Manmohan Singh to hold bilateral talks with Putin today

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin here on Monday for robust discussions to boost the strategic relationship between the two countries.
Singh, who arrived here yesterday in the first leg of his two-nation visit, will be also conferred with an honorary doctorate by the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
Singh after his arrival at Moscow yesterday said that India and Russia share a privileged, special partnership.
India and Russia are expected to sign several agreements in various fields including atomic energy, defence cooperation, space cooperation, science and technology, trade and investment.
In a statement prior to his departure on a two-nation five day official visit to Russia and China, Dr. Singh said: "I am confident that my visit will strengthen our relations with two of our most important partners and create new strategic opportunities for India's growth, prosperity and development in a stable external environment."
Dr. Singh, who will attend the 14th India-Russian Annual Summit in Russia, said the annual summit with Russia is an important feature of special and privileged strategic partnership between both the countries.
"The annual summit with Russia, which has been held since 2000, is an important feature of our special and privileged strategic partnership. The scope of our relationship with Russia is unique, encompassing strong and growing cooperation in areas such as defence, nuclear energy, science and technology, hydrocarbons, trade and investment, and people-to-people exchanges," Dr. Singh said.
"I will convey to President Putin the importance we attach to our relations with Russia, and I will use this visit to strengthen our partnership in every possible way," he added.
Dr. Singh said that India and Russia have always had a convergence of views on global and regional issues, and we value Russia's perspective on international developments of mutual interest.
"I look forward to exchanging views with President Putin on a broad range of international developments, including the conflict and turbulence in West Asia as also closer to India, particularly in Afghanistan. I will convey to President Putin our interest in deepening our consultations and coordination on international issues," he added.
He further informed that the Moscow State Institute of International Relations has decided to confer upon him an Honorary Doctorate during his visit.
"I am honoured at this gesture, which is also testimony to the relations between our two countries," he added.
Following the visit to Russia, the Prime Minister will pay an official visit to Beijing from October 22 to 24.

Barack Obama asked to address India's discriminatory trade practices

Washington: Hours before the arrival of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here, as many as 18 influential American groups asked President Barack Obama to address India's alleged discriminatory trade practices when he meets the Indian leader at the White House.

"India's discriminatory trade policies put American businesses at a disadvantage, place manufacturing jobs at risk, and jeopardize India's ability to grow its economy," said Alliance for Fair Trade with India (AFTI) co-chair and National Association of Manufacturers vice president of International Economic Affairs Linda Dempsey.

"The business community, elected officials, and the administration are united in their concern with these protectionist policies. We urge President Obama to seek immediate and concrete solutions that can lead to growth in the American and Indian economies alike," she said.

In the letter sent to Obama Thursday, the organisations highlighted the alleged harmful trade policies of India which include a failure to protect IP rights, forced local production of certain information technology and clean energy equipment, and revocations of patents and compulsory licenses for innovative medicines.

These unfair policies are designed to benefit a few Indian corporations at the expense of manufacturing and jobs in the United States and other countries around the world, they said in the letter.
 "In the last 18 months, India has consistently failed to recognise international intellectual property rights, hindering India's path to an innovative and knowledge-based economy," said Mark Elliot, co-chair of AFTI and executive vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Intellectual Property Centre.

"During his meeting with Prime Minister Singh, President Obama has the opportunity to promote a trade environment that fosters innovation and creativity, creates high-quality jobs, and advances global economic development," he said.

The letter to Obama by 18 business organisations adds to the growing anti-India campaign here.

This week, a bipartisan group of governors highlighted the impact India's unfair trade practices have on jobs in states across the US in a letter to Obama.

Additionally, more than 170 US Representatives and 40 Senators expressed concern over the trade environment in India that puts American jobs and industries at risk in letters to the administration earlier this year.

PM-Sharif meet to focus on trade

 
While the situation on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir will definitely be discussed when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, it was emphasised by high-level sources on Wednesday that progress on trade would be made, as there is a concrete agenda to be followed for that.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of confidentiality, said that a significant step forward in exporting electricity to Pakistan could happen as early as next week. It had been held up, they claimed, not for political reasons but because the Pakistani side was evaluating its technical and commercial viability. However, it is believed that process is close to conclusion, and Pakistan may express formal interest in cross-border electricity trade, sending a delegation on the subject, within a week. Sharif and Singh are likely to meet on Sunday.

In another significant development, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, or NPCIL, will likely move forward within a few days on evaluating the terms of a possible contract with nuclear supplier Westinghouse. A limited exploratory agreement might be in place between the two companies, according to the highly-placed sources, before Singh meets US President Barack Obama on Friday. This is in spite of concerns expressed domestically that US companies, including Westinghouse, wish to dilute the nuclear liability legislation passed by the Parliament beyond recognition.

A lack of progress in transforming the US-India civil nuclear agreement of 2008 into real projects on the ground is often cited as a major cause for a chill in bilateral relations. However, officials close to the prime minister strongly denied that the United States had any ground for disappointment, and suggested that such claims may just be an American negotiating tactic.

