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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said politics increasingly "trumps" economics in the present era. Jaishankar was addressing a gathering after being conferred Honorary Doctorate by IIM-Calcutta at its campus here. "This is an era where politics increasingly trumps economics... and that is not a pun, he said. "The United States, long the underwriter of the contemporary system, has set radically new terms of engagement. It is doing so by dealing with countries on a one-on-one basis," Jaishankar said. He also said that China has long played by its own rules, and is doing so even now. The external affairs minister said in the ensuing scenario, other nations are unclear whether attention should be on visible competition or the trade offs and understandings that punctuate it. "Faced with such pulls and pressures of globalisation, of fragmentation and of supply insecurity, the rest of the world responds by hedging against all contingencies," Jaishankar said. He said I
India's industrial production growth accelerated to 5 per cent in January 2025, driven by a rebound in manufacturing activity, according to official data released on Wednesday. The government has also revised the December 2024 industrial output figure to 3.5 per cent from the provisional estimate of 3.2 per cent released in the previous month, an official statement said. The IIP growth in November 2024 was 5 per cent. The pace of factory output growth stood at 5 per cent in January 2025. The country's factory output, measured in terms of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), witnessed 4.2 per cent growth in January 2024. The data released by the National Statistic Office (NSO) showed that the manufacturing sector's output grew by 5.5 per cent in January 2025, up from 3.6 per cent in the year-ago month. Mining production growth declined to 4.4 per cent from 6 per cent year-on-year. Power output growth slowed to 2.4 per cent in January 2025 from 5.6 per cent a year ago. In th
The Telangana government will be taking up the next phase of 'Genome Valley', the country's first organised cluster for Life Sciences R&D and clean manufacturing activities here with an investment of Rs 2,000 crore in 300 acres of land, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy said on Tuesday. Speaking at BioAsia 2024, a healthcare and life sciences annual event, Reddy said the government is also planning to develop ten "Pharma Villages" in the state which will have investment potential of Rs one lakh crore. "I am announcing here to establish the next phase of Genome Valley in 300 acres of land with Rs 2,000 crore of investment," he added. He further said the Pharma Villages will have the potential to generate five lakh jobs after they are established. Reddy said the government has also identified clusters for Greenfield Integrated Pharma Villages in Vikarabad, Medak and Nalgonda, all three different areas of Telangana for infrastructure and investment. According to him, the state government
The primary steel industry is likely to experience a challenging environment during the second half of FY24 amid increased input cost and weakening steel prices, according to Icra. The domestic hot rolled coil (HRC) prices have corrected by 6.7 per cent since early October 2023, while the rebar prices witnessed a fall of 4.7 per cent in the same period, the ratings agency said. The overall industry's operating profit margins in H2 FY2024 are expected to be lower compared to H1 FY2024, largely driven by weaker profitability from the blast furnace operators, Icra said in its latest report. It further said it "expects the operating environment of the domestic steel industry to get more challenging in the second half of the current fiscal as elevated raw material costs and weakening steel prices nibble at profit margins." While seaborne coking coal prices have been volatile since Q2 FY2024, thermal coal prices have remained more range-bound. Coupled with the higher resilience of long
The government is likely to put in place a simple import authorisation procedure and not a licensing process for inbound shipments of laptops, tablets and computers from November 1, according to sources. However, they said the commerce ministry is awaiting a final word on the issue from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The government in August imposed import restrictions on laptops and computers (including tablet computers) with a view to boost domestic manufacturing and cut imports from countries like China. As per the notification of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), the restrictions will come into force from November 1. While the IT hardware product industry comes under MeitY, the DGFT notifies decisions with regard to import/export of a product. Following this notification, IT hardware industry had flagged concerns. "It will be more in the nature of an import management system where people will be issued an authorisation. It will