Narendra Modi to meet Donald Trump to set forth vision to expand India-US ties

Washington: The maiden meeting between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi would “set forth a vision” to expand the US-India partnership in an ambitious way, the White House has said.
The leaders of the world’s two largest democracies, home to 1.6 billion people, will meet on 26 June to discuss a gamut of bilateral issues including terrorism and India’s concerns over possible changes in H1B visa rules. “I think you can expect the two of them to set forth a vision that will expand the US-India partnership in an ambitious and worthy way of both countries’ people,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters at his daily news conference.
Spicer said the two leaders were expected to set forth a “common vision” on expanding the US-India partnership. He cited fighting terrorism, promoting economic growth and reforms and expanding security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region as shared priorities. “President Trump and Prime Minister Modi will look to outline a common vision for the United States-India partnership that is worthy of their 1.6 billion citizens,” Spicer said.
Trump invited Modi to Washington after the latter rang him in January to congratulate the new president on his inauguration. “The president and the prime minister have had a number of positive phone conversations, and expect to further that discussion ... whether it’s economic growth and reforms, fighting terrorism, expanding our cooperation as major defence partners,” Spicer said in response to a question.
The bilateral talks appear to be no bed of roses as they come amid thorny issues like US’s plans to reduce the number of H1B visa slots that are mainly used by Indian IT workers, and its withdrawal from the historic climate accord. The White House said that the US-India trade has grown six-fold since 2000, from $19 billion to $115 billion in 2016, despite the recent hiccups over the H1B visa issue.
“US energy and technologies, including natural gas, are helping to build Prime Minister Modi’s vision for a new India and creating thousands of US jobs in the process,” Spicer said. Notably, Modi’s US visit, which would begin on 25 June, comes in the backdrop of Trump’s announcement to withdraw the US from the historic Paris climate agreement signed by over 190 other countries.
In his announcement of the decision for which he received a global condemnation, Trump had blamed India and China for the US withdrawal. “India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions of dollars from developed countries,” he had said. Strongly rejecting Trump’s contention, India said it signed the Paris deal not under duress or for lure of money but due to its commitment to protect the environment.
During his visit to France this month, Modi even said that India would “go above and beyond” the Paris deal to protect climate for the future generations. Apart from ways to enhance trade and business cooperation, Modi and Trump are expected to discuss defence ties.

LIC sets record on claims front, settles 99.92% cases

Mumbai: The Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has pulled off a record claim performance by settling 99.92 per cent of death claims in 2016-17 as against industry average of 95 per cent.
The insurance behemoth is keen to push the boundary further, looking to settle 99 per cent claims on a monthly basis too in future.
"LIC has settled 99.92 per cent of death claims in 2016-17, which is undoubtedly one of the best performances not only in the country, but in the world," an LIC source told PTI here.
According to industry body Life Insurance Council, there are a total of 24 players, including LIC, active in the life insurance space and the industry average of death claim settlement stands at around 95 per cent.
"One of the fundamental reasons for the strong brand of LIC is our service delivery and... our claim settlement operations in particular," the source said, adding that "we would expect that not only we continue to focus on this area, but further strengthen it by settling 99 per cent claims on month on month basis".
Till date, LIC has had nearly 11 lakh such cases outstanding and expects that each and every case needs to be followed up to its logical end.
According to the source, the customer relationship management (CRM) department of LIC has been asked to ensure claim particular sheet is prepared for every outstanding case and regular monitoring is done.
LIC, the source said, is making further efforts in the CRM space, where the corporation would like to see visible and perceptible changes in the quality of response to customers, turnaround time in attending to customer complaints or queries, courteous attitude and business etiquette of officials dealing with customers.
According to the source, prompt handling of queries by the SMS-based helpline has brought down the number of complaints drastically and it would revive the helpdesk in each branch so that customer is attended to promptly.
"Further, to provide instant service, we need to ensure our customers are empowered to use e-services. Their mobile numbers, e-mails and NEFT details are registered as early as possible to provide instant services," the source added.
As for information technology, LIC's immediate focus is to ensure comprehensive cyber security for data, software as well as hardware. This is all the more relevant in the wake of the Wannacry malware attack that hit computers across globe.
The corporation may go for a net addition of 69,000 agents, potentially taking its agency strength to 11,31,181 at the end of March 2017.