Singh will also make a pitch for more US investment in India. Although the recent diplomatic coolness between India and the US has been driven in large part by the souring of US business on the India story, officials insisted that the outreach was not unusual. Reporters were told that a ramped-up pitch for investment will be the one consistent theme of all major upcoming foreign visits, including to China. The PM is scheduled to meet a group of US CEOs in New York City later this week.

Sign in | Create a Rediffmail account Rediff.com » Business » Rajan meets PM, FM ahead of monetary review Rajan meets PM, FM ahead of monetary review

Days before his first monetary policy review, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday. 
The meeting also comes at a time when the US Federal Reserve is expected to take a call on tapering of the bond-buying programme known as quantitative easing.
“RBI has constant consultations with the finance ministry. This meeting was part of that. We discussed a whole gamut of issues,” Rajan told reporters on Tuesday after meeting Chidambaram.
Later, during the day, the government hiked import duty on gold jewellery to 15 per cent from the existing 10 per cent in an effort to curb the spiralling current account deficit (CAD) that touched an all-time high of 4.8 per cent of the GDP in FY13.
A six-month high inflation in August has already made things tough for Rajan at a time when industry is demanding cut in the policy rate to boost growth.
Inflation rose 6.1 per cent in August from 5.8 per cent in July, driven by expensive food items, particularly onions, which saw the rate of price rise skyrocketing to 244.6 per cent from an already high 119.4 per cent.
According to a report by Dun and Bradstreet, RBI is expected to maintain a status quo on the policy rate. Ironically, onion prices can’t be brought down by interest rate policy.
However, that may desist Rajan from easing the central bank’s monetary stance in the mid-quarter review on the 20th of this month, economists said.
India’s economic growth crashed to a four-year low of 4.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2013-14.
On the other hand, inflation in manufactured products further fell to 1.9 per cent from 2.81 per cent, despite depreciation of the rupee, increasing imported inflation. This showed that demand in the Indian and global economy remained subdued.
Usually, it is manufactured product inflation on which RBI focuses its attention; it is core inflation within manufactured item inflation that RBI is usually concerned.
The core inflation relates to manufactured items sans food articles. It fell further to 1.9 per cent in August from 2.3 per cent.
The low rate of price rise in manufactured items and core inflation should have been ideal conditions for RBI to cut rates, but the party is being spoilt by food articles.

G20 Summit: PM leaves for St.Petersburg

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday left for St.Petersburg to attend the eighth G20 Summit during which he is expected to push for a coordinated plan to avoid disruption in India and other large developing economies by imminent phasing out of fiscal stimulus by US Federal Reserve.

While the dispute between Russia and the US over the conflict in Syria is likely to overshadow the two-day summit starting tomorrow in the Russian city, splits between emerging markets and the US over its winding down of stimulus and the slowing growth of India and other four BRICS countries are expected to remain in focus.

Brazil, India, Russia, China and South Africa--grouped in the informal BRICS bloc seen as an alternative economic powerhouse--all go into the meeting experiencing slowing growth, embattled currencies and huge capital outflows.

In a statement before leaving for the Summit, Singh called for an "orderly exit" from unconventional monetary policies being pursued by the developed world for the last few years to avoid damaging growth prospects of the developing world.

Singh, who has attended all the previous G20 summits since the first meet in Washington in 2008, is due to return home on Saturday evening.

These 6 people are responsible for India's economic crisis

T N Ninan

These six people have created a political climate more difficult for business, indeed more hostile to business, than at any time since the mid-1980s, says T N Ninan.
Kapil Sibal said in Parliament the other day that politicians are the most accountable among all categories of people.

So, how accountable do six people, who between them have run the economy these past five years, feel as they survey the mess around them? All but one of them spoke this past week.

Sonia Gandhi told Parliament that if there was no money for the “food security” programme, then money would have to be found - but she did not care to suggest how. She also said that if the public distribution system had its defects, they would have to be fixed - again, the details were beneath her.

If the isolation at 10 Janpath is not like living on Mars, the Congress president must know that the economy faces urgent challenges, and that the last things it needs are irresponsible laws; so she must tell us whether she really thinks that two-thirds of Indians go to bed hungry. Accountability, Mr Sibal?
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Image: Sonia Gandhi with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Photographs: Reuters

Related News: Mr Sibal , Sonia Gandhi , Kapil Sibal , Congress , Parliament

Economy to grow at 5.5%; no 1991-like crisis: PM

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday said India is not heading back to a 1991-like crisis, when the country was forced to pledge its gold to pay import bills, and the economy would expand by 5.5 percent in the current fiscal.

“There is no reason to believe that we are going down the hill and that 1991 is on the horizon,” the prime minister said in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament.

Manmohan Singh pointed out that India has around USD 280 billion of foreign exchange reserve, which is sufficient to finance nearly seven months of imports.

In 1991, India's foreign exchange reserve had fallen to USD 3 billion, not enough even to cover three weeks of imports. The country was forced to pledge its gold with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to pay its bills.