Minimum Wages hiked

National War Memorial

Virar-Vasai-Panvel two-way corridor cleared

The NITI Aayog has cleared the biggest railway project in Mumbai’s suburban network – the Virar-Vasai-Panvel line. The Rs.9,356-crore railway project will be the single-largest investment in a standalone project in Mumbai.
At 70.14 km, the two-line corridor will be longer than the Churchgate-Virar, CST-Panvel and CST-Kalyan routes. The size of this project can be gauged from the fact that, in sheer size, it is 85% of the recently-cleared Rs.10,947-crore Mumbai Urban Transport Project phase 3 – the latter being an umbrella plan comprising several projects across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
It will be a 50:50 partnership project between the state government and the Railways, and the chances of local civic bodies and private firms being brought in as stakeholders are also possible, said officials.
The NITI Aayog appraisal note now sets the project up for a final assessment by the Railway Board and the final approval by the Prime Minister-chaired Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs (CCEA), said officials.
Officials said that the line had the potential to add a completely new urban agglomeration between Virar and Panvel. This agglomeration, officials said, had the capability to rival the growth of Navi Mumbai as a new city, built through the 1980s and early 1990s.
“It has the potential to create a new urban set-up in the Bhiwandi, Kharbao, Kalamboli, Diva and Panvel areas. If work begins now, it could be a reality over the next decade,” said a senior railway official. These are areas which already have a robust presence of warehouses and godowns but the lack of a full-fledged suburban corridor has stifled the growth of much-needed residential colonies.
“The hinterland of big stations on Western Railway and Central Railway are saturated when it comes to new urban complexes,” said an official.
Incidentally, the Railways, in its earlier budgets, has announced warehousing hubs in Bhiwandi, Kharbao and train maintenance and stabling facilities in Kalamboli. “All these projects will boost trading and manufacturing business in the area and the demand for housing to cater to these industries will also come up. A suburban corridor is essential to spur this growth,” said the official.

Jio's Datagiri

RIL's second coming in telecom was always expected to be disruptive, but chairman Mukesh Ambani still managed to stun customers and competitors alike with an announcement that Reliance Jio would offer free voice calls and dirt-cheap 4G data services on its network. The statement could sound the death-knell for voice tariffs and prove a gamechanger for the industry .
“The era of paying for voice calls is ending,“ Ambani told shareholders at the Reliance Industries AGM. “From September 5, India will change forever,“ he said, announcing the date of Jio's formal launch. Jio's data packages are priced at nearly one-fifth of what is charged by existing mobile operators. “We Indians have come to appreciate and applaud Gandhigiri. Now we can all do datagiri, which is an opportunity for every Indian to do unlimited good things with unlimited data,“ he said.
Ambani's tariff offerings, spread across 10 main plans, promise data prices as low as Rs 50 per GB against the average Rs 250 per GB charged by incumbents. He said this could go down to as low as Rs 25 for those who would use it extensively . “We have price points starting from Rs 19 for the occasional data user, to a monthly Rs 149 plan for the light data user, all the way up to a monthly Rs 4,999 plan for the heaviest data user. I believe these are the absolute lowest data rates anywhere in the world,“ he said. Roaming charges would also be abandoned, he said, adding that porting into Jio can begin with the launch of commercial services.
If the aim was to create shock and awe in the minds of investors and rivals, Ambani was bang on. During his 45-minute speech, the combined market value of Airtel, Idea and RCom fell by around Rs 13,000 crore.RIL stock also dipped by nearly 3% over concerns relating to execution risks and losses in the initial months. One of the clinchers for the Jio service, which bundles a host of content packages such as movies, TV programmes and magazines, has been a free data service package that is valid till the end of the year. But the freebie did not find resonance with rivals as industry lobby COAI termed it “predatory pricing“ to undercut competitors.
The RIL chief, however, said the “welcome offer“ would help the company iron out defects in the network. Reliance Jio has been blaming rivals for not providing sufficient interconnect points to make uninterrupted calls, something Ambani reiterated in his speech on Thursday when he asked competitors not to “misuse their market power by creating unfair hurdles“.
Ambani had entered the telecom business with the same chutzpah when he launched Reliance Infocomm (now Reliance Communications) in 2002. However, he had to relinquish the telecom business to younger sibling Anil as part of the family settlement to split the Reliance empire in 2005.But he always nurtured a desire to return to the cut-throat telecom sector. Ambani re-entered the telecom sector after the ending of the non-compete agreement with Anil in 2010. In fact, soon after the cancellation, he snapped up Infotel for Rs 4,800 crore, which had just acquired 4G spectrum.
As in 2002, affordable data is the backbone of Ambani's grand plans, which has seen him take a bet of nearly Rs 1.34 lakh crore to set up a massive network built across telecom towers and fibre optics.The build-up to Jio's launch has already seen deep tariff cuts being announced by existing players, and Thursday's announcement will force rival telcos to sweeten the deal for consumers.
But his return to telecom has been marked by controversies. In the run-up to the launch, Ambani had been accused by existing telcos of receiving undue favours from regulator Trai, including carrying out “unauthorized commercial operations“ during the test phase. Unfazed, Ambani appeared excited when he unveiled the mega plans to shareholders and the audience that included mother Kokilaben, wife Nita (also a board member of Reliance) and children Akash, Isha (both board members of Reliance Jio) and Anant. “I start with the newest and youngest member of the Reliance family­ Jio,“ he said.
Ambani sought to drive home the message that his service was superior to that provided by existing networks. “Most legacy telecom providers have not built their networks for data or the internet. They have built their network to support voice and SMS...they have had to retrofit their legacy networks to deal with data and IP as an afterthought,“ he told the packed audience at the Birla Matoshri Auditorium. “As they are confronted with the explosion of data usage, legacy telcos have been trying to push this `unnatural act' to its breaking point,“ he said, in an apparent reference to nagging issues of call drops and poor broadband speeds experienced with most of the Indian te lecom operators. He cited ambitious numbers for his fledgling business and asked his team to corner 100 million subscribers in a record period. However, market analysts said his plans may be a little far-fetched in present circumstances as Reliance Jio is a “4G only“ service and cannot be availed of by the large majority of users who use 2G or 3G phones.

