5-Jan-2018: The 3rd meeting of the Council for Trade Development and Promotion to be held on 8th January

Shri Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry will chair the 3rd meeting of the Council for Trade Development and Promotion at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on Monday, the 8th of January, 2018.

The Council for Trade Development and Promotion was constituted on 03.07.15 under the chairpersonship of the Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, in pursuance to the provisions of Foreign Trade Policy statement 2015-20. The objective was to ensure a continuous dialogue with the governments of states and Union Territories on measures for providing an international trade enabling environment in the states and to create a framework for making the states active partners in boosting India’s exports.

The State Ministers of Commerce and Industry, Secretaries of concerned central departments/Ministries and heads of other export related organizations/trade bodies are Members of the Council. The1st and 2nd meeting of the Council was held in New Delhi on 08.01.2016 and 05.01.2017 respectively.

23-Dec-2017: India’s first home-grown high purity gold reference standard was launched

India’s first home-grown high purity gold reference standard - the Bharatiya Nirdeshak Dravya (BND-4201) - was launched at the India Government Mint, Mumbai. BND-4201, which is the reference material for gold of ‘9999’ fineness (gold that is 99.99 per cent pure), will be beneficial to the consumers and public at large to ensure purity of gold.

IGM said once the BND’s of other purity gold are made available in the market, jewellers will move towards more instrumental methods rather than the conventional fire assay methods for testing, which are not only time consuming but also not environment friendly as poisonous gases are released.

Gold reference standard is indispensable in gold and jewellery hall marking. This will also be useful for Collection and Purity Testing Centres to certify the purity of gold deposits under the gold monetization scheme.

The high purity gold reference standard has been developed through a collaboration between IGM, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre -- National Centre for Compositional Characterisation of Materials (Hyderabad), and Council of Scientific & Industrial Research-National Physical Laboratory (New Delhi).

The measurement of the high purity BND-4201 is traceable to SI units (International System of Units). Therefore, the possibilities of exporting to other economies are very high. IGM will soon take up the production of other morphologies of the gold BND’s as well as other precious materials. IGM, Mumbai, is a unit of the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd.

5-Dec-2017: INSTC to be operationalised by mid-Jan 2018.

The International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) connecting Mumbai with St Petersburg and beyond – which has been 17 years in the making – is set to be operationalised from the middle of next month with the first consignment from India to Russia.

Although the formal operationalisation of INSTC is planned for mid-January, the corridor will start functioning fully in a few months thereafter. A Russian railway operator is expected to play key role in INSTC.

India, Iran and Russia had in September 2000 signed the INSTC agreement to build a corridor to provide the shortest multi-model transportation route linking the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea via Iran and St Petersburg. From St Petersburg, North Europe is within easy reach via the Russian Federation. The estimated capacity of the corridor is 20-30 million tonnes of goods per year.

Conceived well before China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), INSTC will not only help cut down on costs and time taken for transfer of goods from India to Russia and Europe via Iran but also provide an alternative connectivity initiative to countries in the Eurasian region. It will be India’s second corridor after the Chabahar Port to access resource rich Central Asia and its market.

The operationalisation of Chabahar Port coupled with INSTC will be a game changer for India’s strategic and economic goals in the Eurasian region, where China has benefited from its geographical contiguity. These connectivity routes promise to open up a sea of opportunity for India and the country may even consider working jointly with Russia on economic projects in the Eurasian region.

INSTC could get linked to the Chabahar Port besides Iran’s Bandar Abbas port, said an official, who did not wish to be identified. India also hopes that INSTC will be connected with various other connectivity projects that the five Central Asian and other Eurasian countries have undertaken among themselves.

Chabahar project launched in 2016 will complement INSTC. India is also exploring how Chabahar connectivity corridor can be extended to connect with Central Asia through INSTC, or the Iran-Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan rail line, Iran-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan alignment and Trans-Afghan rail line (which possibly could be developed by Iran, India, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan).

India’s ratification of international customs convention TIR in June will help boost trade through INSTC and other corridors.

The absence of viable surface transport connectivity is a serious impediment to trade with the Eurasian region. Currently, transport of goods between India and Russia mostly takes place through the sea route via Rotterdam to St Petersburg. In the case of the Central Asian region, goods are routed through China, Europe or Iran. The routes through China and Europe are long, expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, a need was felt to have a logistics route that would be shorter, cheaper and faster, officials said. A few dry runs on INSTC have been carried out in the past few years.

The corridor could held Indian exports get a competitive advantage due to lower cost and less delivery time. Studies show that this route can reduce time and cost of container delivery by 30-40%. According to Iranian officials, tariffs for transportation of freight through INSTC may drop further after the completion of a railroad segment connecting two Iranian and Azerbaijani border cities. Finland, Estonia and Latvia may also join INSTC in the near future.

INSTC has been expanded to include 11 new members – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Oman, Syria and Bulgaria (as observer).