PE investments in auto parts up 607% in the first five months of 2017

Chennai: Private equity investment in the automobile component sector rose 607 per cent to $90.2 million in the first five months of this calendar year, over the same period last year.
Merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in the sector were up 170 per cent to $254.8 million.
According to VCCEdge data, three deals alone attracted around $90 mn this year. These included Piramal Finance's investment of $42.5 million in RSB Transmissions India and $44.9 million in IndoShell Mould. SAIF Partners India invested around $2.8 million in Fiem Industries.
Khushru Jijina, managing director at Piramal Finance, said: "The auto components space has been on our radar as a focus area for a while."
The industry has grown at a 15 per cent compounded annual rate over the past decade, significantly higher than the original equipment makers themselves. Both RSB and IndoShell have long-standing relationships with major OEMs. Sector experts say the components industry is projected to clock $50 billion in revenue by 2018-19, up from $39 billion in 2016-17.
"We look forward to more such transactions as we further scale up our investment focus towards this sector," said Jijina.
The automotive retail space has attracted one investment so far this year. Banyan Tree Growth Capital invested $14 million in Popular Vehicles and Services.
In the M&A space, there have been 11 deals worth $245.8 mn so far this year, against $94.4 mn across seven deals in the comparable period a year before. These include JTEKT Corporation's $125.3 million acquisition of a 51.12 per cent stake in Sona Koya Steering in February and a $66.1 million investment for a 34.04 per cent stake in Agile Electric Sub Assembly, for which the investor is not known.
The only outbound M&A was Hi-Tech Gears' $43.7 million investment for the entire equity of Teutech Industries.
Peugeot SA has invested $11.95 million in Hindustan Motors' Ambassador brand for 100 per cent stake. There was a $5 million investment by Meidoh Co in Sterling Tools.
The automotive retail sector saw two M&A deals but no value was disclosed. These were Smarton India's investment in Volta Motors and SAIC Motor HK Investment's for 100 per cent stake in General Motors India's Halol unit.

GST Council reduces rates of 66 products

New Delhi: With two weeks to go for the goods and services tax (GST) roll-out, the GST Council on Sunday reduced the rates for 66 items and expanded the scope of the composition scheme for the benefit of small traders, manufacturers, and restaurateurs. The composition scheme is a presumptive taxation scheme allowing small traders, manufacturers and restaurants to pay a 1-5 per cent GST rate on sales without tax credits.
Insulin, pickles, printers, agarbattis, school bags, and cashew nuts are among the 66. Those were among 133 items whose rates were reviewed following industry representation. However, the GST rates for telecom services, marbles, granite, spectacles, among others, were retained, which drew flak from the respective sectors.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is the head of the Council, said in certain cases the rate fitment committee went beyond the equalisation principle of maintaining the current tax incidence.
“There are certain items that were historically taxed at a higher rate, but the Council felt that the burden needed to be reduced,” said Jaitley.

