Tag Archives: business
Gargash ridicules Kuwaiti cleric’s remarks against UAE
Gargash ridicules Kuwaiti cleric’s remarks against UAE Mustafa Al Zarooni / 17 February 2014 Kuwaiti cleric Nabil Al Awadi hit out at the UAE on the backdrop of dismissal of 8 Kuwaiti students from UAE’s universities. The deliberate affront and attack on the UAE by Muslim Brotherhood members is still ongoing in a bid from them to disseminate what could distort the country’s image without verifying the authenticity of the news they have. After Qatari Muslim scholar of Egyptian descent Yousuf Al Qaradawi transgressed on the UAE and offended it during a Friday prayer sermon last month from a Qatari mosque, Kuwaiti cleric Nabil Al Awadi, who apparently belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, hit out at the UAE without having tangible evidence in hand on the backdrop of dismissing eight Kuwaiti undergraduates enrolled in UAE’s universities. However, the state-run news agency Wam denied that the Kuwaiti students were dismissed arbitrarily, but justified that they have been dismissed because of flouting university rules and regulations. Meanwhile, the social networking websites Twitter saw lots of tweets that denounced Al Awadi’s acts for raising groundless offences against the UAE without ascertaining of whether they are true or not before he posted them on his social networking pages. In reply to Al Awadi’s attack against the UAE, Minister of State for UAE Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that the transgression by the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading members and figures on the UAE denotes and reflects the despair of those who were given a chance, but failed to seize the occasion. The UAE, he said, was said to be an example of success and achievement. “Trying to make up accusations and blame the UAE for–though they contradict what really is– is a silly losing bet.” “The UAE has the full right to protect its society, maintain and preserve its sovereignty, and safeguard lives of its citizens,” he stated. mustafa@khaleejtimes.com For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
New curbs on carrying rupees to India
New curbs on carrying rupees to India Issac John / 17 February 2014 Under the amended Customs Baggage Declaration Regulations Indian citizens will no longer be required to fill immigration forms when they return from abroad. Passengers entering India through its international airports will have to specifically declare Indian currency at the customs if the value exceeds Rs10,000. Effective from March 1, under the new customs rules, passengers arriving at the country’s 19 international airports, will also have to specifically declare, for the first time, prohibited goods and dutiable items, including gold jewellery and gold bullion exceeding the free allowance. However, under the amended Customs Baggage Declaration Regulations Indian citizens will no longer be required to fill immigration forms when they return from abroad. They have to fill up the immigration form only when they go out of the country. In a new detailed form, passengers will have to give details of countries visited in the past six days and mention the passport number on the new customs declaration form. A notification issued on February 10 by the finance ministry said from March 1, passengers must fill out a new detailed customs form that also asks them to declare number of baggage, including hand baggage. The new ‘Indian Customs Declaration Form’ will be different from the detachable perforated strip, which is a part of the current immigration card. For the first time the Declaration Form carries additional fields for declaration of dutiable and prohibited goods, which will help authorities in checking customs duty frauds and keep a record of gold jewellery and bullion being brought into the country. Old fields like declaration of satellite phone, foreign currency exceeding $5,000 or equivalent, aggregate value of foreign exchange including currency exceeding $10,000 or equivalent, meat, meat products, dairy products, fish or poultry products and seeds, plants, fruits, flowers and other planting material have been retained in the new format. Male passengers are now allowed to carry gold worth up to Rs50,000 and female passengers twice as much. Non-resident Indians can take foreign exchange, but they have to declare amounts exceeding $5,000 or equivalent or when the total value of foreign exchange (currencies, travellers cheques) exceeds $10,000. India’s has 19 international airports in Srinagar, Amritsar, Jaipur, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Nagpur, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Goa, Bangalore, Chennai, Calicut, Coimbatore,Tiruchirapalli, Cochin, Trivandrum and Port Blair. In August 2013, the Reserve Bank of India slapped new foreign exchange controls restricting the amount of dollars Indian companies and individuals can spend overseas, and banned people from buying property in foreign countries and imposed fresh curbs on gold imports as part of a strategy to shore up the rupee. Under amended rules, an individual can spend $75,000 from the earlier $200,000 in any given year. Companies can now invest only up to 100 per cent of their networth in overseas locations, a fourth of the previous level of 400 per cent. issacjon@khaleejtimes.com For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Lebanon forms government after 10-month deadlock
