NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has succeeded in getting the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agree to the state’s high-end infrastructure dreams of having a high-speed rail corridor and railway coach factory. Chandy was here on a day’s visit with a long itinerary which included meeting the Prime Minister, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi.

Bangladesh on Thursday banned the import of new oil-fired turn-key electricity generators, citing foreign exchange worries and reversing a policy to allow independent power producers to setup mini plants to meet chronic power shortages.

Bangladesh had planned to host 49 so-called quick rental power plants, mostly fuel-oil powered generating units shipped into the country ready to run, by the end of next year to help cover a daily electricity demand shortfall of 1,500 megawatts (MW).

Geneva: The EU-India FTA could be disastrous for the farm sector in India, if the demands of the EU negotiators would be accepted, according to a joint study by NGOs Misereror, Glopolis, the Heinrich Boll foundation and the Third World Network (TWN). The report pionts out that it would violate the right to food of a vast segment in India which rely on the poultry and dairy sectors. Opponents of the EU demands see losses for the Indian economy- particularly in retail and agriculture. It is contrary to WTO rules, which advocate lower tariffs rather than removing them.

As government funds for sanitation are inadequate, the private sector should pool in. More people die from inadequate sanitation-related causes in India everyday than 10 aeroplanes filled with 200 people each. This has high economic costs. Therefore, achieving adequate sanitation is an imperative.

Investment and price assurance for farmers will yield the results that have eluded our policymakers so far. India has been striving to achieve 4% growth rate in farm output since the beginning of Ninth Five-Year Plan. However, actual growth rate has remained invariably lower than the targeted growth rate. Further, agriculture witnessed a sharp slowdown during mid-1990s to the middle of the first decade of 21st century. Annual growth rate in farm GDP declined to 2.4% a year during 1995-96 to 2004-05 from more than 3% in the previous decade.

India’s economy is expected to grow by 6.9% in 2011-12, the slowest pace of expansion in three years, dragged down by sluggish industrial growth and a decline in the mining sector. Data released by the Central Statistics Office on Tuesday showed growth in 2011-12 is estimated to be a shade below the 7%-7.5% being projected by policymakers and well below the 9% estimated last year. This is the slowest pace of growth since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, which pushed down India’s gross domestic product growth to 6.7%.