the NSS states.
It says that the US would “deepen our strategic partnership with India and support its leadership role in Indian Ocean security and throughout the broader region”.
And what will come as music to New Delhi’s ears is the reference to Pakistan from the perspective of terrorism.
“We will press Pakistan to intensify its counter-terrorism efforts, since no partnership can survive a country’s support for militants and terrorists who target a partner’s own service members and officials,” the NSS states.
It also states that the US would encourage India to increase its economic assistance in the region.
Trump continued with his praise of Modi at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Vietnam last month where he said that the Indian leader was working to bring his country and its people together.
Soon after this, Trump and Modi again met on the sidelines of the ASEAN and East Asia Summits in the Philippines, a meeting that was described as “warm and productive”.
Modi-Trump bonhomie apart, high-level visits continued between the two sides throughout the year.
After the Indian leader’s visit to Washington in June, both US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited India.
From the Indian side, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, then Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu and Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan were among those who visited the US.
Another highlight of the India-US ties this year was President Trump’s announcement of a new US policy on South Asia that called for India playing a key role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
The appointment of Kenneth Juster as the new US Ambassador in New Delhi came in for praise from all quarters. Juster is an old India hand who played a key role in the India-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement.
On its part, New Delhi, reflecting the government’s tendency of keeping faith in trusted people in key diplomatic posts, extended by a year the term of Indian Ambassador to the US Navtej Sarna, who was to retire at November-end.
Another highlight was the visit of President Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump to Hyderabad for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, hosted by India for the first time.
This year also saw a shipment of American crude oil arriving in India, marking the first US oil export to India in more than four decades.
On the downside of the bilateral issue this year, however, was the H1-B visa issue that continues to remain prickly.
Soon after taking over as President, Trump called for stricter norms for issuance of H1-B visas, largely availed of by Indian IT firms. A private member’s bill was also introduced earlier this year in the US Congress by Democrat Zoe Lofgren which seeks to increase the minimum salary of an H1-B visa holder to a whopping $130,000 from the current minimum of $60,000.
While Trump has spoken of restricting the H1-B visa system as part of his policy of putting Americans first, there have been no changes to it so far and for this year the same levels of 65,000 for general H1-B visas and 20,000 for those with advanced US degrees have been kept.
(Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Investing, Large Enterprise, Property
By Bappaditya Chatterjee,
Kolkata : The real estate sector, which witnessed a slew of policy measures through the year, experienced a market slowdown but the affordable segment emerged as its growth driver, say property consultants and developers.
The policy reforms, however, promise to make residential real estate dealings more transparent than ever before and the market is expected to see at least a partial recovery in 2018 on the back of revived confidence of homebuyers, fewer new launches, improving sales and declining unsold units.
The Centre’s surprise demonetisation announcement late last year was a “real shocker” for the sector. But, simultaneously, it helped the sector to resist unaccounted funds from finding their way into the secondary and even primary sales segments as well as the luxury housing section.
Meanwhile, the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act (RERA) was rolled out to improve financial discipline, boost market transparency and give consumers confidence and a clear legal choice for dealing with errant developers and brokers. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) was introduced to improve taxation transparency and the Benami Properties Act got further amended to make it more effective in curbing anonymous real estate transactions and ownership.
“There were reforms galore which literally altered the DNA of the Indian real estate business, focusing on eliminating black money and improving market transparency so as to make the country’s residential real estate a better place for consumers and investors,” Anarock Property Consultants’ Chairman Anuj Puri told IANS.
National Real Estate Development Council Vice Chairman Parveen Jain said all stakeholders adopted a wait and watch policy following the note ban and introduction of RERA and GST.
“This resulted in a somewhat slowdown in the sector as everyone was trying to understand the after-effects of demonetisation and the effects of RERA and GST. No one is willing to venture into new deals until and unless things settle down,” Jain told IANS.
GST, applicable to the purchase of homes in under-construction projects, prompted home buyers to either buy completed projects or hold back their purchase decisions. Also, developers halted sales in projects not registered under RERA across major cities, JLL India CEO and Country Head Ramesh Nair said.
“These factors led to a quarterly sales decline in five of the top seven cities to an all-time low of 4.8 per cent in the third quarter of 2017,” Nair told IANS.
Residential launches up to the third quarter of 2017 saw a decline of 33 per cent compared to the same period in 2016. Simultaneously, affordable housing saw a rise of 27 per cent in the first three quarters, mostly by taking advantage of the new government regulations and incentives for homes in that category.
“Affordable housing is an attractive proposition both for developers and consumers as the demand is huge and largely unmet. The high focus of the central government has resulted in the availability of more funding options for the developers such as ECB, FDI and debt-financing from national financial institutions at highly competitive rates,” Cushman & Wakefield’s Senior Director, Research Services, Siddhart Goel told IANS.
