A look at foreign investment access to the Indian market as relates to several key sectors

By Ankit Shrivastava

Jan. 25 – India has recently liberalized foreign investment regulations in many of its key sectors, opening up commodity exchanges, credit information services and aircraft maintenance operations. The foreign investment limit in public sector unit refineries has been raised from 26 percent to 49 percent and an additional sweetener is that the mandatory disinvestment clause within five years has been done away with. Continue Reading

Jan. 20 – Despite harsh weather conditions, the Arctic is becoming a global hot spot, with non-Arctic countries like China, India and Brazil pursuing “observer” status on the Arctic Council – an intergovernmental body promoting cooperation and environmental protection among countries that have territories in the Arctic area.

Experts believe that the increasing focus in the Arctic is drawn by its abundant natural resources, which will be extracted in the future if the region’s environmental conditions become friendlier and global warming melts more glaciers and sea-ice. Continue Reading

Jan. 19 – The financial crisis in the Eurozone may affect credit ratings in the Asia-Pacific region, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services recently warned.

Last Friday, the firm downgraded Italy, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus by two notches and France, Austria, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia by one notch. Germany, Finland and the Netherland’s AAA rating did not change. Experts predict that the Eurozone states may face further downgrading in the future. Continue Reading

Jan. 18 – U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner visited major Asian oil importers China and Japan last week, attempting to gain support for U.S. sanctions on Iran in response to its suspected nuclear weapons program.

On his two-day trip in Beijing, Geithner urged top Chinese authorities to sharply reduce imports of Iranian crude oil, and he informed China of a new U.S. sanction policy that would be imposed on countries which refuse to join U.S. efforts to curb Iran’s oil revenues. Continue Reading

India moves ahead of China in stock market investment access

Jan. 17 – Starting from yesterday, India has allowed foreign individual investors to purchase stocks directly in Indian companies for the first time; previously, access to Indian stocks was only permitted through institutional investors. The move widens the ability of foreign investors to take advantage of India’s booming growth and is something the financial services lobby in India has been pushing for years. Back-end industries and analysts will also get a boost as interest from international individual investors and their brokerages in India will likely be huge. Continue Reading

Global brands must look to Asia for growth as Hermes begins selling saris to India

Op-Ed Commentary: Chris Devonshire-Ellis

Jan. 16 – The British Chancellor, George Osborne, has arrived in Hong Kong for a three-day tour of Asia and will be suggesting that Britain’s businesses look beyond the battered Eurozone economy and seek trade partnerships in the Far East. He will also visit other parts of China and Japan as forecasters warn that the UK economy has already slipped into recession.

“The problem of high indebtedness in Western economies means these are challenging times for the world economy,” Osborne was quoted as saying in The Observer Sunday newspaper. “But as we look to this difficult year ahead, I want to focus on reasons to be optimistic for the future. A richer, stronger Asia is an opportunity for the world, not a threat.” Continue Reading

Jan. 13 – India has launched the initial pilot run of the Aakash tablet PC, with some 100,000 units having been delivered this week. The PC, similar in look and functionality to an iPad, has been designed to specifically cater for Indian students and the Indian Ministry of Human Resource and Development is set to purchase 10 million of them to distribute to schoolchildren in attempts to improve literacy and educational standards across the country.

Jointly developed by the Canadian company Datawind and the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan, the Aakash is being manufactured in India at plants in Cochin, Noida and Hyderabad. By the end of March an updated version tweaked from observations made during this week’s run will be launched and distributed throughout the country at a rate of 5 million a month. Continue Reading