The Indian cleantech sector is broadly divided into three areas: clean energy, clean water and sustainable agriculture. Energy includes both generation and efficiency management companies while water has companies that are into filtration, desalination and conservation.Sustainable agriculture involves the use of hybrid seeds, organic farming practices, cleaner pesticides and fertilisers. One of the early entrants in the Indian cleantech space was Pune-headquartered Praj Industries, which began in 1984 by offering technology, design and machinery to turn molasses (generated during sugar production) into alcohol for biofuels.
That’s been the experience of STEPS or Sustainable Technologies and Environmental Projects, another cleantech company founded by T Raghvendra Rao, an oil and gas sector veteran. It has developed technology to turn waste plastic into diesel and petrol, and is in final stages of negotiations to install its units in companies within India as well as in Spain, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.
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In wake of the recent fall in international prices of commodities and with a view to safeguard interests of domestic producers, the Indian government has announced certain changes in customs duty rates effective from Nov 18.The government has withdrawn full exemption of customs duty on few industrial and agricultural commodities. Iron and steel items such as pig iron, spiegeleisen, semi-finished products, flat products and long products are now subject to a basic custom duty of 5 percent ad valorem. It has also withdrawn customs duty granted on crude soybean.
Consequently, crude soybean oil will be subject to a basic customs duty of percent ad valorem. There is no change in the import duty on refined soybean oil.
Technorati Tags: edible oil
The global recessionary environment does little to dampen India’s domestic demand for goods and services.
Business Standard
Playing a major role in dispelling the financial gloom in the Asia-Pacific region, India will record an economic growth rate of 7.3-7.8 per cent in 2008, global rating agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P) said today.“Factors such as intraregional trade, supportive policymaking, and still-robust forecasts for China and India will help the region navigate the global storm,” said the S&P ‘Asia Pacific Market Outlook’ report.
It said growth rate is likely to be lower at 6.5-7.0 per cent in 2009, compared to 7.3-7.8 per cent this year.
Further, the report highlighted that India and China, the region’s main growth drivers will record highest growth in the region and help the APAC economy to grow.
“That regional growth drivers such as strong domestic demand in China and India and the supportive monetary policy stances of the regions governments will enable most economies to experience positive, albeit slowing, growth in 2009,” said the report.
The countries of Latin America and the
Caribbean need billions of dollars to deal with the economic impact of
climate change — funding that is not easily found on the international
market. Some of the immediate effects of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean are a 0.1 degree Celsius rise in temperature over the last decade, exceptionally strong hurricanes, flooding in southern Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and drought in Chile, southwestern Argentina and Peru.The long-term effects in the region, according to the World Bank report, include the disappearance of tropical glaciers, the expansion of tropical diseases, the destruction of biodiversity and ecosystems like coral reefs and rainforest, a drop in agricultural production and the devastation of coastal infrastructure.
Agricultural productivity could fall by 12 to 50 percent by 2010 in South America, depending on the severity of climate change. In Mexico, between 30 to 85 percent of farms could experience a near total loss of economic productivity.
Latin America and the Caribbean have more than 33 percent of the world’s total forest biomass and 65 percent of all tropical forest biomass. The region accounts for 12 percent of global agricultural exports and three percent of jobs in the agricultural sector.
- Comarow On Quality (usnews.com)
In January, Serigraph Inc., a West Bend, Wis., manufacturer, will become the first U.S. company of any size to embrace medical travel or medical tourism, offering employees the option of having certain nonemergency operations, such as joint replacement, in India. The company will pay all expenses, including travel and lodging for a companion. The incentive for employees is that they don’t have to pay a deductible—typically $1,000 to $5,000—or the hospital copay, which would be 10 percent to 20 percent of the charges.Last May, I went to India and Singapore to explore the trend of growing numbers of under- and uninsured Americans heading to both places and other foreign climes to take advantage of package prices for hip replacement, heart valve repair, spinal surgery, and other elective procedures that can be 80 percent less than the sums charged by U.S. hospitals. To cite one expensive example, heart bypass surgery can easily run up a $70,000 to $133,000 bill at a U.S. center, compared with an average of $7,000 at Indian hospitals catering to westerners. An uninsured patient I interviewed extensively in India paid a total of about $25,000 to have both hips and one knee replaced, including airfare and incidentals. He easily could have paid more than $125,000 at a U.S. hospital. And there are plenty of similar cases of huge price differences.
