Friday, 17 February 2017

Foreign Tourist arrivals to India

Foreign Tourist arrivals to India and Foreign Tourist availing E-Visa facility during January 2017
Ministry of Tourism compiles monthly estimates of Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) & FTAs on e-Visa on the basis of Nationality-wise, Port-wise data received from Bureau of Immigration (BOI). Accordingly, for the month of January 2017, a growth of 16.5% is observed as compared to January 2016, surpassing the previous year’s corresponding growth of 6.8% observed in January 2016 over January 2015. Correspondingly, there has been observed a growth of 72% in the tourists arrived on e-Visa during January 2017 over January 2016 by registering a figure of 1.52 Lakhs as compared to 0.88 Lakhs in the month of January 2016. Clearly, the share of tourists availing e-Visa facility in January 2017 has reached a level of 15.5% as against 10.4% in the month of January 2016. This clearly outlines the steady success of e-Visa facility in quantifiable terms.

Following a modified approach, Ministry of Tourism from the month of January 2017, shall be presenting monthly Foreign Tourist Inflows to India as well as the Foreign Tourists who availed e-Visa facility, simultaneously.
The following are the important highlights regarding FTAs & FTAs on e-Visa from tourism during the month of January, 2017.
Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs):
  • The number of FTAs in January, 2017 were 9.83 lakh as compared to FTAs of 8.44 lakh in January, 2016 and 7.91 lakh in January, 2015.
  • The growth rate in FTAs in January, 2017 over January, 2016 is 16.5% compared to 6.8% in January, 2016 over January, 2015.
  • The percentage share of Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) in India during January 2017 among the top 15 source countries was the highest from USA (15.01%) followed by Bangladesh (14.91%), UK (11.11%), Canada (4.63%), Russian Fed. (4.46%), Australia (3.65%), Malaysia (3.15%), Germany (2.92%), France (2.89%) and China (2.54%), Sri Lanka (2.45%), Japan(2.15%),Afghanistan (1.84%), Rep. of Korea (1.61%) and Nepal (1.60%).

  • The percentage share of Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) in India during January 2017 among the top 15 ports was the highest at Delhi Airport (28.30%) followed by Mumbai Airport (18.23%), Haridaspur Land checkpost (8.17%), Chennai Airport (7.32%), Goa Airport (6.51%), Bengaluru Airport (5.32%), Kolkata Airport (4.32%), Cochin Airport (3.73%), Ahmedabad Airport (3.37%) and Hyderabad Airport (2.74%), Gede Rail Land checkpost (1.77%), Trivandrum (1.62%), Trichy Airport (1.38%), Ghojadanga land checkpost (1.08%) and Amritsar Airport (1.02%).

Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) on e-Visa
  • During the month of January, 2017 total of 1.52 lakh tourist arrived on e-Visa as compared to 0.88 lakh during the month of January 2016 registering a growth of 72.0%

  • The percentage shares of top 15 source countries availing e-Visa facilities during  January, 2017 were as follows:




UK (22.9%), USA (13.6%), Russian Fed (8.3%), China (6.3%), France (5.6%), Australia (4.4%), Germany (4.1%), Canada (3.6%), Korea (Rep.of) (3.2%) and Ukraine (2.2%), Netherlands (1.6%), South Africa (1.4%), Singapore (1.3%), Malaysia (1.3%) and Sweden (1.1%).

The percentage shares of top 15 ports in tourist arrivals on e-Visa during January, 2017 were as follows:

New Delhi Airport (36.5%), Mumbai Airport (20.5%), Dabolim (Goa) Airport    (16.2%), Chennai Airport (7.0%), Bengaluru Airport (5.1%), Kochi Airport (4.2%), Kolkata Airport (2.7%), Trivandrum Airport (2.0%), Hyderabad Airport (2.0%) and Ahmadabad Airport (1.7%), Amritsar Airport (0.8%), Jaipur Airport (0.5%), Tirchy Airport (0.4%), Gaya Airport (0.2%)and

