Daily Pulse India: Oil’s Turn In The Spotlight, Anil Ambani’s Cutting Debt, Vijay Mallya’s a Wilful Defaulter
Ramya Venugopal
#StrategicCommunications #StrategicPartnerships #Communities. Ex-Meta. Former LinkedIn editor, also ex-Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Economic Times
Coming up next is….. Oil. The government is proposing to get more private players interested in the mining for oil and gas in India by offering some attractive terms – a revenue share, to begin with. For natural gas, the government has proposed to free up pricing, a nod to the protracted legal battle between Reliance Industries and the government over the KG Basin. And in a bid to cut red tape, it is also proposing a uniform exploration license to mine all kinds of hydrocarbons.
The timing couldn’t be better. Last week, the International Energy Agency, a think tank and keeper of all sorts of data on the oil industry predicted that India’s demand would outstrip China and nip at the heels of the US. And the Modi government has also named energy security as one of its key priorities. Meanwhile for those interested, here’s the fine print on the IEA report and here is where you can see the oil ministry’s proposal, seeking feedback.
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Power too. Anil Ambani’s ADAG group plans to sell nearly half of its Reliance Infrastructure to a Canadian pension fund. The size of the deal, not confirmed by the company, is about 35 billion rupees. Reliance Infra is ruthlessly working on cutting its debt and interestingly, 80 billion of its 160 billion-rupee debt will move to the new venture. On Nov 4, the board agreed to sell the roads and cement business and focus on defense, where the big money lies.
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Can telcos be far behind? Telecom companies have lined up $5 billion worth of investment in existing networks and in 4G. About $3 billion of that is from Airtel alone and the rest will be by Vodafone and Idea. Is this about the imminent entry of Reliance Jio or is it the telecom ministry’s rap on the knuckles for quality of service? And more important, what does this mean for tariffs?
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Now, the Daily Mail group wants more of India. No, it’s not launching an India edition. It’s investment arm, the Daily Mail & General trust plans to ramp up its investments in India, in Indian startups to be precise. It already has investment in real estate, data analytics and weather forecasting, and is now looking for opportunities in fin-tech, ad-tech and healthcare.
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It finally bit the bullet. State Bank of India has officially declared Vijay Mallya and two of his companies – brewer UB and grounded airline Kingfisher Airlines - as willful defaulters. Simply put, it refers to borrowers who refuse to pay even when they have the money. What it means for Mallya and co, is that they will be blacklisted by other banks and not allowed to raise funds for the next five year. It does seem like banks, supported by the RBI, are cracking the whip on defaulters.
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Cover Image: Chennai, India’s southernmost metropolis is submerged, after the heaviest rains in 10 years and an administration caught unawares. 71 people have died and the Indian Air Force has been called in for help.
What you may have missed — and really should read:
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Digital Marketer | 10+ Years Experience @Syntel By Arvind
9 年Pray for Chennai & Paris people..
Country Manager, Software Sales, IT Consulting / BFSI
9 年Pretty god brief about the happenings in India !
illustrator at sobigalpa
9 年Well i like Ramya Venugopal with the news she brings but none of the characters who are in news. Well, Anil Ambani and his group(Reliance) are doing what actually an uninnovative,lagging behind time and slagging Company would do.So also Adani and his energy companies too. It is a costly i mean too costly a venture to rely on coal and oil as a basis for generating power in India.India is poor country except for a few very super rich and a growing middle class.But these middle class make approximately 30% of the population and the rest 70% of its population are poor and very poor.If one visits the newly created State of Telanga and the existing states of south actually 77% of the villages do not have power that is generated by hydro electric for 24 hours,7 days a week..What few villages have is a few solar powered system created by indian Institute of Sciences and few bold companies.And what is that the power supplied by these units is for 7 hours when the sun is the brightest and less than 3hours in case of cloudy or less bright skies.So the situation of power generation and distribution is pathetic because India chooses by the virtue of its Central government to rely on coal as a material to generating power supply and nothing else. The Northern Indian states and North-Eastern States because of the Himalayas and fast rivers generate electricity by using coal as its fuel and West india has its solar plants but overall they are also useless in the long run because solar parts becomes unreliable when it becomes too hot thus the enegry efficiency gets poor or unable to generate electricity.Anil Ambani, Gautam Adani and Ratan Tata actually should build technical expertise and technical infrastructure to produce electricity and deliver it. otherwise the loans they took and the huge investments they had would turn to nothing in next 10 years and they would have to sell thier companies which already is in heavy debt. India should stop coal as fuel and dismantle its present distribution company---The Power Grid Corporation which has become the den of corruption and initiate a art of novel infrastructure of power distribution. India should look to private power company of U.K---Erocity which has build a superb power distribution in UK by relying on Anaerobic bacteria to generate power of efficiency in UK. India actually is the world's biggest and highest producer of carbon monooxide and thereby depleting 40% of ozone and China is second depleting 30% of world's ozone and both these countries are actually a culprit in global climate change. How irony? The central government by having a liberal policy on coal and oil and supporting rascals like Ambanis,Adanis and Tatas to go for coal are in fact cheating. the the people of India. It also suppresses the report of International agencies on climate change of which India is a significant player.So please don't use coal.