President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to India is likely to kick-start stalled negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) between the US and India that has been under sporadic discussion since 2008, aimed at facilitating greater cross-border investment flows. Negotiations will resume based on model treaty texts prepared by each side. In April 2012, the US released a new version of its model BIT. New Delhi launched a review of its investment treaties in mid-2012 in the wake of public…
Wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The gap between rich and poor is widening between and within countries all over the world, a trend that “menaces vigorous societies” says Will Hutton, the former editor-in-chief of the UK’s Observer newspaper. But such growing inequality does not come about by itself. “It is a proxy”, says Hutton, “for how effectively an elite has constructed institutions that extract value from the rest of society.”
Public-Private Partnerships are one such institution.
By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | November 16, 2014
After months of stalemate, India and the US have agreed to resolve their differences over food stock holdings which would open the way for future implementation of Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) of the WTO – the biggest trade deal in its entire history. On November 13, 2014, Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, issued a statement announcing a bilateral agreement with the US. “We are extremely happy that India and the US have successfully resolved their…
The G20 Leaders’ Summit will take place on 15 and 16 November in Brisbane, Australia. The Summit is expected to discuss a wide range of global policy issues and challenges from corruption to taxation to employment to financial regulation to growth strategies. It is expected that the Brisbane Action Plan, which would be discussed at the Summit, will outline an action plan which would be implemented by member-countries in the coming months.
Given the lackluster approach of member-countries towards implementing…
Thanks to the persistent efforts by civil society groups demanding access to the full text of India-UAE bilateral investment promotion and protection agreement (BIPA) under the Right to Information Act, the agreement was recently made public by the concerned appellate authority of Ministry of Finance. On December 12, 2013, India signed the agreement with the United Arab Emirates despite an ongoing official review of its existing BIPAs. In early 2013, the then government initiated the review and imposed a moratorium…
