Today's Hot Stories - March 19, 2014
10 Headlines for Today(1) BJP, Congress spar over 1962 report
(2) Infighting comes to the fore in Jharkhand BJP
(3) Ukraine crisis: Australia imposes sanctions on Russians
(4) Pillai questions CBI move against former SEBI officials
(5) India and China agree to co-operate on IT
(6) Sony unveils virtual reality headset for PS4
(7) All-round Bangladesh register 8-wicket win over Nepal
(8) Real Madrid breeze into Champions League quarters
(9) Saina seeded eighth at India Open
(10) India’s longest mural adorns Tihar Jail
5 Stories for Today
(1) Govt. will provide maximum relief to hailstorm-hit farmers: Chavan
(2) Israel bombs Syrian posts over Golan attack on its troops
(3) Polaris demerges product business
(4) Goldman upgrades Indian markets to overweight
(5) Gujarat keeps top rank in economic freedom, gives Narendra Modi big boost: Report
(1) Govt. will provide maximum relief to hailstorm-hit farmers: Chavan
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Wednesday assured that his government is committed to provide relief to hailstorm-hit farmers in the State and appealed to them not to take any “untoward decision” that could harm them.
Mr. Chavan’s statement comes in the wake of reports that several farmers have committed suicide in the hailstorm affected districts.
“As you all know Lok Sabha elections have been declared and the Model Code of Conduct has been enforced.
Considering the magnitude of devastation, the government is trying its best to provide maximum relief to the affected farmers,” Mr. Chavan said.
“Myself and my cabinet colleagues have toured the affected districts and discussed the compensation to be given at informal cabinet meetings. The state government has demanded a financial package of Rs. 5,000 crore from the Centre and also apprised the Election Commission of India about the damage caused,” MR. Chavan said in an appeal to the farmers.
He said a high-level group comprising Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, has been formed. A central team has recently completed its tour of the affected areas.
The State Government has already given orders to the district administration to provide relief as per standing orders in case of a natural calamity.
Source: The Hindu
(2) Israel bombs Syrian posts over Golan attack on its troops
Israel attacked several Syrian military sites on Wednesday in retaliation for a roadside bombing that wounded four of its troops on the occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday, the Israeli military said.
It said targets included a Syrian military headquarters, a training facility and artillery batteries. Aircraft carried out the overnight strike, said Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman. He described targets as military facilities on the Syrian-held side of the Golan.
Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move not recognised abroad. Tuesday's wounding of the soldiers as they patrolled the separation line on the strategic plateau marked Israel's worst casualties there since an insurgency erupted in Syria more than three years ago.
Israeli defence minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement that the Syrian army had aided and abetted Tuesday's attack.
"We hold the Assad regime responsible for what happens in its territory and if it continues to collaborate with terrorists striving to hurt Israel then we will keep on exacting a heavy price from it and make it regret its actions," Yaalon said.
Parts of the Syrian-held side of the Golan are controlled by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, including al-Qaida-inspired militants hostile to the Jewish state. Israel says Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas helping Assad battle the insurgency also have a presence on the Golan.
Spillover violence on the Golan from the Syrian civil war has often drawn Israeli return fire against Syrian positions, ending what had previously been a stable, decades-old stand-off between the foes.
Israel is believed to have struck inside Syria several times since 2013, against advanced weapons it believed were intended for Hezbollah, attacks it has neither confirmed nor denied.
Hezbollah accused Israel of carrying out an air strike on one of its bases on the Lebanon-Syria border last month and vowed to respond. Israel said it would hold the Beirut government responsible if Hezbollah attacked it from Lebanese territory.
Source: The Times of India
(3) Polaris demerges product business
Financial services firm Polaris Financial Technology, on Tuesday, formally announced the demerger of its product business into an independent entity after receiving approval from the company’s board.
The announcement puts an end to a nearly year-long restructuring process — which was undertaken to ‘unlock value’ — and will see the creation of a new entity known as Intellect Design Arena Ltd (Intellect).
Shares of the company surged nearly 11.6 per cent to end at Rs.152.8 on the BSE after news of the demerger broke.
According to a stock exchange filing, Intellect will now comprise four distinct businesses — global universal banking, risk and treasury management, global transaction banking and insurance. As part of the demerger, every Polaris shareholder will now receive one share of Intellect. Polaris will continue to run the services business with a strong vertical and solution focus. “Yes it has taken some time from when we decided to demerge and the official announcement. This is because we wanted to restructure properly first, with our employees having the chance to choose what career path they wanted to take,” said Arun Jain, Executive Chairman, Polaris Financial Technlogy Ltd.
“Close to 45 new leadership positions have now been created in the mid to senior level management. 28 of those positions have been filled externally,” he added.
The Polaris board has also decided to offer a special option to the shareholders of Intellect to exchange the shares (should they wish to) allotted pursuant to the demerger against fully secured non-convertible debentures (NCD).