A World Divided: Emerging Demographic and Geographic Fissures in the Global Economy:

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Yuwa Hedrick Wong is currently Chief Economist and Chair of the Academic Advisory Council at MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, and Global Economic Advisor, MasterCard Worldwide. Prior to his global role, he was Economic Advisor to MasterCard in Asia/Pacific, Middle East, and Africa from 2001 to 2009. In performing these roles, Yuwa has focused on understanding the challenges of economic development and evaluating business opportunities in emerging markets worldwide in the context of international trade and globalization.
In addition to Mastercard, Yuwa has served as economic advisors to over 30 leading global companies in the past two decades. Yuwa studied philosophy, political science, history and economics at Trent University, and pursued post-graduate studies at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University in Canada, where he received his Ph.D.

The political shocks in 2016 are the lagged effects of the economic shocks of the preceding  decade. Consequently global economic outlook today is deeply affected by political uncertainty. The pushback against globalization is likely to stay for the foreseeable future, which will continue to challenge the status quo in global trade, capital flow and economic integration. At a deeper structural level, however, there are two emerging fissures that will further fragment the world as we know it in terms of a demographic and a geographic divide.
In this divided world political uncertainty will deepen. The demographic divide will pit the young against the elderly in the high income developed countries, aggravated by high and rising government debts, generous social welfare commitments that are increasingly difficult to meet, and stagnant economic growth.
This demographic divide will make rational macroeconomic policy making ever more difficult in the high income developed countries.
The geographic divide, on the other hand, separates emerging Asia from the rest of the world, which is expected to be the best performing region in the global economy in the foreseeable future. Against this background, India is very advantageously positioned – it is immune from the demographic divide while positively connected to emerging Asia. Therefore, the external environment for India is actually very positive in spite of generally difficult and uncertain global economic conditions.

Chaudhary Birender Singh at the ‘Make in Steel’ Conference

Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh at the ‘Make in Steel’ Conference in New Delhi today:

“Dr. Aruna Sharma, Secretary, Steel
Shri P.K.Singh, Chairman, SAIL
Shri Prashant Ruia, MD, Essar
Madam Rita Singh, CMD, MESCO Steel
Distinguished delegates
Friends from the Media
Ladies & Gentlemen;

I am glad to be here at this conference on a very relevant theme- ‘Make in Steel’. My compliments to the organisers for choosing this topic for the conference.

It has been over six months since I took over as Steel Minister. I have met different stakeholders and visited steel plants and mines. I have come to the conclusion that steel industry is a vibrant and dynamic industry where employees work hard round the clock to produce steel which is the building block for a strongeconomy.

International linkages for raw materials and markets make the industry dependent on changing trends in world steel market.

Steel industry is important for the country because it has one of the highest economic linkages in overall GDP. Steel has an output-multiplier effect of around 1.4 times on GDP, so if steel industry grows by 1 per cent, its proportionate impact on GDP would be 1.4 %.

Employment-multiplier effect of steel is around 7 times, that is, with increase in output, steel industry has the potential to create 7 times the job opportunities, in upward and downward industries.

In 2016, India retained its position as the fastest growing major steel economy in the world. We are all proud of it, and we are confident that India would continue to lead the growth trend in world steel industry. All of us will have to work together for it.

In my view, there are five important thrust areas we need to focus on and to make it easy to remember, we have coined an acronym ‘PRIDE’ that aptly sums up the way forward for the steel industry.

P stands for production & productivity

R for Research & Development

I for Indian-made steel

D for Demand of Steel

E for excellence in quality

Each of these areas is important from the perspective of ‘Make in Steel’, which I understand as maximising usage of steel in different segments of industry.

I would go one step further and add another element to the theme, which is ‘Why Steel’. We need to ask this question to ourselves and then convince the potential customers about the advantages of using steel. Our message will be clear when we are ourselves clear about what we want to achieve.

