China, India set to sign 12 pacts later in the year - envoy
New Delhi: China and India are expected to sign at least a dozen agreements during the visit later this year of Chinese President Hu Jintao to New Delhi, the Chinese ambassador said.

Ambassador Sun Yuxi did not provide details about the agreements. No dates have been announced as yet for the November trip.

The Ambassador also mentioned that China would like to go in for large investments in India but was facing difficulties in this regard on account of restrictions. He said that his country would like particularly to set up a steel factory in India in view of availability of large amount of iron ore in this country which it imports from here.

He said there are 150 Indian companies engaged in about 2,000 projects in China whereas in this country there is presence of only 50 Chinese companies.
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Oman keen on FTA with India
New Delhi: Oman is interested in developing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India, which would create a framework for business growth and facilitate macro-economic stability and joint ventures.

Speaking at a meeting with an Omani business delegation organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Maqbool Ali Sultan, Oman's minister of commerce and industry said there was potential for cooperation between Indian and Omani companies in the fields of information technology, tourism and human resources development and training and knowledge based industries such as ICTs, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.
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Infrastructure sector records 9pc growth in July
New Delhi: A growth of nine per cent in the six infrastructure sectors in July 2006, as compared to 2.3 per cent in July 2005, has lifted the overall growth rate during the April-July 2006 period to seven per cent (6.1 per cent), an official release has said.

According to the release except steel, all infrastructure sectors registered higher growth. Crude oil output has grown by 4.1 per cent, as compared to a decline of 3.9 per cent in the year ago period, while refining throughput rose 12.6 per cent (3.6 per cent) in July.
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Fin Min: Status quo on participatory notes to be manitained
New Delhi: The finance ministry said on Monday that status quo would be maintained on the policy on participatory notes (PNs) until a view is taken on the recommendations of the Tarapore Committee and that of the expert group on encouraging Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) inflows.

"The Government will take a view on this (expert group's recommendations) and other recommendations contained in the Tarapore Committee report in due course after considering all suggestions received in this behalf. In the meanwhile, status quo on policy on PNs will continue," an official release said.

PNs are derivative instruments issued by FIIs to investors abroad who may actually not be eligible to invest in Indian stock markets. Bulk of the foreign portfolio inflows comes in through the PNs.

The Tarapore Committee on fuller capital account convertibility has expressed a majority view that fresh issue of PNs should be disallowed and existing PNs be phased out in one year. Two of the six-members of this Committee dissented.

In November 2005, an expert group on encouraging FII flows while reducing the vulnerability of the financial system to the flow of speculative capital, chaired by Dr Ashok K. Lahiri, had suggested that the current dispensation for PNs may continue. The RBI representative in the Expert Group had given a dissenting opinion.
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