Lebanon forms government after 10-month deadlock (Reuters) / 16 February 2014 Prime Minister Tammam Salam hopes the new government would allow Lebanon to hold presidential elections before May. Lebanon announced a new government on Saturday, breaking a 10-month political deadlock during which spillover violence from neighbouring Syria worsened internal instability. A caretaker government has run the country since former Prime Minister Najib Mikati resigned in March as parties aligned with the Hezbollah movement and a Sunni-led rival bloc pursued a power struggle exacerbated by their support for opposing sides in Syria’s almost three-year-old civil war. “A government in the national interest was formed in a spirit of inclusivity,” new Prime Minister Tammam Salam declared on live television. He said he hoped the new government would allow Lebanon to hold presidential elections before President Michel Suleiman’s mandate expires in May and finally conduct parliamentary polls that were postponed last year due to the political impasse. “I extend my hand to all the leaders and I am relying on their wisdom to reach these goals and I call on all of them together to make concessions in the interest of our national project,” he said. Parliament designated the Sunni lawmaker as prime minister in April 2013, but he had been unable to form a cabinet for months due to rivalries between the Hezbollah-dominated March 8 bloc and the March 14 alliance, led by the Sunni Future Party. Former Energy Minister Gebran Bassil, from the March 8 bloc, becomes foreign minister. Former Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, also from March 8, takes the finance portfolio. Nouhad Machnouk, a March 14 legislator, was named interior minister. Salam said his “national interest government” had a mandate to fight mounting security problems, which he linked to Syria. “We must also deal with our complicated economic and social issues, the most important of which is the growing number of refugees from our Syrian brothers and the burdens this has placed on Lebanon,” he said. Sectarian violence has erupted sporadically in the past year, particularly in the north, and car bombings targeting both security and political targets have increased dramatically, with Hezbollah-dominated areas being the most frequent target. “We want this new government to open the doors for a complete settlement and to get the country back on the train to stability,” Finance Minister Khalil told Reuters by telephone. Salam had tried again to form a government last month, but was thwarted by a row over who would hold the energy portfolio, a ministry given extra weight by the discovery of potential gas and oil reserves off Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast. The Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a Hezbollah ally, had insisted former Energy Minister Bassil keep his post. The dispute was finally resolved with the appointment of Arthur Nazarian, from the FPM-aligned Tashnag, a small Armenian party. “The top priority of this government will be stability and security, and also to improve people’s daily life, and I think one of the essential things that is important to all Lebanese is the petroleum issue,” Bassil told a news conference. Salam had earlier made a deal with political parties that requires all cabinet roles to be rotated among different religious groups in each new government, so that no sect can indefinitely dominate a particular ministry. Lebanon, still struggling to recover from its own 1975-1990 civil war, has found its internal rifts aggravated by the conflict in Syria, whose sectarian divisions mirror its own. The Future party supports the anti-Assad uprising led largely by the Syria’s Sunni majority. Syria’s war has stoked a region-wide struggle for influence involving Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-ruled states against Iran and its Shia allies in Lebanon and Iraq. The Lebanese cabinet deal could signal that those powers want to stem the sectarian violence convulsing Syria and rippling across Lebanon, Iraq and other countries. In a televised speech on Friday, Future party head Saad Hariri, a former prime minister who threw his weight behind a unity government with March 8 last month, vowed to tackle sectarian radicalism within his own Sunni sect. He also called on Hezbollah to pull its forces out Syria to prevent a “sectarian holocaust” in Lebanon. For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