Steel industry needs to join the drive to demonstrate benefits of steel. Through Life Cycle Analysis, we need to showcase that steel structures are highly cost-effective and have shorter lead time for erection. Steel has greater durability with high design comfort.

At Ministry level, we have directed all concerned to utilize every possible opportunity to showcase prototypes and exhibits of steel for this purpose.

We must use all marketing, branding avenues to push this message. That is the only way to meet the challenge of product substitution by aluminium, concrete, plastic, glass etc.

As far as the first letter P in PRIDE is concerned, India is on its way to become world’s second largest steel producer.

The gap between India and Japan was 16 million tonnes in 2015, which has come down to 9 million tonnes in 2016.

India’s share in global steel production was 5.5 % in 2015, which has increased to 5.9 % in 2016. So as far as production of steel is concerned, we are on the right path.

In draft National Steel Policy that was put up in public domain recently, we aim to more than double the capacity to 300 million tonnes. That means an investment to the tune of Rs. 10 lakh crore.

We definitely need to create demand in line with the planned increase in capacities. Our target is to increase per capita steel consumption to 160 kilogram.

We should work towards meeting the entire domestic demand of high-grade automotive steel, electrical steel and special steels from domestic production. These products constitute a major portion of the steel imports in India.

We are examining the feasibility of setting up scrap-based steel plants in India. These will be on the lines of ‘Melt & Manufacture’ steel technology in USA.

Scrap-based steel plants are environment-friendly, energy-efficient and cost-effective. These will have the capability to produce special high-quality steels, apre-requisite for Make in Steel.

I would like you to deliberate on the cost-benefit analysis of setting up scrap based steel plants in North and West India.

These  regions  are  important  from  the  perspective  of scrap-availability and steel import hubs.

MSTC-Mahindra Intertrade state-of-the-art Auto Shredding Plant is likely to be functional in 2018.

Indian market has huge potential for auto-shredding. As per reports, there are more than 7 lakh cars and over 4 lakh trucks and buses which have reached end-of-life stage. By 2025, around 28 lakh cars and 12 lakh trucks and buses will reach their end-of-life stage.

India imports around 6 million tonnes of scrap steel every year and is the second largest importer of scrap after Turkey. By 2025, we will be able to generate 7.5 million tonnes of scrap every year.

So far as productivity is concerned, we are lagging behind the international benchmarks of performance. At country level, PSUs need to catch up with the productivity and efficiency levels achieved by Private steel companies.

At international level, all Indian steel companies need to aim high and work towards achieving international levels.

Research & Development in Indian Steel industry is dismal. Whatever little R&D is being done is scattered and isolated. At one hand, there is overlapping & duplication of research efforts, at the other, no research is being done on futurerequirements of the industry. We are happy and contented with token R&D here and there.

I went to Luxembourg last year and was apprised that they are trying to explore for mineral resources in space.

If a small country like Luxembourg can dream that big, what stops us from aiming high and working on out-of-the-box solutions and technologies for steel making using indigenous resources.

We are still dependent on imported raw material and high-end steel products. We have the potential to enhance usage of domestic coking coal by setting up more coal washeries,

we are capable of producing auto-grade, defence-grade and other special steels in India. What we need to do is to push ourselves and to come out of our comfort zones. Then and then only can we be self-sufficient and strong.

We are trying to bring together all R&D efforts under one umbrella of SRTMI (Steel Research & Technology Mission of India) with public-private partnership.

Ministry of Steel is in constant touch with different user ministries to ensure that steel-intensive structures are promoted through regulatory, advisory and other measures. We are in the process of talking to hill states to increase use of crash barriers to minimize fatalities due to road accidents on hills. Rural Development Ministry has already recommended use of steel-intensive structures in rural housing.

We  are  trying  that   “Indian  Made  Steel”  can  be defined in the light of existing Public Procurement Bill.

This will provide for mandatory procurement from domestic bidders on the grounds of promoting domestic industry. Basically the aim is to emphasize lower life cycle costing while evaluating projects, rather than just looking at the upfront cost alone.

