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Gulf Countries
India has deepened its diplomatic and economic ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council region this year with Prime Minister Narendra Modi visiting three of the six GCC countries including Kuwait where no Indian PM had been after Indira Gandhi. As 2024 unfolded, a renewed focus on strategic partnerships in the region took centre stage, with Abu Dhabi serving as the pivotal gateway to this robust alliance. From high-profile visits to pivotal agreements, the story of India and the GCC, an influential grouping comprising the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, is a dynamic one. Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, became Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first GCC destination in 2024. The India-UAE bonhomie has been an ongoing story in recent years, and some layers were added this year. PM Modi's Abu Dhabi visit may have hogged the limelight due to the much-talked-about inauguration of BAPS Hindu Mandir; it also gathered momentum on substantive bilateral ..
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the Lok Sabha on Friday that his ministry has requested for blocking certain websites offering fraudulent jobs abroad and also recommended for the prosecution of those involved in such scams. Responding to supplementaries, Jaishankar said the government has brought back 1,167 Indians from Cambodia and another 497 from Myanmar, who were taken there on the pretext of getting them jobs. He said people are made to work illegally by those running such online scams. "In India, we have requested for the blocking of sites which promote such jobs. We have recommended prosecution in certain cases for people who have been involved in this," the minister said during the Question Hour. He said a "different set of problems" have been raised for West Asia, the Gulf and the Middle East, "where we have a situation" of under-payment or non-payment of wages and maltreatment of Indian professionals and workers. Jaishankar asserted that the Indian embassies
A tropical disturbance in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico was expected to bring significant rainfall to parts of Texas and Louisiana this week and could quickly develop into a stronger storm, including a hurricane, the National Weather Service says. The system was forecast to drift slowly northwestward during the next couple of days, moving near and along the Gulf coasts of Mexico and Texas, the weather service said on Sunday. Donald Jones, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles, Louisiana, said during a weather briefing Saturday night that parts of Southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana should expect a whole lot of rain in the middle and later part of this week. Definitely want to continue to keep a very close eye on the forecast here in the coming days because this is something that could develop and evolve fairly rapidly. We're looking at anything from a non-named just tropical moisture air mass all the way up to the potential for a hurricane, Jones ..
Kuwait said Saturday it will hold elections for its national assembly on April 4, its latest round of voting after years of political turmoil. The state-run KUNA news agency made the announcement, citing a decree published by the oil-rich country's official gazette. In February, Kuwait's emir dissolved parliament after a lawmaker reportedly insulted the ruler. Domestic political disputes have been gripping Kuwait for years including the overhaul of Kuwait's welfare system which prevented the sheikhdom from taking on debt. That has left it with little in its coffers to pay bloated public sector salaries, despite generating immense wealth from its oil reserves. Parliament has been repeatedly dissolved after failing to move forward, with Kuwait's Constitutional Court in 2023 annulling a 2022 decree overturning another such annulment. The country's late emir then annulled that parliament again and held an election for a new parliament, which was annulled with the February ...
Sundaram Alternates Assets (SAA), the private equity arm of Sundaram Finance Group, plans to raise about Rs 1,000 crore from global investors to fund green real estate projects in India. "This move reflects our commitment to build on our own track record, depth of underwriting and risk management skills in the ever-evolving landscape of Indian real estate credit market," Sundaram Alternates Assets managing director Vikaas M Sachdeva told PTI here. In the past year, SAA has not only re-engineered its high-yield credit funds to generate real alpha from its performing credit business but has also adopted a robust ESG and climate impact framework as a significant investor initiative, he said. The firm is currently in the process of raising money from global investors including NRIs in the Gulf region through its Series IV real estate credit fund. "We are expecting to close the fund (Series IV real estate credit fund) at between Rs 1,000-1,200 crore to fund green real estate projects,"
India's interim Budget for 2024-25 received mixed reactions from the Indian business community in the Gulf with some hailing it as forward-looking and a vision statement for the journey from developing to a developed country by 2047 while others voiced disappointment over the absence of tax reliefs for individuals. Presenting a vote on account for 2024-25 in Parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed no changes in income tax rates for individuals and corporations, as well as customs duty. She hiked capital expenditure to Rs 11.11 lakh crore for 2024-25 while trimming the fiscal deficit for this financial year to 5.8 per cent, from the budgeted 5.9 per cent of GDP, and further lowering to 5.1 per cent in the next fiscal. In the interim Budget 2024, there is a need to enhance digitalisation of tax return filing-linked procedures such as changing residency status, assessments and even alternative tax return verification systems linked to NRIs," said Deepak Bhatia, Managin