Technorati Tags: medical tourism
India’s Future group bets on in-house brands for growth
- Retailing-Services-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times
Future Group, the country’s largest retailer, announced that it targets to earn Rs 10,000 crore [US $2bn] from the business of its own brands in
FMCG, household consumer durable and electronics and apparel categories by 2012.“Having achieved stupendous success in some of our consumer brands, such as Tasty Treat, Fresh & Pure, DJ&C, Koreo, we felt that it was the right time to extend it to broader categories such as health & beauty, dairy, apparel, accessories etc. Hence, we have drawn up an ambitious plan of achieving Rs 10,000 crore in the next four to five years. Through our consumer brands, we will be able to offer our consumers, best of the products at much more reasonable prices,” Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani said.
The European Commission announced on Nov. 11 that talks for a trade pact between the EU and the Andean Community were officially over.E.U. External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Walder said that last-ditch efforts to forge a region-to-region agreement had failed, and that it was moving ahead with separate agreements with Colombia and Peru.
Since negotiations for the trade pact began in June 2007, Andean Community members Bolivia and Ecuador – both staunch opponents of free trade agreements – had opposed the pace and scope of the future pact, vying instead for individual stipulations to protect their smaller and developing markets compared with Peru and Colombia.
Peru and Colombia, both of which have signed free trade agreements with the United States and are in the process of pursuing other agreements with several countries, especially in Asia, pushed for a speedy conclusion to the talks, with our without their fellow Andean Community members.
Technorati Tags: trade
India International Trade Fair turning focus on B2B
India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) is making a serious bid to convert its flagship global trade fair from a consumer-oriented thrust to a business-to-business (B2B) fair largely because Indian industry is maturing, the Chairman & Managing Director, Dr Sheela Bhide, said today.In an interview to Business Line here as the 28th India International Trade Fair, an annual event showcasing India’s development, is under way, Dr Bhide said that ITPO is focusing on B2B model since Indian industry is looking for “a platform for their products and they are not always interested to sell across the counter”.
That is why, prompted by the success of the launch of international business lounge last year, ITPO is hosting a domestic business lounge for Indian companies to interact with other companies/clients for securing orders and business propositions during the course of the two-week fair at Pragati Maidan this time around, she said.
Stating that IIFT has twin objectives, she said foremost, it showcases the development story to its people and foreign visitors and development of every State with a State pavilion in the exhibition.
The second objective is commercial and it is becoming quite an international fair for the simple reason that more international companies are participating.
Technorati Tags: trade
California leads fight against climate change on global level
This is like saying ‘Artillery crew leads fight against gunshot wounds’.
California leading the fight is a little rich since it consumes more fuel than India
largely because of its auto-centric transportation system.
Instead of California leading the charge, maybe India should given its favorable position on emissions per capita and energy intensity per capita (See graph above).
In the long line of many others preaching the global warming gospel, but not practicing it.
California formally moved to spread its can-do global warming gospel around the world, signing a declaration Wednesday with 11 other U.S. states and provinces or states in five other countries to help them slash their greenhouse gas emissions.[S]uccess is far from assured as industrial nations, which have caused much of the world’s global warming, battle with fast-growing developing nations such as China to determine who should cut emissions.
Regional leaders signing Wednesday’s declaration said they would develop strategies for high-polluting industries in an effort to influence the talks. The signers included 12 U.S. governors and state or provincial representatives from Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and India.
China, India, Brazil and other fast-developing nations have resisted caps on their emissions.
“The industrial countries that have been spewing out the most greenhouse gases have a higher responsibility to act,” said Gov. Ana Julia de Vasconcelos Carpa of the Brazilian state of Para.
Technorati Tags: climate change, global warming
Selling Mexican food in India is a no-brainer. Last year, in Bangalore, I bought taco shells and stuffing imported from Sweden! Grupo Bimbo, where are you?
Mexican operators like Taco Inn, Coco Express, El Fogoncito and El Tizoncito should follow Taco Bell’s foodsteps. It is still early days.
Yum Brands Bets on Taco Bell To Win Over Customers Overseas – WSJ.com
To expand Taco Bell, which has been the company’s most profitable U.S. brand, Yum plans to put the chain in Spain by the beginning of next year and in India by April. Right now, there are about 240 Taco Bells in 10 countries outside the U.S., with the majority in Canada and Puerto Rico.The challenge will be going to countries where Mexican food isn’t popular and persuading customers to try the Americanized version sold at Taco Bell (!!!). Mr. Novak says the lack of authenticity in the chain’s Mexican cuisine is an advantage. “It owns its own category,” he says.
Other American food companies are trying to export Mexican food to other countries. General Mills Inc. sells its Old El Paso brand in about 20 countries.
Technorati Tags: mexican food
