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Southern Asia News

  • India’s African safari

    INDIA, 2016/07/04 June 2016 has seen an unprecedented intensification of India’s relationship with Africa. In the initial week, Vice President Hamid Ansari visited Tunisia and Morocco. In the second week, President Pranab Mukherjee launched his whirlwind tour of Western and Southern Africa, covering Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Namibia. And, in July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa. Ever since the Third India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) in 2015, Modi has been building bridges with African nations, soliciting support for a host of multilateral initiatives. It’s as well unabashedly about business, a good example of geo-politics conference geo-economics. For instance, Ansari’s visit to Morocco and Tunisia are key, because India imports phosphate — a critical raw material for fertiliser production — from these nations. Ansari as well inaugurated an India-Morocco Chamber of Commerce during his trip to Rabat.
  • Indian central bank chief to step down in surprise move

    INDIA, 2016/06/20 India’s “rock star” central bank governor Raghuram Rajan, feted by foreign investors but under pressure from political opponents at home, stunned government officials and colleagues on Saturday by announcing he would step down next just one three-year term. Rajan, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is held in high esteem by policymakers and investors at home and abroad for overhauling the way the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) operates.
  • Bangalore, India gives Seychelles a special welcome

    INDIA, 2016/06/12 The Seychelles Tourism Industry were in India last week on what they called a Tourism Promotional Roadshow that took them to Chennai and as well to Bangalore. This Promotional Roadshow was a followup to similar events but a year ago in Delhi and Mumbai and the aim of this drive into India was for the tropical islands of the Seychelles to increase its visibility in order to remain relevant as a holiday option for the Indian holiday makers.
  • Turquoise waters of the Maldives captures everyone’s attention

    MALDIVES, 2016/05/15 There is no denying it, the pristine turquoise waters of the Maldives captures everyone’s attention. But for a lot of, it is all about what is found in the waters in the Maldives that have them swimming. With healthy coral and a critical abundance of marine life such as manta rays, eagle rays and a variety of sharks that includes whale sharks, scuba divers are flocking to feast their eyes on the underwater playground that some are very lucky to call home.
  • IndiGo airlines has terminated two of its ground staff

    INDIA, 2016/05/15 IndiGo airlines has terminated two of its ground staff besides suspending three additional employees at the Srinagar airport for a week over security breach last month. The security breach at Srinagar Airport took place on April 1 at the same time as a senior AAI official allegedly misused his position and travelled on a boarding card of his subordinate. An IndiGo spokesperson confirmed the incident and termination of two of the airlines-employees. Sources, however, said that besides sacking the two employees on Friday, the Gurgaon-based budget carrier has as well suspended three ground staff employees for seven days and issued them "warning letters" for "negligence" next investigations found multiple security breaches by a high-ranking security official at the aerodrome.
  • Oil & Gas Global powers are realigning on the back of oil – and India is driving that realignment

    INDIA, 2016/04/27 Ahead of 2040, as India’s people continues growing and its economy expands to additional than five-times its current size, the country is to lead the surge in world request for energy. A cross-country surge in energy request and new regulations aimed at improving the oil and gas sector are to position India as a world bright spot for energy firms worldwide amid an increasingly complex scenario. And Oil and Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has the task of reforming India’s natural resources policies and implementing them in a equitable manner to win the confidence of the world industry The present and rather sustained crash in world crude prices is due to oversupply – at the same time as producers are taking out additional than world request. In 2014, at the same time as prices were hovering above $100 a barrel, producers were extracting approximately 90 million barrels a day and the world request was around 93 million barrels. And the Indian economy was thriving in that false sense of security. With oil being a finite commodity, expectations of prices rising beyond the $200 dollar/barrel were rife. But factors the industry did not take into account include the rise of new technologies, energy efficiency due to public discourse and behavior change, and new oil and gas producing nations coming through. The same producers are extracting additional than 96 million barrels of oil daily, while world request is around 94-95 million barrels a day. As a result, prices have crashed to historic lows of around $30-$40 a barrel.
  • The privatization of Pakistan’s power sector Privatization and U.S. support put Pakistan on track towards 50,000 MW goal

    PAKISTAN, 2016/04/09 Pakistan’s power sector has hampered increase for a lot of years. The combination of new government initiatives, a revitalized private energy sector and cooperation with international partners – namely the U.S. – is going a long way to not only transaction with the issues that Pakistan faces, but as well to make it one of the majority dynamic and geopolitically significant energy players in the world One of the major challenges Pakistan’s economy faces today is power supply. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government has said that it plans to improve Pakistan’s power sector through reform and investment to boost increase, and hopes to end chronic power shortages that have crippled the economy for years. So, it has made real strides to tackle this issue chief on.
  • Make in India Success lies in implementation

    INDIA, 2016/04/07 The government’s flagship ‘Make in India’ initiative encourages foreign companies to manufacture their products in India. If the Make in India Week, which took place in February 2016 in Mumbai, is an indication to go by, launched on September 25, 2014, again the initiative is slowly but surely moving in the right direction. Mumbai was in a frenzy during the Make in India week. The colorful and ubiquitous Make in India logo greeted people everywhere they went. Clearly, the marketing push was bang on the buck – hoardings, advertisements, radio talks, boardroom-to-hotel-lobby conversations, it was all there.
  • Pakistanis hunt militants behind blast that killed at least 70

    PAKISTAN, 2016/04/04
  • India’s Economic Generosity Can Transform South Asia

    INDIA, 2016/03/20 It is often suggested that the only way out of an over-zealous competitive world order that is attended by threatening rivalries and lack of trust is to embed the nations in a relationship of economic interdependence. Appearing to be the best bet in a world order that is connected by boundary-transcending technologies, but where national rivalries are still rife, fostering of economic cooperation between nations can help pacify if not eliminate suspicion and mistrust that have often triggered conflicts between and within nations. Attesting to the harms that unchecked rivalries have the potential of creating, India, which shares its territorial and maritime boundaries with almost all the other South Asian nations, it has realized that the dividends accruing out of economic cooperation can outweigh the ills of political animosity that pervades the region at different levels.