After growth, India elbows out China on foreign investment

After logging a higher growth, India has emerged as the top-ranked nation in the flow of foreign direct investment in 2015, beating China on the very turf it has dominated for a few decades, says the think tank of the Financial Times.

“After a long period of trailing behind China, India is now racing past its rival. India was the highest ranked country by capital investment in 2015, with $63-billion worth of foreign direct investment (FDI) projects announced,” says fDi Intelligence in its soon-to-be-released report.

“All this while China saw a 23 percent decline in capital investment and a 16 percent drop in FDI projects. India replaced China as the top destination for FDI by capital investments, following a year of high-value project announcements,” it said in a preview.

“For so long trailing in China’s wake, India is now the great global growth story.”

Yet, said the report, China’s new phase of development may well have the stronger global impact, since its highly ambitious initiative to revitalise the Silk Road and create bold new logistics to Europe can generate investment and boost connectivity betwen the two continents.

India replaced China as the top destination for foreign investment following a year of high-value project announcements and maintaining the current momentum will a monumental task faced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi government, said Courtney Fingar, editor-in-chief of fDi Magazine.

“Longer term challenges must also be faced head on, including improving India’s infrastructure, reducing bureaucracy and tackling inequality. How well these are addressed will have significant effect on future continued competitiveness of India as an investment destination.”

As regards China, she said, there were other concerns. Faced with plateauing growth and rising costs, the country is going through a transition to becoming a high-income country while at the same time solidifying its place as a world power.

“As befits its new status as a global goliath, China is looking outward to solve some of its problems such as excess capacity due to slowing demand and this will not be without consequence to the rest of the world,” she added.

The fDi report specifically mentioned the alleged dumping of Chinese steel distorting the global market, and countries such as the UK feeling the effects in a painful way. The report said many have blamed this for the Tatas’ plans to sell off their UK steel units.

As regards the global play, the report said greenfield investment were were on recovery phase.

“But it is a sketchy recovery and not an entirely a convincing one. The report reveals capital investment increased by 9 percent in 2015, to $713 billion, while the number of jobs created through foreign capital grew by 1 percent to 1.89 million,” Fingar said.

“But the big foreign direct investment story of the past year is undeniably India.”

Source : IndianMediaBook - Business

FBI paid over $1 million to crack San Bernardino iPhone

The Federal Bureau of Investigation paid more than $1 million to access San Bernardino attacker’s iPhone, the agency said on Thursday.

It is for the first time the agency has offered a possible price tag in the high-profile case, the Washington Post reported.

Director James Comey did not offer a precise dollar figure, saying it cost “a lot” to get into the phone.

Comey said the cost of the tool was “more than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months, for sure.”

Comey is paid at the rate set for Level II of the executive salary schedule. That means he makes $185,100 a year, under the pay schedules that went into effect this year.

As a result, Comey’s remarks strongly implied that the bureau paid at least $1.3 million to get onto Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone.

Farook, with his wife Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in the December 2 terror attack in San Bernardino.

“But it was, in my view, worth it,” the FBI director said of what it cost to access the phone’s data.

Federal authorities have not publicly revealed who helped the FBI unlock the iPhone, which was at the center of an extended fight between the government and iPhone maker Apple.

The Justice Department had maintained that only Apple could help it access the phone without erasing all of its data before abruptly saying it had gotten help from an outside party and no longer needed Apple’s assistance.

According to people familiar with the issue, the FBI cracked the phone with the help of professional hackers who were paid a one-time flat fee.

Law enforcement officials have said recently that the FBI has found no links to foreign terrorists on the phone, though they are still hoping that geolocation data on the device could help reveal what the attackers did during an 18-minute period after the shooting.

Earlier this month, Comey had said the government was considering telling Apple how it accessed the phone, though he acknowledged if that happened, the technology giant would fix the flaw and close off that avenue.

Comey said the tool would only work on a “narrow slice” of devices, saying he was “pretty confident” it would not work on newer models.

Comey conceded Thursday that the tool would work only on an iPhone 5c running iOS 9.

In part because of the price tag, Comey said he hoped the government could figure out a solution to access other, more current phones without having to make mass appeals to the tech industry for some kind of hack.

He noted that there were 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the US that might want to access phones and could not afford what the FBI paid to access the San Bernardino phone.

The FBI’s total budget for fiscal year 2016 was more than $8.7 billion, and the bureau requested more than $9.5 billion for fiscal year 2017.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Business

Vistara partners TCS for IT services

Vistara airline on Friday said it has signed a four year comprehensive agreement with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for availing a range of IT and digital services.

“As per the agreement, the global IT services company will provide a broad range of IT services in the area of IT management, application maintenance and development to help the airline achieve its goal in customer experience, operational excellence as well as cost leadership,” the carrier said in a statement.

The airline, which is a joint venture of Tata and Singapore Airlines, currently offers almost 400 weekly flights to 16 destinations in India.

“Since the start of airline’s journey, the global IT services provider has been assisting us in defining our IT strategy, launch innovation platform items, created dashboards and tracking mechanisms to increase transparency and compliance. Both parties will now see greater synergies as the expanded partnership,” said its CEO Phee Teik Yeoh.

TCS president (Asia Pacific) Girish Ramachandran said that the strategic partnership provided an opportunity to develop the next-generation of innovative digital and IT solutions.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Business

Odisha targets creation of 1 lakh acre land bank by June

The Odisha government has set a target to complete acquisition of one lakh acres of land under the proposed land bank for setting up industries without any hassle by June end this year, an official said.

Industries Secretary Sanjeev Chopra has urged all district collectors to direct the concerned tehsildars to complete the process by the end of June.

