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Moody's cuts credit ratings of 12 British banks
- Moody's on Friday downgraded its credit ratings for a dozen British banks, including state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB, due to the removal and curtailment of government financial support.
- The announcement comes as the European Union seeks swift recapitalisation of the region's banks to avert the spreading across borders of the eurozone debt crisis. Moody's had warned in May that it could downgrade British banks.
Draft IT policy targets $200 b exports by 2020
- the draft National Policy on Information Technology 2011 that envisages taking the overall revenue from the sector from $89 billion as of today to $300 billion by 2020, besides creating additional one-crore jobs.
- once the Direct Taxes Code (DTC) was in place, the Centre might extend tax holiday under the Software Technology Park of India (SPTI) scheme, which expired in March this year, besides giving incentives to small and medium enterprises engaged in the IT sector.
- Today, 80 per cent of the IT sector revenue comes from exports, mainly from North America and Europe. While we have seen IT sector exports growing at 30 per cent, this year it may be around 15 per cent due to global financial crisis…we need to diversify our exports by exploring new markets to sustain the growth momentum
Centre to announce incentive package for exporters next week
- We have carried out a thorough review of the impact of European sovereign debt crisis and slowdown in the U.S. economy on Indian exports. Hopefully, a package of incentives would be announced in the next few days.
- The stakeholders informed the Commerce Minister that the sharp cut in the drawback rates for most exporting items at a time when world demand was slowing down and volatility in the exchange rate was not advisable.
- The demand has weakened in traditional destinations particularly in Europe but there is strong growth in Africa, ASEAN and South America
- The Textiles Export Promotion Councils said the rising labour cost driven by high inflation, the cost of power for the industry, anti-dumping duty imposed by some importing countries and the need to tap new markets such as Egypt under Focus Markets needed immediate attention.