The finance minister said the average of all the rates decided by the Council was significantly lower than the present tax incidence.
On the question about any further revision of rates, he said the fitment committee and the GST Council had gone into all the cases in depth and the rates had been decided after discussion.
“These broadly are the final rates... Just because somebody raising an issue does not mean you have to grant it,” he said.
On the automakers’ pitch for a lower rate for hybrid cars, Jaitley said the facts presented by the industry were not correct. “If necessary, it will come up for discussion,” Jaitley said.
The current level of tax on hybrid cars stands at 30.3 per cent, as against 43 per cent (28 per cent plus 15 per cent cess) decided by the Council.
Providing relief to small entities under the GST, the composition scheme has now been expanded to traders, manufacturers, and restaurants with an annual turnover of Rs 75 lakh as against Rs 50 lakh decided earlier.
The scheme allows traders, manufacturers, and restaurants who satisfy the turnover criterion to pay a fixed rate at 1 per cent, 2 per cent, and 5 per cent, respectively, and they will have reduced procedural requirements.
All goods and services under the GST regime have been broadly placed in five tax slabs — 0, 5, 12, 18, and 28 per cent.
The GST on insulin, cashew nuts and agarbattis has been lowered to 5 per cent from 12 per cent proposed earlier. The rate for school bags, printers, and tractors will attract an 18 per cent rate against 28 per cent decided in the earlier meeting. The rate for children's exercise books has been slashed to nil from 12 per cent proposed earlier.
The GST rate for movie tickets under Rs 100 has been slashed to 18 per cent, while tickets priced above Rs 100 will be taxed at 28 per cent. Kitchen use items like pickles, mustard sauce, and morabba will attract 12 per cent as against 18 per cent proposed earlier.
MS Mani of Deloitte Haskins and Sells said the reduction indicated many consumer items might see a price reduction or at least an equivalence of prices after the GST is introduced.
"This will erase fears of an inflationary spiral due to the GST and may see prices stabilising and benefit consumers," said Mani.
The Council will meet again on June 18 to take up residual issues including e-way bill and the rates for lottery.
"There has been an attempt to address the inverted duty structure in a few cases like tractors and textiles by reducing the rates on parts and job work services," said Pratik Jain of PwC India.
Uday Pimprikar, Tax Partner, EY, said: “The telecom sector's ask of a lower tax rate was ignored by the GST Council. The 18 per cent rate imposed on the sector would increase the tax incidence. It is now important that the government engages with the industry to provide certainty and support for a smooth transition into GST.”
Six states are yet to pass the state GST (SGST) Bill in their respective state assemblies.

Internet users to double to 829 mn by 2021: Report

Mumbai: Internet users in the country will double by 2021 to 829 million users from 373 million users in 2016, driven by digital transformation according to a recent report.
This means roughly 59 per cent of the Indian population will use the internet. Also, there would be two billion networked devices in 2021 up from 1.4 billion in 2016.
Overall IP traffic is expected to grow 4-fold during the same period of five years at a compounded annual growth rate of 30 per cent, the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast said.
"Combining device capabilities with faster, higher bandwidth and more intelligent networks is leading to wide doption of high bandwidth data, video and advanced multimedia applications that contribute to increased mobile and Wi-Fi traffic," said Sanjay Kaul, Managing Director, Service Provider Business, Cisco India SAARC.
"The need for optimised bandwidth management, network automation, end to end security and ultimately network monetisation through cost efficient data production is fuelling the growth of network automation, mass market 4G deployments and adoption, soon to be followed with 4.5G and 5G," Kaul added.
The report further explained that mobile to mobile (M2M) connections will represent 22 per cent of the total two billion devices and connections and will account for five percent of IP traffic by 2021.
Advancements in IoT applications such as smart meters, package tracking, digital health monitors and a host of other next-generation M2M services is driving this incremental growth.
Video will continue to dominate IP traffic and overall Internet traffic growth representing 76 per cent of all Internet traffic in 2021, up from 57 percent in 2016, the report noted.
India will reach 84 billion Internet video minutes per month by 2021, which is one hundred and sixty thousand years of video per month, or about thirty two thousand video minutes every second, it explained.