“It is pertinent to mention that the state government has mandated Idco for creation of land bank of at least one lakh acres by June 30, 2016 to attract investors for establishment of industries in the state. The chief minister is also reviewing the progress from time to time”, Chopra said in a letter to the district collectors recently.

Chopra, who is also the chairman of Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco), said it has filed requisition for government land measuring 76,721.94 acres under Land Bank scheme in different districts.

“Accordingly, out of the total filed area, 12,698.93 acres has been prioritized as category ‘A’ for sanction of lease in favour of Idco and 64,023.01 acres as category ‘B’ to be kept as reserved at the district level for industrial purpose,” he said.

The state government has identified lands in these two categories for creation of the land bank. While lands identified under Category A would be leased out to Idco by the district collector on requisition for immediate use for establishment of industries, under Category B, land to be kept reserved at district level for industrial purposes.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Business

Committed to bringing Mallya back to India: Government

The central government was committed to bringing liquor baron Vijay Mallya back to India to face justice, the external affairs ministry said on Friday.

“The government is committed to bringing Vijay Mallya back to face justice. We are considering steps for Mallya’s deportation,” foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup told the media here.

He said that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had requested the ministry initiate the process of his deportation after a Mumbai court issued non-bailable warrant against him.

“We are currently consulting legal experts on the next steps in this particular matter,” Swarup said.

A special court in Mumbai issued an undated non-bailable arrest warrant against the beleaguered businessman on April 18 in response to a plea by the Enforcement Directorate on April 15 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

Mallya, who owes more than Rs.9,000crore to various Indian banks, have failed failed to honour ED summons for questioning in various cases pertaining to his loans and allegations of money laundering.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Business

Obama’s ‘back of the queue’ warning infuriates Brexit campaigners

Visiting US President Barack Obama set the EU referendum debate alight on Friday with a warning that Britain would “go to the back of the queue” to strike a trade deal with the US if the Brexit vote wins the June 23 referendum.

Standing alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron at the Foreign Office in London, Obama spoke of the impact of an “out” vote in Britain’s national referendum on continued membership of the European Union.

Hours earlier, Obama said in a message that he was speaking as “with candor as a friend of Britain”.

His joint press conference with Cameron hours later sparked a frenzy among politicians, campaigners and commentators.

Obama said: “I think it’s fair to say that maybe some point down the line there might be a UK-U.S. trade agreement, but it’s not going to happen any time soon because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done. The UK is going to be in the back of the queue.”

Cameron welcomed the president’s trade warning as a big moment in the debate, describing it “a clear statement.”

Some analysts even suggested that the words “had been written for Obama” as Americans use the word “line” instead of “queue”. The suggestion was that Obama was doing the bidding for the pro-Cameron stance to vote yes on June 23.

Some Brexit supporter accused the US president of being guilty of “wanton double-standards”,saying that he was asking the British people to do something he wouldn’t dream of asking Americans.

Ahead of the press conference, Obama and Cameron held private talks on a number of issues, including economy and the Middle East.

Emerging after the private talks to face the media, Obama said the special U.S.-British relationship is solid and will continue – – “hopefully eternally” even if Britain votes to leave the EU, adding that he had not journeyed to Britain to “fix votes”.

But he also added that leaving the EU would not be in Britain’s economic interests.

Obama said: “If, right now, I have got access to a massive market where I sell 44 percent of my exports and now I’m thinking about leaving the organisation that gives me access to that market and that is responsible for millions of jobs in my country and responsible for an enormous amount of commerce and upon which a lot of businesses depend — that’s not something I would probably do.”

Source : IndianMediaBook - Business

Investors can be convinced of future returns from green investments: Singhi

Investors and corporate boards can be convinced to make green investments by showing them the value of tangible and intangible future returns, industrialist Mahendra Singhi has said.

Singhi, Group CEO of Dalmia Cement, said here on Friday that many green initiatives – to reduce the carbon footprint of industries and make them environmentally sustainable – will not require much additional investments.

But some initiatives, like using waste for power generation or adopting certain low carbon technologies, do need larger investments, he said. Whenever there are such projects that may not produce “normal investment return”, the cost of the green initiative is noted.

“They may not be the right return today, but considering the problems of climate and the future benefits we do convince the board as well as the the investors to support those projects,” he said.

Singhi briefed the news media about the “Impact of the Paris Climate Agreement on Business and Investors”. In recognition of Indian businesses vigorously joining the climate change battle, he was one of the two Indian industrialists showcased by the UN at the Paris Agreement signing events. The other was Anand Mahindra, the CEO of Mahindra Group, who spoke on behalf of the corporate world at the opening ceremony.

Many green projects requiring large investments but low returns are beyond the reach of industries in developing countries and are not being implemented, Singhi said. “That is why there is the demand from developing countries for green funds,” he said. “Developed countries should support developing countries for achieving” environmental goals.

He said his company decided it would “walk the talk” on sustainable development and adopted voluntary targets. These were ensuring that its carbon footprint should be one of the lowest in the industry, which it has achieved, and becoming “water positive” so that more water is conserved, he said.

“We are also working in a big way on renewable power,” Singhi said. “Almost seven percent of our power consumption is from renewable resources and we will make it to 20 percent by 2019.”

The company has also started to convert the waste of other industries into power and projects its message of “waste to wealth”, he said. “We conserve the very important resources of our planet.”

“We have worked on corporate social responsibility for serving the poor part of society so that we don’t become an island of prosperity, but we create prosperity for all. We follow the philosophy of total prosperity shared with all stakeholders including the poor in our society.”

Source : IndianMediaBook - Business