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Dutch Dy.PM: Netherlands to relax visa rules for Indians
New Delhi: The Netherlands has said that it is willing to relax visa regime for Indian knowledge workers since the Dutch economy would significantly benefit from the professional prowess and the global brand that India has built in the area of services.

"We have the political will to put in place a relaxed visa regime for the knowledge workers. The bureaucratic resistance will also soon disappear," Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, deputy prime minister and minister for economic affairs of the Netherlands told reporters after his meeting with Mr Kamal Nath, commerce and industry minister.

Kamal Nath said that he has taken up the issue of visa with the Dutch minister since the Indian companies engaged in services and other professional business find it difficult to carry out the onsite jobs.

On the issue of India's position on agriculture in the WTO negotiations, Brinkhorst said that EU was willing to move forward in this sticky area provided there was simultaneous progress on NAMA (Non Agriculture Market Access) and services.

The Netherlands has also shown interest in further promoting trade and economic ties with India which grew by 25 per cent to 2.27 billion dollar in 2004-05 with India's exports increasing by about 18 per cent and the Dutch imports by about 42 per cent.

The top five export items to Netherlands are readymade garments cotton including accessories, petroleum products, electronic goods, transport equipments and drugs and pharmaceuticals. The top five import items from Netherlands are organic chemicals, machinery, electronic goods, artificial resins/plastic materials and transport equipments.

The Netherlands now ranks fourth in the list of countries in terms of cumulative Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows into India during the period August 2001 to June 2005 with inflows amounting to 1,930.64 million dollar. Earlier it was sixth in 2004.
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GDP growth scaled up to 7-7.5 per cent
Mumbai: The RBI has revised its projected GDP growth for 2005-06 to be in the range of 7-7.5 per cent from the earlier projection of 7 per cent based on the current assessment of a pick-up in agricultural output and in the momentum in industrial and service sectors.

RBI also expected that the kharif output would register an increase over the previous year's level. In addition, the improvement in water storage levels over the previous year augurs well for the outlook on rabi production, the bank said while releasing the credit policy.
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National Disaster Response Force to be deployed soon
Chennai: A National Disaster Response Force is being set up which will tackle situations arising from different types of disasters with the state-of-the-art gadgets.

The force would comprise of eight battalions from the Central Reserve Police Force, Central Industrial Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and the Border Security Force, and would be positioned at eight locations in different parts of the country. There would be 15 regional response centres.

The Prime Minister would head the Force.
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India to get 650 tonnes of onions from Pakistan
New Delhi: India will receive 650 tonnes of onions from Pakistan and another 2,000 tonnes from China by the weekend, according to Alok Ranjan, managing director of the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED).

He said the consignment from Pakistan will arrive within this week by Samjhauta Express ahead of the Diwali festival, while the consignment from China will take another two weeks.

Pakistan is offering onions at a high price of US$260 a tonne, while the order from China has been booked at US$240 a tonne.
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Gold prices up as festive season approaches
New Delhi: Gold prices have shot up on the bullion market as demand by stockists and retail customers have gone up. Gold yesterday closed higher by Rs30 at Rs6,900 per ten grams.
The upsurge was further supported on reports that the metal in overseas markets climbed up on funds buying.

Standard gold and ornaments gained Rs30 each at Rs6,900 and Rs6,750 per ten grams respectively. Sovereign also moved up by Rs25 at Rs5,525 per piece of eight grams.

Silver ready shot up by Rs100 at Rs11,650 per kg and weekly-based delivery by Rs115 at Rs11,625 per kg. Silver coins were continued to be asked at previous levels of Rs17,000 for buying and Rs17,100 for selling of 100 pieces.
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