สรุปข่าวเศรษฐกิจอินเดียประจำวันที่ 7 กุมภาพันธ์ 2557

India to double Indian Foreign Services cadre posts

With India's global image taking a beating in recent years, the Manmohan Singh government has decided to change the country's flailing 21st century narrative by setting in motion a strategy to double the strength of the country's diplomatic corps - the Indian Foreign Services - in order to engage more pro-actively with the world. India has just 845 diplomats representing a population of 1.2 billion through 180 missions and consulates overseas, which according to former minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor is the 'smallest diplomatic corps of any major country,' including most emerging economies and the BRICS nations. At a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month with influential global Indians, Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid gave an assurance that the government is doubling the strength of the Indian Foreign Services in the next few years.  The assurance reflects fresh thinking in the UPA administration that had earlier diluted a 2008 plan moved by the foreign ministry to double the IFS cadre strength. At the time, the cabinet had decided to expand the foreign services' top brass by just 320 people, at a painstakingly slow pace of 32 new inductees each year over a ten-year period. India's diplomatic cadre strength looks especially unflattering when compared with some of its emerging markets or BRICS peers and downright puny when compared with developed nations such as the US or France.

(Source: Economic Times)

Liberal face of defence procurement policy lures slew of Indian companies

The liberal face of defence procurement procedure 2013 — stressing on ‘Buy’ (Indian) and ‘Buy and Make’ (Indian) categories of acquisition — has encouraged a slew of Indian companies from varied backgrounds to enter the area of defence production. JK Group, Kalyani Group, L&T, and Tata Group, among others, have all lined up business strategies around areas of defence production, including design and development. Business conglomerate JK Group on Thursday announced the acquisition of a majority stake in Deepti Electronics & Electro-Optics (DELOPT), a Bangalore-based company manufacturing defence electronics, avionics and electro-optics, through its group company Global Strategic Technologies (GST). Pune-based engineering and technology focused Kalyani Group is intensifying its efforts to address requirements of Indian defence sector while Bharat Electronics (BEL) has signed an MoU with US-based Textron Systems Corporation for providing the Textron Systems MicroObserver Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) system to Indian security agencies. Baba N Kalyani, chairman of Kalyani Group, said the group has invested sizeable resources to develop a wide range of products and technological capabilities to manufacture various critical items of defence systems, equipment and components.

(Source: Financial Express)

Visa-on-arrival: Travel companies see tourists doubling

With the government planning to extend the visa-on-arrival facility to tourists from 180 countries, travel companies can’t help but smile at business prospects. The decision to ease visa processes through electronic travel authorisation follows years of lobbying by tourism companies. While implementation of the move will take about seven months, companies are expecting the number of inbound tourist to double in the next couple of years. “One of the reasons why we were lagging behind countries such as Thailand and Singapore in tourist numbers was our visa regime. We are going to go all out to promote this to international travellers,” said Prashant Narayan, senior vice-president and head (inbound leisure travel) Thomas Cook India. Travel companies plan to announce the development with much fanfare at the Internationale Tourismus Börse in Berlin next month. Amid the rejoicing, some feel India might not actually walk its talk of being generous in granting visas. “This discussion has been underway for very long, but after the elections, one may take a relook at the infrastructure and security hurdles that the move may pose. Also, reciprocity issues with countries will come into play,” said a bureaucrat. A source said “it might be a long haul” before the decision is implemented in entirety. To turn its plan into reality, the government plans to get a few things right between now and September. Apart from the requirement of about 2,000 trained persons, the home ministry has also stressed the need to set up a secure payment gateway for facilitating visa fee transactions online. Also, the Centre has to ramp up airport infrastructure across key cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkata.Travel firms have been reeling under the slowdown, which led to slow growth in foreign tourist arrivals. As a result, most firms have invested in promoting the domestic tourism market, which continues to thrive. “This opens up many markets for firms. For long, tourists have complained about the expensive and time-consuming visa processes. This will give us at least 50 per cent growth in tourist numbers,” said Subhash Goyal, president, Indian Association of Tour Operators.

(Source: Business Standard)

Fat profit margins in Indian market a big lure for MNCs

For multinational companies, the bigger lure to invest in India seems to be a fatter profit margin than the size or other opportunities offered by the market. While global giants dwarf their Indian rivals in terms of size, turnover, profits and valuations in almost all sectors, the margins or profitability of local players are far more superior. Analysts cite lower costs on labour, raw material and taxes in India for the better margins. While profitability is enticing, they say the MNCs do consider India's growth potential as well while investing here. With a population of over 1.2 billion that is still growing, India remains a big consumption story and can be sustainable even in recession. Analysts expect the big disparity in other areas - such as size, turnover and profits - also to slowly start disappearing. India has huge talent. The need of the hour is to have proper policies, flexibility, infusion of new ideas and innovative work practices and a more dedicated approach towards these companies. In fact, Indian companies are already venturing abroad. Companies such as TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Tata Motors, Tata, Steeland and Hindalco have made major foreign acquisitions. They are also fast establishing global presence in terms of operations and brand, says analysts. India is growing faster than many of the emerging and developed countries and the gap between Indian and foreign will reduce gradually. However, for that, Indian companies will have to spend more and more on R&D

(Source: Economic Times)

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