QBiz: India Opposes WTO Talks, Xi Pledges Billions For Silk Road

Here are the important business stories from the previous day.

Image used for representational purpose. (Photo: iStock)

1. India Opposes Investment Facilitation Talks at WTO

India will continue to oppose talks on a proposed investment facilitation agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO), senior government sources say. A demand to put the topic on the official agenda for the December ministerial conference in Argentina was opposed by India earlier this week.

The government feels allowing such a discussion at the WTO would be akin to handing over policy space to decide on things such as the foreign direct investment norms and arbitration clauses.

(Source: Business Standard)

2. GST Panel Works out Rates for 6,000 Items

Ahead of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting in Srinagar from Thursday, the Centre and states seem to have arrived at a consensus on the rates for at least 6,000 items.  The fitment of contentious items such as soaps, cosmetics, coconut oil and cars would be finalised in a meeting of the state and central officials on Monday and Wednesday.

“The committee has looked into each and every product and their excise and VAT (value-added tax) rates across the country. Rates have been finalised for 70-75 per cent of the total items.

(Source: Business Standard)

3. Wal-Mart Pushing Hard to Catch Amazon in E-Commerce

Wal-Mart Stores, the 800-pound gorilla of retail, is running hard to catch up in an increasingly crucial segment where it is neither the biggest nor the best: e-commerce. The company, founded in 1962 by Sam Walton, has been gobbling up smaller and niche players in e-commerce in an effort to reach online shopping market leader Amazon.

Whether those efforts are paying off will be a focal point when Wal-Mart Stores reports quarterly earnings on Thursday. A bit more than half of all funds spent online in the United States now goes to Amazon, according to the bank Macquarie.

(Source: The Financial Express)

4. Chinese Prez Pledges Billions of Dollars for New Silk Road

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday pledged to pump billions of dollars into the new Silk Road initiative as he described his signature foreign policy push as inclusive, one that should not be held hostage to old rivalries and power games.

Xi pledged a major funding boost to the ambitious project, including an extra 100 billion yuan ($14.50 billion) into the existing Silk Road Fund, 380 billion yuan in loans from two policy banks and 60 billion yuan in aid to developing countries and international bodies in countries along the new trade routes. Xi said China would encourage financial institutions to expand their overseas yuan fund businesses to the tune of 300 billion yuan.

(Source: Hindustan Times)

5. Zomato in Talks to Buy Delivery Start-Up Runnr in $20 Million Deal

Food-technology start-up Zomato Media Pvt Ltd is in advanced talks to acquire delivery start-up Runnr (Carthero Technologies Pvt Ltd) in a move that will help Zomato strengthen its food delivery business, according to two people aware of the development.

The deal is likely to give Zomato a captive fleet of delivery personnel, a model similar to its rival Swiggy (Bundl Technologies Pvt Ltd). While the final contours of the transaction are yet to be finalised, Zomato is likely to buy Runnr in an all-stock deal for about $20 million, said one of the two people cited above, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

(Source: Livemint)

6. WPI Revision to 2011-12 Base Calls for New GDP Estimates: Pronab Sen

The government will have to come out with new GDP estimates with a 2011-12 base since it has revised the index to capture wholesale inflation, former chairman of the National Statistical Commission Pronab Sen has said.

This is so because the wholesale price index is used as a deflator for many sectors of the economy for estimating real GDP by the statistics office. The earlier GDP estimates were based on inflation calculated on a 2004-05 base.

(Source: The Economic Times)

7. Idea Cellular Posts Lower-Than-Estimated Loss In Q4

Idea Cellular Ltd reported a loss for the second straight quarter as its spectrum-related costs rose and revenue fell due to tariff cuts to counter free services by new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.

The Kumar Mangalam Birla-led company reported a net loss of Rs 327.7 crore in the three months ended March compared to a net profit of Rs 451.7 a year ago, according to its filing to the stock exchanges. The loss was, however, less than half of the consensus estimate of analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

(Source: BloombergQuint)

8. Adani Group's Renewable Energy Arm May Raise $200 Million

Adani Group’s renewable energy arm is seeking to raise external equity capital after having pumped in millions of dollars of its own money to build a pipeline of projects worth over 2 gigawatts (GW), two people aware of the development said.

The proposed fundraising could see Adani’s renewable arm – Adani Green Energy Ltd – raise as much as $200 million (about Rs 1,300 crore), said one of the two people cited above, requesting anonymity, as the talks are private.

(Source: Livemint)

9. Trai Asks Telecom Department to 'Revisit' Right of Way Rules

The telecom regulator has asked the telecom department (DoT) to ‘revisit’ its Right of Way (RoW) rules whose terms imply tower companies such as Bharti Infratel, Indus Towers and American Tower Corp are excluded from seeking benefits under the rules. It warned that such an exclusion would lead to a slowdown in tower installations, hurting quality of services.

“Exclusion of IP-1s (infrastructure providers) from the said (RoW) rrules will not only affect provisioning of duct and optical fibre cable (OFC) but will also result in slowdown of tower installation,” Sudhir Gupta, secretary at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), wrote in a recent letter to the DoT secretary.

(Source: The Economic Times)