Demand of steel is most important factor from the Make in Steel angle. I am happy that you have devoted most part of the conference to this aspect. There is nodearth of potential for steel demand. You name a core sector and steel is an integral part of it. The need of the hour is to channelize our resources in harnessing this demand.

At Ministry level, we are constantly working to think of and work on ways for increasing steel demand in India.

We  had  the  meeting  of  newly  constituted  Steel Consumer  Council  last  month,  in  which  concrete feedback has come from different stakeholders. We invited suggestions on increasing steel consumption in India on MyGov platform and Ministry is working on implementable suggestions.

We have constituted four task forces and committees of experts and users of steel to formulate strategies to increase steel consumption in India.

The importance that we are giving to this area can be gauged from the fact that we discussed ways and means to increase steel demand in Parliamentary Consultative Committee and urged the members to use their good offices to propagate the message.

We all know that a record allocation of around Rs. 4 lakh crore has been made for infrastructure sector in the recent budget.

Focus on areas such as ports, roads, affordable housing, physical infrastructure should provide the steel sector necessary impetus to meet its growth targets.

The budget has given infrastructure status to housing and enhanced budget for housing, which is expected to revive domestic steel demand as it will push up demand for construction grade steel particularly those for roofing purposes.

At present around 40 % steel consumption is from construction and infrastructure sectors, and we want to take it to 60 percent in long-term.

In the budget, the Government has waived basic custom duty on nickel and reduced custom duty on specific-use grades of hot-rolled and cold rolled steel coils. The decision to cut down customs duty to on LNG (liquefied natural gas) will boost domestic steel companies that rely on imports to run gas-based steel plants.

All these decisions will go a long way in ensuring that Make in Steel drive is successful in India.

Lastly, all these efforts will mean nothing, if we are not able to produce steel of high quality. If we want to compete at international level, we will have to perform as per international benchmarks of efficiency and quality.

It is my firm belief that Indian steel industry needs to move to a 100 % quality regime, for health and safety of end users. That is why we are going ahead with making BIS certification essential for most of the products.

All the measures we discussed will have to be taken as a part of comprehensive strategy to generate steel demand in the country.

I am sure you will all use PRIDE as your guiding principle for Make in Steel Roadmap for the industry.

Piyush Goyal addresses the International Conference on NexGen Technologies

Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy, Mines, addressing the Valedictory Session of  the International Conference on NexGen Technologies for Mining and Fuel Industries – NxGnMiFu – 2017 said that the country has become coal and power surplus because of the efforts put up by the Indian Coal Mining Companies and the Power plants. He lauded the work of Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CIMFR) Dhanbad that has ensured the quality check on the coal supply to the power plants.  Shri Goyal said that it is now required to implement innovative ideas so that cost of power to the users remain affordable. The Minister said that all the stakeholders including those working in the R&D in coal and mining sector, have to work with newer technologies for safer mining, smarter mining and efficient mining with sustainability. He asked scientists of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to go for innovations with newer, big ideas and transforming the way the research is carried out in the country.
CSIR – Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, Dhanbad together had organised the International Conference on “NexGen Technologies for Mining and Fuel Industries” [NxGnMiFu-2017] during February 15-17, 2017 at New Delhi on the occasion of CSIR-Platinum Jubilee Celebration to commemorate 75th year of its foundation. Dr. Girish Sahni, DG, CSIR, presided over the function.
The conference deliberated on issues related to Innovative Mining Technologies for Complex Geo-mining Conditions; Mine Safety, Monitoring and Risk Management; Clean Coal Initiatives; Coal to Liquid, Methanol and Urea; Harnessing Coal Bed Methane, Shale Gas and Underground Coal Gasification; Technological Developments in Oil and Gas Sectors and Alternate Clean Energy Initiatives. During the three- day deliberations, it presented suggestions on the R&D needs to innovate new techniques, technologies and applications for clean, safe, symbiotic sustenance of society, environment and industries in post-2020 era.
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