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Australia invites more Indian investments, collaborations
- This initiative is part of the “Doing business and investing with Australia” events being held in various cities, including Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune during next month aimed at strengthening and broadening Australia's commercial engagement with India and enhancing awareness of Australian industry capability among the Indian business community.
- Australia is an important source of India's gold, chickpea, coal, copper ores, lead and wool requirements, as well as a significant source of education and skills based training, and a collaboration partner in research and innovation including in the automotive, manufacturing and agricultural sectors
- Australia's abundance of natural resources, its economic and political stability, and world-class infrastructure have contributed to a number of major Indian investments in coal, gas, minerals, and agricultural production and processing to support India's need for energy and food security
- Indian investments in Australia are concentrated around the mining and resources, information technology, infrastructure and the financial services sector. However, over the past three years there has also been a growing interest from Indian investors to invest in renewable energy, tourism infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, as well as to carry out cutting edge research and development in Australia.
China unfairly limits raw material exports: WTO
- Led by the U.S., several countries, including India, Mexico and Brazil, have won their battle against China at the World Trade Organization on export of raw material.
- Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Chinese Taipei, and Turkey joined as third parties in the dispute.
- The Obama Administration will continue to ensure that China and every other country play by the rules so that U.S. workers and companies can compete and succeed on a level playing field
- The export restraints challenged in this dispute include export quotas and export duties, as well as related minimum export price, export licensing, and export quota administration requirements.
- The raw materials at issue include various forms of bauxite, coke, fluorspar, magnesium, manganese, silicon carbide, silicon metal, yellow phosphorus, and zinc.
- Export restraint on these types of industrial products could skew the playing field against the U.S. and other countries in production and export of numerous steel, aluminium and chemical, and a wide range of other products
- They can artificially increase world prices for these raw materials while artificially lowering prices for Chinese producers.This enables China's domestic producers to produce lower-priced products from the raw materials and, thereby, creates significant advantages for China's producers when competing against US and other producers, both in China's market and other countries' markets.
- In 2009, the U.S., the European Union and Mexico filed a complaint to the WTO, claiming China's export restrictions on nine raw materials, including zinc, coke and magnesium, inflated global prices and gave an unfair advantage to the country's domestic producers
U.S. move hits small nations: Rajapaksa
- As the United States' and European Union's combined sanctions against Iran take effect, small nations like Sri Lanka are extremely worried.
- Sri Lanka depends almost entirely on Iran for its crude oil supplies and the only refinery in the country, Sapugaskanda, can only process Iranian crude.
- The Iranians provide a seven-month credit facility, and 93 per cent of the crude comes from Iran.
- “We need an alternative. Finally they [the U.S. and the West] are not punishing Iran. They are punishing us, small countries,” said Mr. Rajapaksa.
