July 8 - Having garnered strength from his fragmented coalition government, India's confident prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is ready to meet President Bush on Wednesday morning, the stage is now set for India to sign the nuclear deal with America.

July 7 - Amidst the row in the United States over outsourcing, a study proves that Indian companies are not taking American jobs, instead they have generated more than 30,000 jobs for U.S. citizens in recent years. Indian small and medium enterprises alone in 2007 had set up shop in the U.S. through greenfield units or via acquisitions and created no less than 65,000 jobs, said a study conducted by industry chamber Ficci.

June 20 - BOLLYWOOD'S songs are hummed in Morocco, its films are rented in California and its stars are cast in wax at Madame Tussauds in London. But India's new money has an appeal even its melodrama cannot match. On June 17th the Wall Street Journal reported that one of India's biggest conglomerates, Anil Ambani's Reliance group, was in talks to form a film-making partnership with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio, owned by Viacom, a media giant. Mr Spielberg and David Geffen, the studio's co-founders, want to regain their independence when their contract with Viacom ends, and are looking for funding.

June 2 - Global steel giant ArcelorMittal will spend at least $20 billion setting up two new integrated steel plants in India from 2009 onwards, company executives told CNN.

The two projects, based in the eastern states of Orissa and Jharkhand, will be the largest foreign direct investments yet seen in India and will add 24 million tonnes of annual steel production capacity.

Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal is the world's biggest steel maker, with annual capacity of 120 million tonnes, but has no presence yet in the fast-growing Indian market.

 May 15 - The rupee weakened by about 34 paise at Rs 42.44/46 per US dollar on Wednesday, making it costlier for the travellers and students going abroad, reported the Hindustan Times.

At the same time, the remittances from those working abroad would fetch more money now, than it did a couple of weeks back when the rupee hovered around Rs 40 against the dollar. The rupee weakened against the dollar by 6.52 percent from April 10, 2008 when it closed at Rs 39.84 against a dollar.

On the corporate front, the weakening rupee will help exporters to fetch more bucks for the same unit of exports. No wonder, the market has given a thumps up for the information technology stocks on Wednesday by taking the IT sector index on Bombay Stock Exchange up by 3.8 per cent to 4,256 points. On the contrary, imports will become costlier to the extent of weakness in the domestic currency.

 April 22 - India will soon have two new wind energy farms generating 183.2 mega watts of electricity at a total cost of US$250 million. The wind farms will be situated in the western state of Gujarat and the south Indian state of Karnataka and will partly be financed by loans from the Asian Development Bank the rest coming from  private sponsors, inrenal funds and long term debt.

India is already ranked fourth in the world for installed wind power generation, behind Germany, the U.S. and Spain. As of September 2007 India had over 7,200 MW of installed wind power capacity, with a gross potential for 45,000 MW.

Big Ticket Strategic Investments into India

India’s Roadmap for Redevelopment

The new spring issue of India Briefing is now available and features an interview with India's minister of commerce and minister of finance covering why India is unlikely to face any slowdown in the face of a U.S. downturn, an article on registering your trademark in India - important as India is not signatory to the international Madrid Protocols governing most developed countries. We also focus on developments in India's auto industry, including the new Nano, and Tata's acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover, and the new opportunities that now exist for foreign investors in the sector. We also feature India's civil aviation sector and the new successful operations of its first privately owned and managed domestic airports. The magazine concludes with India’s renewed partnership with Africa – Energy in exchange for aid.

India's first woman President Pratibha Patil (R) with Sao Paulo Industries Federation's president Paulo Skaf (L) 

April. 15 - India hopes its trade volume with Brazil will reach US$10 billion in 2010, up from the US$3.1 billion registered in 2007, Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil told Xinhua in Sao Paulo Monday.

Indian expertise in information technology, pharmaceutical products and agriculture equipment can be exchanged for Brazilian know-how in the production of food and infrastructure facilities, sectors that India needs to develop in order to boost bi-lateral trade.  

"Both Brazil and India are large and growing economies, with enormous opportunities for further rapid investment and growth. Our natural synergies and economic complementarities can be exploited for mutual benefit," she told an audience of the Federation of Industries in Sao Paulo.

April. 11 - India may very soon be exporting much more than software. As the knowledge industry grows in India, Indians and Non-resident Indians (NRI’s) alike want their children to be global citizens but with strong Indian roots. Realizing this latent demand, India will have its first university dedicated to NRI’s in the next three months, The Economic Times reported. The proposed university plans to draw on the expertise of the NRI doctors, engineers, and many qualified professionals.

In many countries of Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, which have large Indian populations, NRI children find it difficult to gain admission, as these countries often prefer sons of their soil.  

Mar. 27 - Mergers and Acquisitions are dominating India’s phenomenal growth story. 2007 was the year when corporate India spent almost as much money acquiring global companies as international companies spent acquiring Indian ones. The Hindu Business Line reported that Domestically, 2007 saw another record year of deal activity, with total mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and private equity (PE) deals up 82 percent from Rs 865 billion (US$21 billion) in 2006 to Rs 1,576 billion (US$38 billion) in 2007. Comparatively, Indians bought up companies in Europe and the US, splashing out some Rs 1,367 billion (US$33 billion). The Teleom, finance, cement and building materials, oil and gas and metals sectors formed the bulk of India’s global M&A activity.

Major deals that were signed during the year are as follows: