After GMR, Indian carmakers in deep waters in Sri Lanka

December 12, 2012

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New Delhi, Dec 12: After the Maldives, India’s economic interests are in deep waters in another neighbouring island nation, Sri Lanka.

 

Notwithstanding the setback in its efforts to help the GMR Group in the Maldives, New Delhi has now taken up the cudgels for Indian carmakers and urged Colombo to roll back the recent steep hikes in import duty on automobiles.

 

“The Indian High Commission in Colombo has taken up the matter with the Sri Lankan government. The issue will be discussed again when the Finance Secretary of Sri Lanka would travel to India,” said Syed Akbaruddin, Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), on Tuesday. Sri Lankan finance secretary Dr P B Jayasundera is set to visit India shortly.

 

The Sri Lankan government recently raised excise duty on imported utility vehicles from 100 per cent to 173 per cent. Duty on cars with less than 1000 cc engines was also raised from 120 per cent to 200 per cent, including a 47 per cent hike in excise duty.

 

The excise duty on both three-wheelers and two-wheelers were raised from 45 per cent and 61 per cent respectively to 100 per cent. Besides, an absolute levy of $ 845.95 was imposed on all commercial vehicles, in addition to an 12 per cent excise duty. Indian carmakers would be hit hard by the steep hike as the island nation is the largest export market, accounting to nearly 13 per cent of the total automobile export.

 

The Ministry of Commerce is understood to have sought the help of the MEA to take up the issue diplomatically with the Sri Lankan government.

 

Rajiv Kher, additional secretary in the Ministry of Commerce, on Monday said that New Delhi was concerned over the “very substantial rise in import tariff” by Sri Lank as the island nation on the Indian Ocean was a “very important market” for cars and commercial vehicles manufactured in India.

 

Lately, New Delhi has reacted very strongly to the Maldivian government’s decision to terminate its agreement with a consortium led by Indian infrastructure giant GMR Group to manage the international airport in an island close to the archipelagic nation’s capital Male. New Delhi warned Maldives about the repercussions their move could have on bilateral ties.

 

But a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Singapore on December 6 ruled that the Maldivian government could take control of the airport from the GMR Male International Airport Limited or GMIAL, a joint venture of GMR Infrastructure and Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad.

 

The judgment came as a setback for the GMR Group that had earlier got an injunctive relief from the High Court of Singapore against the applicability and operations of the notice the Maldivian government had served the company on November 27 seeking to take back the control of the airport. India subtly toned down its rhetoric on Maldives move against GMIAL after the judgment.

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News Network
February 18,2020

New Delhi, Feb 18: Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot is the richest minister in the AAP government, according to a report released by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on Monday.

In a statement, the NGO said, Delhi Election Watch and ADR have analysed the self-sworn affidavits of all the seven-party leaders including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

According to the statement, the minister with the lowest declared total assets is Gopal Rai with assets worth Rs 90.01 lakh.

"The minister with the highest declared total assets is Kailash Gahlot from Najafgarh constituency with assets worth Rs 46.07 crore," it stated.

The report by ADR comes on the day Kejriwal and his six ministers took charge after the formation of the new AAP government.

Chief Minister Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues took charge of their respective offices on Monday and asserted that they would work to fulfil the promises made in the "guarantee card", released during the poll campaign, including reduction in pollution and expansion of metro network.

Members of his Cabinet are -- Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, Rajendra Pal Gautam, Imran Hussain, Gopal Rai and Kailash Gahlot.

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News Network
March 29,2020

Mumbai, Mar 29: Virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale led from the front to create India's first coronavirus testing kit even when she was in the last stage of her pregnancy.

Bhosale's efforts paid the price with her team delivering the testing kit in a record time of six weeks.

Bhosale gave birth to a baby girl just a day before submitting the kit to the authorities for evaluation.

"It was like giving birth to two babies," Bhosale told PTI over the phone.

The virologist said both the journeys - that happened in parallel - were not without challenges.

"There were complications in the pregnancy while work on the test kit was on. The baby was delivered through cesarean," she said.

Bhosale said she felt that it was the right time to serve the people to help them in combating the coronavirus threat.

"I had been working for five years in this field and if I don't work in emergency situations when my services are needed the most, then what is the use?" she said.

Though Bhosale was not able to visit the office due to the pregnancy, she was guiding a team of 10 persons working on the project at Mylab Discovery in Pune.

The strong bonds forged with the team over the years and their support made it possible, she said.

Company's co-founder Shrikant Patole said just like drug discovery, test kits too go through a lot of quality checks to improve the precision.

He credited Bhosale for the success of the project.

The COVID-19 testing kit delivered by Bhosale's team will reduce the time taken for delivering a result to 2.5 hours from the prevalent practice of eight hours.

A pioneering approach to testing without compromising on the results was adopted, Bhosale said.

The Maylab test kit will cost Rs1,200, a quarter of Rs 4,500 per kit that the government has been spending on testing so far.

"I'm happy that I could do something for the country," Bhosale said.

As of Friday, only 27,000 of the 1.3 billion people were tested for the virus in the country.

According to experts, high scale testing is essential because it alone can ensure an early diagnosis of COVID-19 and lower down the fatalities.

The company is confident of ramping up the capacity at its plant in Lonavala to deliver 100,000 kits a week, Patole said.

He said the authorities are helping the company, including giving priority for shipping of the raw materials.

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News Network
February 18,2020

New Delhi, Feb 18: India emerged as the world's fifth-largest economy by overtaking the UK and France in 2019, says a report.

A US-based think tank World Population Review in its report said that India is developing into an open-market economy from its previous autarkic policies.

"India's economy is the fifth-largest in the world with a GDP of $2.94 trillion, overtaking the UK and France in 2019 to take the fifth spot," it said.

The size of the UK economy is $2.83 trillion and that of France is $2.71 trillion.

The report further said that in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, India's GDP (PPP) is $10.51 trillion, exceeding that of Japan and Germany. Due to India's high population, India's GDP per capita is $2,170 (for comparison, the US is $62,794).

India's real GDP growth, however, it said is expected to weaken for the third straight year from 7.5 per cent to 5 per cent.

The report observed that India's economic liberalisation began in the early 1990s and included industrial deregulation, reduced control on foreign trade and investment, and privatisation of state-owned enterprises.

"These measures have helped India accelerate economic growth," it said.

India's service sector is the fast-growing sector in the world accounting for 60 per cent of the economy and 28 per of employment, the report said, adding that manufacturing and agriculture are two other significant sectors of the economy.

The US-based World Population Review is an independent organisation without any political affiliations.

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