According to Mr. Jain, the demerger will now allow the services business to start partnering with third-party solution providers in addition to Intellect. “Both companies will now have full freedom to start growing. The cloud business, which is part of Intellect, still needs sometime to mature before we decide anything on that,” he said.
Polaris Holdings Pvt. Ltd., whose name has been changed to Polaris Banyan Holding Pvt. Ltd., will continue to be the promoter of both the companies. Both companies, therefore, will operate as Polaris Group Companies, each with its independent management team and board of directors.
Source: The Economic Times
(4) Goldman upgrades Indian markets to overweight
On a day when both the Sensex and Nifty scaled their lifetime highs, US brokerage Goldman Sachs on Tuesday upgraded its rating on Indian stocks to “overweight” citing improving domestic economic data and expectations linked to the upcoming general elections. It expects the NSE Nifty to touch 7,600 points this year — a 17% upside from current levels.
“Upcoming Parliamentary elections in April could have an important impact on reform progress,” the report said.
Historically, Indian equities have fared well in the run-up to the elections. “Our analysis of past election moves, valuation and flows suggests India may have more room for a pre-election rally than Indonesia,” the report says.
Goldman said GDP growth has bottomed out in the first quarter and picked up going forward.
It is bullish on IT and energy as well as autos.
Source: Hindustan Times
(5) Gujarat keeps top rank in economic freedom, gives Narendra Modi big boost: Report
Amid intense poll-time discourse over claims of development in Gujarat, the latest report on the economic freedom of Indian states has revealed that the western coastal state retained in 2013 the No.1 slot it held in 2011. Gujarat also widened the gap with Tamil Nadu, which lost the top rank in 2011, in what could give ammunition to BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in the electoral sweepstakes.
Bihar continued to languish at the bottom of 20 major states reviewed since 2005 despite “significant” improvement under chief minister Nitish Kumar, showed the latest report on Economic Freedom of the States of India (EFSI).
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan — BJP’s other poster-boy of development — hasn’t been quite successful though, with the state slipping four notches since 2005 and three notches since 2011 to No. 6 last year. Moreover, of the top five states that enjoyed economic freedom the most in 2013, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana were ruled by the Congress for the period under review, while there was an AIADMK-led government in Tamil Nadu.
The report — authored by Bibek Debroy, Laveesh Bhandari and Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar and is a joint effort of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit, the Cato Institute and the Academic Foundation — is based on an index that factors in three major parameters: Size of the government with focus on expenditures, taxes and enterprises; legal structure and security of property rights; and regulation of labour and business.
Compared with 2005, the sharpest improvement in overall economic freedom scores has been registered by Gujarat (0.19 points), Chhattisgarh (0.11 points) and Andhra Pradesh (0.10 points) – all of which, unsurprisingly, also witnessed faster GDP expansion. The GDP growth averaged 12% in Gujarat, 10.6% in Chhattisgarh and 10.4% in Andhra Pradesh between FY06 and FY12. On the other hand, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Odisha have experienced declines in their index value since 2005.
What contributed most to Gujarat’s top rank in economic freedom was its stellar performance in “regulation of labour and business” in which it has scored 0.87 out of 1, leaving No.2 Tamil Nadu at a far distant 0.51, and retaining its top position since 2005.
“A host of factors have contributed to Gujarat’s continuing improvement (in this segment). A sharp decline in man-days lost due to strikes and lock-outs, higher market wage rates compared with minimum wage rates, and a decline in pendency of cases are some major factors,” it said.
Gujarat has also retained its slot at No.2 in the “size of government”, which is based on parameters such as government revenue expenditure as a share of the gross state domestic product (GSDP), the contribution of national services to the national product, state level taxes on income, property and capital transactions to the GSDP, among others.
However, at No.9, the Modi-led state’s performance hasn’t been quite impressive in “legal structure and security”. Its rank dropped by five notches since 2011, although it witnessed improvement since its ranking at No. 12 in 2005. Here, Chouhan beat Modi, with Madhya Pradesh retaining its lead over all other states since the 2011 rankings.
In contrast, India performed poorly in the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index in 2011, with its ranking slipping from a peak of 6.72 in 2005 to 6.34 in 2011, the report said. The 2013 EFW report is yet to be published.
“The good news is that economic freedom in the states of India has improved even as it has decreased in India as a whole... This is a good, important structural feature of the economy,” wrote Debroy and Bhandari.
Interestingly, Bihar remained at the bottom of the index consistently since 2005, despite what Aiyar calls “a veritable revolution” since Kumar took over in 2005. Nevertheless, the state improved its score to 0.31 last year from 0.29 in 2011 and 0.23 in 2005, aided by a sharp 15-fold increase in Plan spending, financed mainly by central transfers, over the past eight years and a construction boom.
The report also calls for greater role of states in the economic development and use of resources. It advocates equitable access to services by citizens across states, horizontal equity among states and the need for reducing flows through the Planning Commission.
Source: The Indian Express
Disclaimer: All news stories and content sourced from freely available material on the internet. All sources are acknowledged.
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