“On a year-on-year basis, the growth in all-India house price index (HPI) continued to moderate and stood at 3.6% in Q4 of 2018-19 as against 5.1% in the previous quarter and 6.7% a year ago,” RBI said in a statement.
The government has come out with draft steel scrap policy, which is aimed at curtailing import dependency and make India self-sufficient by producing high-quality ferrous scrap.
The draft steel scrap policy aims to promote resource efficiency in the steel sector.”The policy envisages to set up environmentally sound management system for ferrous scrap which can encourage processing and recycling of ferrous scraps through organised and scientific metal scrapping centres across India to minimise dependency on import of scrap and make India self-sufficient in scrap availability,” said the draft steel scrap policy.
The draft policy said there is a worldwide trend to increase steel production using scrap as the main raw material as recycling of scrap helps in conservation of vital natural resources besides other numerous benefits.
The use of every tonne of scrap shall save 1.1 tonne of iron ore, 630 kg of coking coal and 55 kg of limestone, it added.
IndInfravit Trust has entered into an agreement to acquire the entire shareholding of Ahmedabad-based Sadbhav Infrastructure Project Ltd (SIPL) in nine operational road projects, for about Rs 6,610 crore.
The Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways has suggested that the Centre should consider extending fiscal incentives to infrastructure projects under the proposed National Logistics Policy and also give sops like interest subsidy, reimbursement of part of capital investment, stamp duty exemption and exemption of tax on electricity.
The Commerce & Industry Ministry has said that funding may be offered based on the detailed project assessment, but for other incentives there has to be more stakeholder consultations.
“Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal recently reviewed the draft National Logistics Policy and action plan for implementation of the policy. The Ministry is likely to send the policy for approval of the Cabinet soon,” a government official told.
The key proposals in the draft policy include setting up a national logistics online marketplace to simplify trade documentation, incentivising logistics to make it more efficient, putting in place a data and analytics center for monitoring key logistics metrics and conceptualising a center of excellence to drive innovation.
The policy envisages bringing down logistics cost from 14% of GDP to about 9% and also creating employment opportunities for 10-15 million people.
The Ministry of Road Transport, in the consultation, also suggested that the PPP (public private partnership) mode should be the preferred mode of implementation of logistics infrastructure to encourage private investments and bring in new technologies.
The Commerce & Industry Ministry officials replied that PPP mode will be the preferred mode wherever relevant based on the interests of the investors.
Singareni Collieries Company Ltd has produced 170.82 lakh tonnes of coal in the first quarter ended June 30, 2019, registering an increase of 17.3% over 145.65 lakh tonnes during corresponding quarter of last fiscal.
In June 2019, the state-owned mining company has produced 57.13 lakh tonnes of coal as against 55.19 lakh tonnes in June 2018.
The eight core industries output grew by 5.1% in May 2019, higher than the 4.1% growth recorded in May 2018, but lower than the 6.3% in April 2019 due to a strong growth of 19.9% registered by steel.
For the period 2019-20 (April-May), the output of the eight core industries (Steel, coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilisers, cement and electricity) grew by 5.7% against 4.4% in the same period last year.