However, the flip side is the implementation RERA by the states. As per the central government schedule, by the end of July 2017, all states should have implemented the RERA with full functionality.
“Many states are still either in the process or don’t have requisite infrastructure. Dilutions in a few RERA rules by a some states, has also hurt buyer confidence,” Knight Frank Chief Economist Samantak Das told IANS.
According to an ICRA study, by the close of third quarter of 2017, most of the major states had notified their real estate rules and set up real estate regulatory authorities as required under the RERA Act. While new project launches have remained subdued even after RERA implementation, the developers continue to push sales in ongoing projects, with expectations of improved customer confidence in those projects which are approved by the state RERA.
However, the inclusion of land and real estate (completed properties) under the ambit of GST has been a topic that has been debated significantly and will ultimately require a political solution since land is a state subject and any such move will require the concurrence of state governments.
“Any such move could bolster the transparency and compliance of real estate transactions (especially in the secondary market) since there would be an incentive to report transactions at market price to claim full tax benefit,” said Shubham Jain, Vice President and Sector Head-Corporate Ratings, ICRA Limited.
The industry is expected to somewhat stabilise in 2018 as both real estate developers and customers become attuned to the changed regulatory scenario.
Developers are likely to take a cautious approach as far as new project launches are concerned, given the over-supply situation in various markets, along with their own stressed balance sheet positions.
The focus is likely to remain on liquidation of existing stock and reduction of the debt overhang before new projects are launched. This is already visible from the trend of decreasing quantum of absolute stock of unsold inventory available with the developers.
(Bappaditya Chatterjee can be contacted at bappaditya.c@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance
By Rohit Vaid,
New Delhi : India’s civil aviation sector soared in 2017 as passenger traffic continued to rise on the back of more regional flights and higher disposable income levels.
Addressing industry chamber Ficci’s 90th AGM here earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his government’s policy reforms had resulted in an equitable and inclusive growth for the sector.
“In the aviation sector, we have brought in policy changes that have enabled even a ‘hawai chappal’ (slipper)-wearing person to avail the benefits of air travel. We have brought this type of change,” Modi said.
Besides augmenting passenger traffic growth, the Rs 2,500-an-hour flight services launched under the regional air connectivity — UDAN — scheme also expanded the country’s aviation infrastructure.
In the first phase, contracts to five companies were awarded to operate flight services on 128 routes to 70 airports. Till recently, RCS-Udan operations to 13 airports had commenced, with an additional 12 ready to receive flights.
Apart from enhanced services to non-metro cities, the sector has also benefited from the rise in domestic disposable income levels and lower jet fuel prices, all of which accelerated passenger traffic growth in 2017.
According to the latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), passenger traffic during January-November 2017 zoomed 17.27 per cent to 105.9 million.
The rise in passenger traffic aided airlines to post healthy quarterly figures and also place new aircraft orders in anticipation of future growth.
The government, however, did not see the same logic working in favour of debt-ridden Air India.
The Union Cabinet, in a momentous decision, mandated the formation of an “Air India — Specific Alternative Mechanism” headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to look into the strategic divestment of the airline.
Among the potential bidders, budget passenger carrier IndiGo evinced interest in buying the airline’s international operations and its subsidiary Air India Express.
In addition, aviation industry majors SATS, Bird Group and Celebi have shown interest in buying Air India’s ground handling unit.
Currently, the airline is under a massive debt burden of Rs 50,000 crore, and had posted an operating profit of Rs 105 crore in 2015-16.
The year also saw some very low points, especially with frequent clashes erupting between passengers and crew. These rare, but disturbing incidents forced the airline industry to even debar individuals, including MPs, from using their services.
Consequent to the frequent on-board misbehaviour, the government constituted a “No-fly” list which bans erring passengers from availing flight services for a minimum of three months to two years in certain cases.
The mechanism categorises unruly behaviour into three bands: Level 1 — unruly behaviour (verbal); Level 2 — unruly behaviour (physical); and Level 3 — life-threatening behaviour.
It also mandates a different quantum of ban defined in terms of the level of offence: Level 1 — up to three months, Level 2 — up to six months; and Level 3 — a minimum period of two years or more without limit.
On-ground friction was also witnessed, as airport operator DIAL had a hard time to convince its tenants — IndiGo and SpiceJet — to shift some of their operations out of Terminal-1, so that the facility could be expanded further.
The law suit ended in DIAL’s favour with IndiGo given time till February 15, 2018, to shift a part of its operations to Terminal 2.
