While the government may be finding it difficult to get its FDI in multi-brand retail pass the test of Parliament, India Inc has been pledging huge investments in wholesale and retail trade abroad, including in countries like the US and the UK.   In the 2010-11 fiscal, investments of Indian companies in wholesale and retail trade overseas went up 78% as compared to the previous year - up from $1,052 million in...

-PTI   The United Nations has warned that the world is on the brink of another recession, projecting that global economic growth will slow down further in 2012 and even emerging powerhouses like India and China, which led the recovery last time, will get bogged down.  The UN 'World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012' report has cut the global growth forecast for next year to 2.6 per cent from 4 per cent in...

Has India done a China to its trade partners? Against huge opposition and popular discontent over the years, the Cabinet last week cleared 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail and allowed 100 per cent FDI in single-brand retail. The move appears crafty in that it tries to change the perception of a reform impasse in the government while simultaneously aiding India’s negotiators to meet their peers...

The 11th five-year plan promised the nation “inclusive growth”. It marked a departure from the earlier official position that the “benefits of growth” would automatically “trickle down” to the poor, and that if growth was not actually benefiting the poor, then the reason lay in its not being high enough. The 11th plan, by contrast, conceded that the “benefits of growth” did not automatically “trickle down”, but argued that growth...

-The Times of India Promotion of organized retail and contract farming to improve farm production and modernize the agriculture supply chain as well as direct marketing initiatives are among the highlights of the report on consumer affairs prepared by a group of chief ministers chaired by Gujarat CM Narendra Modi.  In a report submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March, the committee headed by Modi prioritized reducing farm gate to retail...