Table of Contents
Goyal on Amazon
- Piyush Goyal: Amazon was not doing India any favor by investing $1 billion
- Company’s CEO Jeff Bezos is in India
- “How can a marketplace make such a big loss unless they are indulging in predatory pricing or some unfair trade practices?
- GoI has shown a soft corner for brick-and-mortar retailers
- Overseas-funded e-commerce marketplaces can’t engage in retailing goods themselves and can only function as platforms for buyers and sellers.
- Bezos: 21st century will be the Indian century
- Bezos: ties between India and the US will be the “most important alliance” in the 21st century.
Amazon’s Welcome Move on Small Biz
- Businesses seek profits. That is an entirely honorable motive.
- Workers queue up to be hired because they want to earn a wage, the higher the better.
- Banks compete to lend to businesses, to make profits.
- In the process of businesses investing, hiring workers and taking credit, jobs get created, savers’ deposits find profitable deployment, some consumer want or need is met, and the government gets direct and indirect taxes.
- Where markets fail, the State steps in.
- The Competition Commission of India has launched an investigation into the fairness of eCommerce operations.
- Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart should welcome it as something that would build public confidence in the fairness of what they do.
- As Kishore Biyani of the Future Group says, online and physical retail might look very different today but are likely to converge to produce hybrid models that benefit both in a few years’ time.
- If Amazon enables India’s small and medium businesses to sell online, they would get organized and formalized, qualify for bank credit, pay their taxes regularly and pay their employees’ statutory dues and still be better off than in the informal past.
- Their cost of credit would be a fraction of what it would be when drawn from informal sources.
Telcos
- Supreme Court rejected pleas by Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices.
- 24 October 2019: verdict widened the definition of adjusted gross revenue (AGR).
- Three telcos collectively are facing more than ₹1.02 lakh crore in additional license fees, spectrum usage charges (SUC), penalties and interest.
- Analysts and industry executives said Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel are likely to file curative petitions, besides applying to the court for more time to make the payments—a combined ₹89,000 crore for the two.
Target core inflation
- An inflation measure which excludes transitory or temporary price volatility as in the case of some commodities such as food items, energy products etc.
- Core inflation is calculated using the Consumer Price Index(CPI) by excluding such commodities.
- If temporary price shocks are taken into account, they may affect the estimated overall inflation numbers in such a way that they are different from actual inflation.
- To eliminate this possibility, core inflation is calculated to gauge the actual inflation apart from temporary shocks and volatility.
- Pronab Sen, is the newly appointed chairman of the Standing Committee on Statistics.
- The core inflation target of 3% with an upper tolerance level of 4% and a lower limit of 2% should be part of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) mandate, along with the headline retail inflation.
- A small uptick in telecom has led to higher core inflation.
- Actually, there are parts of the core that are staring at deflation, not inflation.
CVC panel to vet fraud cases
- Central Vigilance Commission (CVC)has set up an advisory board to serve as the first level of examination in cases of banking and financial frauds above Rs 50 crore in state-run banks and financial institutions.
- It is expected that this move will ease the fear of investigative agencies among officials and get the wheels of lending moving.
- The panel will review cases of financial fraud involving general managers in state-run banks and financial institutions before any action is initiated by the organizations involved.
- The five-member panel headed by TM Bhasin, ex-chairman & managing director of Indian Bank and a former vigilance commissioner, will also provide advice on all cases of financial fraud under the relevant laws.
- The move comes after experts and industry leaders flagged the concerns during their recent meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where they cited instances of investigative agencies hounding the corporate sector and bankers.
Tejas Express
- India’s second private train, the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Tejas Express, will begin commercial operations on January 19, the railway’s ministry said in a statement.
- The train, operated by Indian RailwaysCatering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), will have its inaugural run flagged off by railways minister Piyush Goyal on Friday.
- Bringing in private train operators to provide improved passenger services was a proposal mooted by the railways in its 100-day agenda to hand over certain trains to private operators.
- The Indian Railways has identified 100routes for operation of 150 trains by private operators.
- Government think tank Niti Aayog earlier this month floated a draft proposal for running these trains, indicating an investment opportunity of Rs 22,500 crore.
Forex loan
- The government is considering aproposal to provide foreign exchange loan at cheaper interest rate to exporters and higher insurance coverage to the banks on their export credit-disbursement.
- The current trade standoff between the US and China and the slowdown in the international market is likely to have its impact on the imports and exports of countries
Download Free PDF
WhatsApp