11 APRIL 2015: India to buy 36 rafale plane from France

Ø  Marking a breakthrough in the protracted talks for striking the French Rafale jet deal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced here on Friday that India would buy 36 of the fighter planes in flyaway condition, citing critical operational requirements of the Indian Air Force. Mr. Modi made the announcement at a joint press conference with French President Francois Hollande after their summit talks at Elysee Palace. An agreement on proceeding forward on the stalled nuclear project in Jaitapur in Maharashtra was among the 17 pacts signed after the talks between Modi and Hollande. The Jaitapur project, where French company Areva is to set up six nuclear reactors with a total power generation capacity of about 10,000 MW, has been stuck for long because of differences over the cost of the power generated. The agreement between India’s Larsen and Toubro and France’s Areva is aimed at cost reduction by increasing localisation and to improve the financial viability of the Jaitapur project. The original deal was for 126 fighter aircraft under the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft contest, which began in 2007. Dassault Rafale was shortlisted in 2012 after rigorous evaluation but negotiations have been stuck over pricing and delivery guarantees for the aircraft manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) in India.

Ø  Now, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to get his hands on this temple gold, estimated at about 3,000 tonnes, more than two-thirds of the gold held in the U.S bullion depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, to help tackle India’s chronic trade imbalance. The Modi government is planning to launch a scheme in May that would encourage temples to deposit their gold with banks in return for interest payments. The government would melt the gold and loan it to jewellers to meet an insatiable appetite for gold and reduce economically-crippling gold imports, which accounted for 28 per cent of India’s trade deficit in the year ending March 2013. India’s annual gold imports of 800 to 1,000 tonnes could be cut by a quarter if temples decided to participate in the scheme. But some Hindu devotees are not happy with the idea that their offerings could be melted down.

Ø  Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro are expected to hold talks on Saturday, a U.S. official said, raising the prospect of the first substantive meeting between an American and Cuban leader in more than five decades. Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro are in Panama for the two-day Summit of the Americas, Cuba’s first, raising expectations of a landmark follow-up to their historic announcement on December 17 that their countries would restore ties severed since 1961.