Hyderabad, Feb 10: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi continued his tirade against PM Modi and Amit Shah against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). "We are ready to take bullets in our chests but we will not show our papers.
We are ready to take bullets in our chests as we love our country," Owaisi said further.
New Delhi, Jul 14: India's COVID-19 tally has reached 9,36,181 as 29,429 new coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours, informed the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Wednesday.
The death toll went up to 24,309, including 582 fatalities in the last 24 hours.
Out of the total cases, 3,19,840 are currently active and 5,92,032 are cured/discharged/migrated.
As per the Ministry, Maharashtra -- the worst-affected state from the infection -- has a total of 2,67,665 COVID-19 cases and 10,695 fatalities. While Tamil Nadu has a tally of 1,47,324 cases and 2,099 deaths due to COVID-19.
Delhi has reported a total of 1,15,346 cases and 3,446 deaths due to COVID-19.
As per the information provided by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) 3,20,161 samples have been tested for COVID-19 till July 14, of these 1,24,12,664 samples were tested on Tuesday.
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.
New Delhi, Jan 11: Islamic preacher Zakir Naik has revealed that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government offered to drop false money-laundering charges against him and provide with a "safe passage to India" in return for his support to the government's move to revoke Article 370 of the Constitution.
In a statement issued by Naik's PR team on Saturday, the Islamic preacher said that he was approached by a representative of the Indian government in September, who offered him the said deal on Kashmir, which he refused.
"Three and a half months before, the Indian officials approached me for a private meeting with a representative of the Indian government. When he came to Putrajaya (a Malaysian city), in the fourth week of September 2019, to meet me, he said that he is coming after personally meeting and under the direct instructions of the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and the Home Minister of India Amit Shah," Naik said in a video statement released by his Mumbai-based PR team.
Naik, who has been living in Malaysia for the last three years, is facing charges of inciting communal disharmony and committing unlawful activities in India.
"(The representative) said that he wanted to remove the misconceptions and miscommunications between myself (Naik) and the Indian government, and wants to provide me a safe passage to India," he added. "He (the representative) said that he would like to use my connections to better the relationship between India and the other Muslim countries."
"The meeting lasted for several hours. He told me that he wanted me to support the BJP government when they revoked Article 370 in Kashmir. And I flatly refused," he added.
Naik said that after he refused the offer, he was further asked to not make public statements against the BJP or Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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