Table of Contents
Potential of India’s cruise industry
- This year India is the host country for World Tourism Day
- 2019 theme: ‘Tourism and Jobs: A better future for all’
- World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC): cruise industry contributed $8.8 trillion to the global economy in 2018 with over 319 million jobs supported worldwide.
- Tourism can be a major contributor to the Indian economy given the right mix of policies and infrastructure.
- WTTC forecasts direct contribution oftravel and tourism to India’s GDP to rise by 7.1% per annum over the next decade to reach 3.9% of the total GDP.
- The total contribution of travel and tourism to employment, including jobs supported indirectly, is at 8% of total employment.
- 150,000 cruise passengers head for a global cruise every year.
- This represents just 3% of the outbound leisure market and indicates the tremendous potential of the Indian cruise industry.
- However, even as the global cruise industry has shown good growth, the leisure cruise industry in India has not shown any signs of life.
- Robust cruise infrastructure
- Positive policy decisions
- Port fees: reasonable
- Removing ousting charges
- Granting priority berthing to Indian
- cruise ships Training of human resources
Meity to launch a host of initiatives
- October 21: The Ministry of Electronics and IT is scheduled to launch
- Specialised portal for start-ups
- Updated version of BHIM app
- Indian software product registry
- Government is organising a start-up summit and various industry leaders are expected to attend it.
- The main objectives of the portal are to
- Support start-ups to reach out to mentors
- Facilitating technology resources across a gamut of incubators
Help start-ups scale from ideation to marketplace
- Diwali Home Sales
- With new launches at just 20,849 units — a third of the number seen in 2018 — this Diwali will be the seventh straight season of subdued sentiment.
- Although builders are working hard to win over customers, property sales will likely stay dull.
- The launches last year were 25% lower than those in 2017.
- Much like last year, when the ILØ&FS issue broke just before the festive season, the DHFL and PMC Bank crises could hurt.
- Last year 40 of the 50-60 bookings for a particular project were ultimately cancelled.
- By one estimate, the unsold inventory across India is still upwards of 10 lakh units valued at a staggering Rs 6 lakh crore.
- DPIIT on E-comm
- The government has asked Amazon and Flipkart to provide details of their top five sellers.
- Investments and commission agreements with vendors
- DPIIT has sent two questionnaires to the ecommerce firms, seeking details of capital structure, business models and inventory management systems.
- Amazon said it was fully compliant with the rules.
- Brick-and-mortar trade lobby groups complained that they were in violation of foreign direct investment (FDI) norms.
- DPIIT is also checking if the marketplaces are compliant with goods and services tax (GST) in letter and spirit.
- Piyush Goyal said the government would take stringent action against ecommerce companies if they are found to be violating India’s ecommerce policy.
Air India sale
- The government is planning to invite preliminary bids for 100% stake sale in Air India next month.
- Some entities have expressed interest in the national carrier.
- ₹58,000 crore debt pile
- Besides huge accumulated losses running into thousands of crores.
Paddy straw into biogas
- India’s first plant to convert paddy straw into biogas.
- Can be used as CNG in automobiles
- Bio manure produced from the plant as a byproduct will be organic and can be used to grow organic food and vegetables.
- Karnal in Haryana by 2022
- Prevent burning of crop stubble
- Main reason for pollution
- The plant will deploy special machines that will chop and bundle paddy straw for transportation to a storage.
- This storage will used through the year to production CBG.
- This unit will have the capacity to convert stubble generated from 20,000 acres of farmland in a year into gas.
- SATAT (Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation) scheme on CBG launched by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
- SATAT was launched in October 2018
- Target production of 15 million tonnes of CBG by 2023 from 5,000 plants.
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