Govt aims to make India "food factory" of the world: Badal

New Delhi: Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal today said the government wants to make India a "food factory" of the world and is fully committed to provide transparent environment to investors.
Laying the foundation stone for a mega food park being developed by KINFRA at Palakkad in Kerala, Badal said the government has made food processing a major thrust area of 'Make in India' initiative.
"The present government is fully committed to providing an environment that is smooth, transparent and easy for investors wanting to start an enterprise in India in a bid to make the country a resilient food economy and 'Food Factory' of the world," Badal said.
The food park is being set up on 78.68 acres at a cost of Rs 119.02 crore.
"Giving a big push to the infrastructure development for food processing in the state of Kerala, foundation stone of two mega food parks are being developed by Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (KINFRA) at Palakkad and other by Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) at Alappuzha has been laid today," a statement from the ministry of food processing said today.
The foundation stone for the food park being developed by KSIDC at Alappuzha was laid by Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan, it said. This is being set up on 68.18 acre of land at the cost of Rs 129.15 crore.
"Government of India is providing financial assistance of Rs 50 crore to each of the projects," the statement added.
Each of the mega food parks will leverage an additional investment of about Rs 250 crore in 25-30 food processing units in the park and generate a turnover of about Rs 450-500 crore annually, Badal said.
"Each of the Parks will also provide direct and indirect employment to 5,000 people and benefit about 25,000 farmers in the Central Processing Centre (CPC) and Primary Processing Centres (PPC) catchment areas," the statement added.
Minister for Food Processing Industries said that the modern infrastructure for food processing created at the food parks will benefit the farmers, growers, processors and consumers of Kerala and prove to be a big boost to the growth of the food processing sector in Kerala.

IT-ITeS sector leased 10% more office space in 2016, says JLL

Mumbai: Office space absorption by the information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (ITeS) companies rose by 10% to 16.81 million square feet (sq ft) in 2016 over the previous year, with Bengaluru and Hyderabad together accounting for more than 50% of this space take-up, according to a report by JLL India.
Office space demand from these companies had increased from 1.4 million sq ft in 2001 to 15.2 million sq ft in 2015.
The transaction sizes, however, are becoming smaller — the average area leased was slightly over 31,200 sq ft in 2015, which went below 27,000 sq ft in 2016. ”In percentage terms, this is a reduction of 14% (year-on-year) and implies that developers need to be ready for designing business parks for smaller requirements. Their focus should change from quantity to quality of tenants,” said Ramesh Nair, country head & CEO, JLL India.
The number of lease transactions saw a 52% growth year-on-year, going up from 414 in 2015 to 628 in 2016. Back in 2001, there were only 19 IT leasing transactions. Last year, most of the transactions were recorded in the tech hubs of Bengaluru and Hyderabad, while micro-markets preferred by IT players across Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Mumbai and Pune also saw a good number of transactions.
“The growing transaction numbers indicate that IT companies, which previously preferred built-to-suit office complexes, increasingly prefer to lease offices that offer flexibility. Earlier, many Indian IT firms, especially the bigger ones like Infosys and TCS, preferred constructing their own campuses. Now, as the client contracts of many of these companies get shorter, they prefer to lease,” Nair said.
Many IT firms in India follow the principle of ‘one dollar real estate cost' and lease quality spaces that charge rents below Rs 65 ($1) per sq ft per month. The top seven cities in the country have been providing spaces to accommodate this strategy. Industry body Nasscom forecasts that the IT-BPO sector will account for 10% of India’s GDP by 2020 and create Rs 30 million direct and indirect jobs, he said.
“Last year, however, the pace of growth of top technology firms was in single digits due to global uncertainty and technological disruption. The office space requirements of technology and outsourcing firms - particularly those engaged in software development - also slowed down,” Nair said.