Goa 15th state to ratify GST bill

Goa became the 15th state to ratify the goods and services tax (GST) constitutional amendment bill passed by Parliament.
This means the bill is one short of the 16 states that need to ratify it before it can be sent for presidential assent.
The 40-member Goa legislative assembly passed the 122nd constitutional amendment bill by voice vote, an official at the Goa secretariat said.
In the process, Goa became the seventh BJP-ruled state to ratify the bill.
Addressing the assembly, Goa chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar said GST will benefit Goa as it is largely a consumer state driven by revenues from tourism and the services sector. “Goa stands to benefit from GST introduction as it is a tourism-driven and consuming state. GST will also help the state improve its manufacturing sector as the devolution from the centre will be invested in building the necessary infrastructure,” he added.

Eight Core Industries Clock Slower Growth in July

India's infrastructure sector growth moderated in July from the month before, marking a slow start to the second quarter of the fiscal after a moderate first quarter.
The core sector index, which measures output of eight infrastructure sectors, was up 3.2% in July compared with a 5.2% rise in June.
These sectors have a 38% weight in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), suggesting a weaker industrial growth in July. The IIP numbers for July will be released on September 12.
The economy grew 7.1% in the first quarter ended June, down from 7.9% growth in fourth quarter of FY16.
However, the fiscal so far has been better than last year. April-July core sector growth is at 4.9% compared with 2.2% at same point last year. The slowdown in July was due to a broad-based moderation except for refinery output that rose at 13.7%. Coal output growth fell to 5.1% from 12% in June while cement production rose only 1.4% in July compared with 10.3% rise in June, both impacted by the monsoon rains.
Crude oil and steel production declined in July by 1.8% and 0.5%, respectively.Natural gas production increased after four months of decline and was up 3.3% in the month. Electricity generation rose 1.6%, its slowest in eight months.

Q1 GDP Growth slows

India's economy grew at its slowest pace in five quarters in the April-June period, falling below expectations amid sluggish investment and farm output. That dents the prospects of hitting the 8% mark for the full financial year but the government is hopeful that a bountiful monsoon and increased pay and pensions along with various structural reforms could still take growth closer to that figure.
Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 7.1% in the first quarter, reaffirming India's position as the world's fastest-growing major economy , but sharply lower than 7.9% in the January-March period, data released by the statistics office showed.
A survey of economists had seen June quarter growth at a median 7.4%.
GDP growth in FY16 was 7.6%, ahead of China, while it grew 7.5% in the first quarter last year.
India needs to grow at 8% and more for several years in order to generate jobs, raise incomes and lift millions out of poverty.The latest GDP numbers will put pressure on Urjit Patel, who succeeds Raghuram Rajan as Reserve Bank of India governor next month, over whether to raise interest rates in the October 4 monetary policy announcement amid possible inflationary pressures.
Gross value added (GVA), which is adjusted for subsidies and taxes to arrive at GDP, grew at an improved 7.3%, almost matching 7.4% in the previous quarter, giving the numbers some lustre.
The April-July fiscal deficit was at 73.7% of Budget estimates, only slightly higher than 69.3% at the same time last year.
Some so-called high-speed indicators suggest an improvement in the coming months. The purchasing managers' index for both services and manufacturing inched up in July , and car sales are likely to continue to grow at over 10%.Rajan said earlier this week that a rate cut was possible if inflation slows. Consumer inflation crossed 6% in July , breaching the limits set by the monetary policy framework -4% for the next five years with a 2 percentage point margin on either side.

Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), a measure of investment, fell 3.1% in real terms in the April-June quarter, suggesting private investment sentiment remains weak. Based on current prices, this measure declined 1.1%, suggesting that the government's efforts to revive stalled projects, clean up banks and boost public investment have not yet galvanised private investment.
Consumption is driving the economy in the absence of investment.