-The Hindu parliamentary committee airs concerns over poor growth The parliament’s Standing Committee on Commerce has questioned the country’s low manufacturing growth despite initiatives such as Make In India, Startup India and FDI reforms that are now more than two years old. The committee, led by BJP MP Bhupender Yadav, had expressed concerns about manufacturing growth averaging just 1.6% in the five years till 2015-16 and a 0.5% contraction in the sector in...

-Deccan Herald New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra on Monday said the government is likely to scrap public distribution scheme (PDS) system and transfer money directly to the accounts of poor beneficiaries after getting encouraging results from Haryana and Puducherry. Modi stated this during his Monday's informal discussion with BJP MPs from Delhi, J-K, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh. According to a press statement issued on the outcome of interaction with...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Demonetisation and the subsequent push for digitisation has escalated risks relating to cyber crime and India needs to urgently upgrade its defences by setting up a cyber security commission on the lines of the Atomic Energy and Space Commissions, according to an IIT Kanpur study shared with parliament's committee on finance. Noting that the government has initiated a number of programmes to enhance the participation of...

-Business Standard Govt told to be consistent on capital infusion criteria The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has slammed the managements and statutory auditors of 12 public sector banks (PSBs) for overstating their net profit, by underestimating non-performing assets (NPAs) and under-providing for these bad assets during 2016-17. Also, there were differences in the classification of and provisioning for assets between five banks and the Reserve Bank (RBI) but as the...

-TheWire.in The negotiator’s comments were non-committal but indicated that for now, the RCEP talks have not yet moved decisively into a TRIP-plus scenario. The chief negotiator for New Zealand, at the Asia trade pact talks in Hyderabad this week, made pointed reference to TRIPS-plus (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) provisions, saying that while the TRIPS agreement on intellectual property rights was sufficient, it was up to the countries to analyse whether...