'DigiYatra'- A new digital experience for air travellers

New Delhi: The Ministry of Civil Aviation is adding a Digital experience for Air Travellers through DigiYatra Platform. The ‘DigiYatra’ is an industry-led initiative co-ordinated by the Ministry in line with the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s Digital India’s vision to transform the nation into a digitally empowered society. This follows Air Sewa which brings together all the stakeholders on a common platform for handling customer grievances and disseminating real-time data.
The Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Shri P Ashok Gajapathi Raju expressed hope that ‘DigiYatra’ initiative will transform the flying experience for passengers and position Indian Aviation amongst the most innovative air networks in the world.
The Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Shri Jayant Sinha today launched the report on ‘DigiYatra’. Shri Sinha also briefed the media about the ‘DigiYatra’ initiative of the Ministry. He said that ‘DigiYatra’ initiative aims to bring together entire industry to develop a digital ecosystem that will deliver Indian customers a seamless, consistent and paperless service experience at every touch point of their journey.
The Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Shri Sinha informed that the Ministry created a Technical Committee comprising industry stakeholders which will submit its recommendations in 30 days. These propositions would be open for public comments and discussions for another 30 days. These would then be translated into a time-bound action plan.
Shri Sinha said that the DigiYatra initiative envisages providing airline travellers in India, a pioneering ‘digitally unified flying experience’ across all stages of their journey. All aviation stakeholders – airlines, airport operators, security and immigration agencies, cab operators, retail establishment and others are working to devise digital standards which can enable seamless exchange of data and information. He said that these standards can power unique applications which can deliver a delightful experience for air travellers.
Shri Sinha further informed that the platform will be built on 4 key pillars, like Connected Passengers, Connected Airports, Connected Flying and Connected Systems which can make it possible over a period of time for passengers to:
Plan their trips efficiently by identifying price trends and estimate future airfares at the time of ticket booking,
Optionally link their Aadhaar to airlines and other ecosystem players at the time of booking for faster airport entry and automated check-ins without requiring any paper-based interventions,
Walk-through security scanners swiftly owing to advanced biometric security solutions,
Receive relevant information pertaining to various facilities, protocols, airline timings, queue lengths at airports etc.,
Engage in customised digital offerings at experience zones,
Get real time notifications about congestion and delays to have greater visibility on the next step of journey,
Conveniently navigate through the airport using digital guidance systems, interactive kiosks and augmented reality apps,
Stay connected during flights and indulge in immersive experiences. Also book in-flight services and destination based offerings digitally,
Get a prompt when their luggage reaches the baggage claim belt , and
Submit grievances, share experiences and provide feedback.
The Digitising data would help the aviation industry gather meaningful insights for continuous improvement and innovation. This initiative has emerged after six months of comprehensive discourse with various ecosystem players.

India 'bright spot' for global steel output growth: report

New Delhi: India is being seen as a bright spot for the growth in global steel production, supported by government’s push to augment capacity and demand from the construction, automotive and infrastructure sectors. Tata Steel Ltd and Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) would drive the steel output growth, according to a report by BMI Research. India's steel output grew by 7.4 per cent year-on-year in 2016, and is expected to reach an average annual growth of 8.9 per cent between 2017-2021.The steel output has been estimated to grow to 128.6 million tonnes (MT) in 2021 from 88.4 MTs in 2017 and the share in global output would rise to 7.7 per cent by 2021 from 5.4 per cent in 2017.

Daily consumer goods being used by the common man among others to become cheaper after GST .

New Delhi: Implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on the following items will have zero rate after the GST Law comes into force on 1st July, 2017.
As a result of which these items will be available at cheaper rates to the common man at large:
1) Foodgrains and flours
a. Cereals
b. Pulses
c. Atta
d. Maida
e. Besan
Except branded ones with registered trade mark in whose case GST will be charged at the rate of 5 %.
2) Fresh milk
3) Fresh vegetables and fresh fruits
4) Puffed rice (muri)
5) Common salt
6) Animal feed
7) Organic manure
8) Fire wood
9) Raw silk/raw wool/jute
10) Hand operated agriculture equipments.
Due to no GST on these items, most of them are expected to become cheaper in the range of approximately 4-5% as compared to their existing prices.