Donald Trump mocks PM Modi for funding library in Afghanistan

Jan 21: Indian policymakers may make it easier for companies to tap foreign funding, as a prolonged cash squeeze makes it tough for firms to borrow at home.

Investors are speculating about potential steps Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman could unveil when she presents the nation’s budget on Feb. 1. These measures may include freeing up firms to borrow at higher rates and offering tax breaks to global funds.

“The government will need to relax local rules to make it easier for Indian companies to raise debt overseas and tide over the funding crunch in the onshore market,” said Raj Kothari, London-based head of trading at Jay Capital Ltd. “At the same time, they need to ensure that the borrowers tapping offshore markets abide with stricter corporate governance so as to avoid further defaults.”

A prolonged crisis in India’s shadow bank sector and a pile of bad loans at traditional lenders is making it expensive for Indian companies, other than the best-rated firms, to access funding. The government has tried a series of measures to spur domestic credit, including providing so-called credit enhancement and allowing tiny firms to restructure debt.

Here are some steps Sitharaman may consider to spur foreign borrowing:

• She could raise the cap of 450 basis points above Libor, which limits overall foreign debt costs for Indian companies

• This could help lower-rated firms sell bonds abroad. Indian companies rated BBB currently borrow at more than 10%, about 3.8 percentage points more than their top-rated peers;

• Sitharaman could waive the withholding tax foreign investors need to pay on holdings of rupee-denominated debt sold by Indian companies abroad

• The waiver was offered between September 2018 to March 2019, but wasn’t extended as the highest global interest rates since the financial crisis deterred Indian borrowers. Since then, the three-month Libor has dropped by about 1 percentage point

• She could permit Indian property developers and housing finance lenders to sell overseas bonds for reasons beyond affordable housing projects

• New funding lines to the real estate sector, arguably ground zero of India’s economic slowdown, could help kickstart consumption and investment as the industry is the nation’s biggest job-creator.

Jan 13: India lost more than $1.33 billion to internet restrictions in 2019 as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pushed ahead with his party’s Hindu nationalist agenda, raising tensions and sparking nationwide protests.

The worst shutdown has been in Kashmir, where after intermittent closures in the first half of the year, the internet has been cut off since Aug. 5 following the government’s decision to revoke the special autonomous status of the country’s only Muslim-majority state, a study said. The prologued closure was criticized by India’s highest court, which ruled Friday that the “limitless” internet shutdown enforced by the government for the last five months was illegal and asked that it be reviewed.

India imposed more internet restrictions than any other large democracy, according to the Cost of Internet Shutdowns 2019 report released by Top10VPN, a U.K.-based digital privacy and security research group. The South Asian nation recorded the third-highest losses after Iraq and Sudan, which lost $2.31 billion and $1.86 billion respectively to disruptions. Worldwide internet restrictions caused losses worth $8.05 billion, the report said.

The cost of internet blackouts was calculated using indicators from groups including the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union, and the Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Center. It includes social media shutdowns in its calculations.

India’s ministry of information and technology didn’t respond to an email seeking a response to the report’s findings.

‘Conservative Estimates’

Through 2019, India shut access to the internet for over 4,000 hours. The report added shutdowns in India were often narrowly targeted, down to the level of blocking city districts for a few hours to allow security forces to restore order. Many of these incidents were not included in the report.

“These are conservative estimates,” said Simon Migliano, head of research at U.K.-based Top10VPN. “Internet shutdowns are increasing and it shows a damaging trend.”

India’s other major internet disruptions coincided with two moves by the government that affect India’s Muslim minority. The first disruption took place in November in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan after the Supreme Court handed a victory to Hindu groups over Muslim petitioners in a long-simmering dispute over a plot of land.

There were further disruptions in December when protests erupted against the introduction of a religion-based law that allows undocumented migrants of all faiths except Islam from neighbouring countries to seek Indian citizenship. The government enforced shutdowns across Uttar Pradesh and some Northeastern states in order to quell the protests, the report said.

Mar 16: A fourth batch of 53 Indians returned to India from Iran on Monday, taking the total number of people evacuated from the coronavirus-hit country to 389.

This comes a day after over 230 Indians were brought back from Iran to New Delhi and quarantined at the Indian Army Wellness Centre in Jaisalmer, the third batch to be evacuated from that country.

"Fourth batch of 53 Indians - 52 students and a teacher - has arrived from Tehran and Shiraz, Iran. With this, a total of 389 Indians have returned to India from Iran. Thank the efforts of the team @India_in_Iran and Iranian authorities," Jaishankar tweeted.

The Indians came in a Mahan Air flight that landed at the Delhi airport at around 3 am, officials said, adding that they were later taken to Jaisalmer in an Air India flight for being quarantined.

The first batch of 58 Indian pilgrims were brought back from Iran last Tuesday and the second group of 44 Indian pilgrim arrived from there on Friday.

Iran is one of the worst-affected countries by the coronavirus outbreak and the government has been working to bring back Indians stranded there. Over 700 people have died from the disease in Iran and nearly 14,000 cases have been detected.

Jaishankar had told Rajya Sabha last week that the government was focusing on evacuating Indians stranded in Iran and Italy as these countries are facing an "extreme situation".