The DIAL had earlier directed IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir to relocate their operations in “parts” and split their operations by shifting flights to and from some sectors, namely Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, to T2 with effect from January 4, 2018.
It also said that the capacity of the three airlines to and from the three sectors would amount to around eight million persons per annum and shifting those to T2 would considerably reduce the burden on T1.
GoAir has since shifted its entire operations to T2.
(Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Large Enterprise, Marketing Basics, Markets, Technology
Huawei India-Consumer Business Group Vice-President Sales P Sanjeev at the launch
By Krishna SinhaChaudhury,
New Delhi : There are nearly 650 million mobile phone users in India — and over 300 million of them have a smartphone. For these users, Chinese players became the first choice this year as they launched devices with compelling features, thus dominating the budget and mid-range price segment in the country.
Chinese vendors captured 49 per cent of the Indian mobile phone handset market in the first quarter of 2017 — with a 180 per cent (year-on-year) revenue growth — threatening to wipe out domestic players from the overall handset segment.
Among the top Chinese brands, Xiaomi witnessed the biggest growth this year.
With a market share of 23.5 per cent and having shipped 9.2 million smartphones in the third quarter this year, Xiaomi became the fastest-growing smartphone brand with a growth rate of nearly 300 per cent (year-on-year) in the third quarter this year.
According to IDC, Samsung had 23.5 per cent market share in India, similar to Xiaomi, the Lenovo-Motorola combine was at 9 per cent, Vivo at 8.5 per cent and OPPO at 7.9 per cent.
For Xiaomi, its Redmi Note 4 device that was launched in January at Rs 9,999 for the base model (2GB RAM and 32GB onboard storage) proved to be a game-changer and its best-selling smartphone too. The company shipped approximately four million units of the device in this quarter, said IDC.
Chinese brands like Huawei (which sells its youth-centric sub-brand Honor in India), Vivo, Motorola (a Lenovo brand) and OPPO’s performance remained strong and contributed to more than half of the total smartphone shipments in the country.
Aiming to push its position up in the highly competitive Indian market, Honor launched flagship products at “unbeatable prices”, like the highly-successful Honor 8 Pro (Rs 29,999) and Honor 7X (starting at Rs 12,999).
Vivo and OPPO’s aggressive marketing spends also paid them hefty dividends. With smartphone growth nearing saturation in metros, Chinese players were also busy building their base in the tier II and III cities.
When it comes to manufacturing in India, Xiaomi announced its third plant in the country based out of Noida and the first facility for power banks in partnership with Hipad Technology.
Spread across 230,000 square feet, the Noida unit is a dedicated facility for Xiaomi power banks where the Mi Power Bank 2i will be assembled. The company already has two smartphone manufacturing plants in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh, where more than 95 per cent of its smartphones sold in India are assembled locally.
Meanwhile, South Korean giant Samsung also announced that it would invest Rs 4,915 crore in expanding its Noida manufacturing plant to double the production capacity of both mobile phones and consumer electronics.
The Foreign Investment Promotion Board approved OPPO’s request to open single-brand retail stores in the country. With this decision, OPPO became the first smartphone company to get this opportunity in India.
The Chinese players also handled the post-demonetisation ripples well with high decibel marketing, increased credit line to distributors and efficient channel management.
Global vendors, led by Samsung, were able to withstand the aggressive Chinese players post-demonetisation owing to their good distributor coverage and penetration in the Indian market.
Aiming to gain a further foothold in the offline smartphone market, Xiaomi opened its first “Mi Home” store in Bengaluru in May and plans to add 100 such stores in the next two years.
Similarly, Lenovo-owned Motorola opened six “Moto Hubs” in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai and plans to open 50 more by the end of this year.
Huawei’s sub-brand Honor announced opening four more exclusive service centres in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Guwahati. Its service centres are already operating in 17 cities.
India this year surpassed the US to become the second-largest smartphone market in the world after China. Yet, according to Counterpoint Research, only one fourth of India’s population uses smartphones, thus making the country an attractive destination for Chinese players in the mobile ecosystem.
Highlights:
* Chinese vendors captured 49 per cent of the Indian mobile phone handset market in the first quarter of 2017.
* Among the top Chinese brands, Xiaomi witnessed the biggest growth this year.
* South Korean giant Samsung announced it would invest Rs 4,915 crore in expanding its Noida manufacturing plant.
* The Foreign Investment Promotion Board approved OPPO’s request to open single-brand retail stores in the country.
* Xiaomi announced its third manufacturing plant in the country based out of Noida and the first facility for power banks in partnership with Hipad Technology.
(Krishna SinhaChaudhury can be contacted at krishna.s@ians.in)
—IANS
