Thailands New Program Will Provide Up To $14,000 In Medical Coverage For Visitors

In an effort to entice travelers back after the pandemic, Thailand has launched a program to provide up to $14,000 in medical coverage in the event of an accident, the country's tourism minister announced on Thursday. Under the new plan, the government will pay up to 500,000 baht ($14,000) in expenses and up to one million baht in compensation in the event of a death. The kingdom's vital tourism industry was severely impacted by travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and arrivals have not recovered as quickly as officials had hoped.According to AFP, the new Thailand Traveler Safety program launched on January 1 and will run through August 31. Sudawan Wangsuphakijkosol is the minister of tourism. "The campaign aims to assure foreign tourists that Thailand is safe and everyone will be under good care," she stated. For a long time, young travelers from all over the world who are looking for sun, sand, and excitement have been drawn to the kingdom. However, mishaps are not unusual, and in the past few months, there have been multiple accounts of young Europeans being left with large medical bills and insufficient insurance.The Thai government makes it clear that mishaps brought on by "negligence, intent, illegal acts" or reckless behavior are not covered by the program. Travelers can sign up for the program at tts.go.th, the website for Thailand Traveller Safety. In 2023, there were about 28 million tourists to Thailand, up from 11 million in the previous year but still far less than the 40 million that arrived in 2019, the final year before the pandemic.

High Fives For The Adani Group Following

International rating agencies have upgraded and reaffirmed the credit ratings for Adani Group companies, which is a significant boost to the Adani Group. This includes Moody's and S&P reiterating their ratings for eight companies and giving five entities a stable outlook. All of the Adani Group's companies' ratings have been maintained by Fitch, a reputable rating agency that has a stable outlook and supports the upward trend. The collective rating actions are the result of consistent quarter-over-quarter strong performance, availability of capital at market-see-through prices, and lack of tail risk that could potentially cause a downturn.A company's credit rating serves as an indicator of its ability to meet its financial obligations, and changes to these ratings frequently have an impact on stock prices. In a statement, Moody's emphasized that the Adani Group had successfully completed a number of debt transactions, including refinancing and acquiring new loan facilities. The Group has finished a number of debt transactions in the intervening time, such as refinancing and acquiring new loan facilities, indicating its continuous availability of debt capital at a fair price. The Adani Group's consistent access to the equity market was demonstrated by the report's mention of high-profile equity transactions by significant institutional and strategic investors like GQG and Qatar Investment Authority.In February of last year, the ratings of the four companies were revised to 'negative' following a stock market meltdown in the Adani Group, which was caused by accusations of market manipulation made by Hindenburg Research. Since the Supreme Court ruled that market regulator SEBI was not responsible for any apparent regulatory failure, the Adani Group is no longer facing charges. S&P said that the fact that most regulatory investigations into the Adani Group ended without finding any evidence of wrongdoing has decreased downside risk. Restored access to funding is reflected in the repayment of all promoter loans associated with equity prices, share prices, and bank loans raised by various group entities at competitive rates.The high credit quality of the Adani Group, with steady and predictable cash flows across all of its issuers, is highlighted by these rating upgrades and affirmations. Now, among Indian private companies, the Adani Portfolio has the highest number of issuances of Investment Grade (BBB-/Baa3 and higher) ratings, which are equivalent to India's sovereign rating.

Congress mastered art of spoiling accomplishments: FM Sitharaman in RS

Accusing the UPA government of mismanaging the price situation after taking charge from the Vajpayee government in 2004, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday mocked the grand old party, saying 'gur ko gobar karna inki maastaree hai'.Replying to a short-duration discussion on the 'White Paper on the Indian Economy' in the Rajya Sabha, Sitharaman said inflation in the last year of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government was below 4 per cent. "Through their ill-targeted, reckless fiscal policy, ill-targeted subsidies and wasteful expenditure, all done for political gains, inflation went high during the UPA rule," she said.In AICC's Session in Jaipur, she said, former prime minister Manmohan Singh admitted that handling inflation was a shortcoming of the UPA government. "Gur ko gobar karna inki (Congress) maastaree hai (Congress has a mastery of ruining something that has been accomplished)," she said.The minister outlined the steps taken by the Modi government after 2014 to manage inflation in the country.In the last nine years of the Modi government, retail inflation has been mostly around 5 per cent, and it has never crossed 8 per cent. "And that Congress is lecturing us now on how to manage inflation," Sitharaman noted.She further said the Modi-led government toiled for 10 years to bring the economy back on track, taking India from the 'Fragile Five' to the fifth largest economy in the world. India is soon going to become the world's third-largest economy.On the contrary, in the Modi government, the Prime Minister personally monitors programmes and projects and their progress through the PRAGATI portal by holding video conferences with officers even at the district level. Up to the 43rd edition of PRAGATI, 348 pending projects worth Rs 17.36 lakh crores have been reviewed, their progress is happening, and they are coming to a conclusion."This kind of effort never happened earlier during the UPA era," Sitharaman said.Giving reasons for coming out with the White Paper now, Sitharaman said a similar exercise earlier would have impacted the confidence of institutions, investors, and the people. As an elected government, she said it is imperative to inform the public and Parliament about the true picture of the economy during the UPA regime and the efforts taken by the Modi government to revive the economy.In an apparent jibe at the erstwhile National Advisory Council headed by Sonia Gandhi, the finance minister said India needs a clean and accountable governance and not governance through an extra-constitutional body.    

Paytm Payments Bank Is Looking To Employ Outside Compliance

Four people with knowledge of the situation claim that Paytm Payments Bank Ltd. has sent out a request for proposals to outside auditors. According to the individuals cited above, who requested to remain anonymous, the bank only made this RFP available to outside auditors. As a result, it is not in the public domain.According to the three individuals mentioned above, the goal of this RFP is to audit the bank for compliance and the know-your-customer procedure.As stated by the first person quoted above, Paytm Payments Bank also hopes to demonstrate to the Reserve Bank of India that it is fully compliant by starting this audit. One97 Communications Ltd.'s associate company came under heavy fire from the RBI on January 31 for "persistent non-compliance" and serious "supervisory concerns." The regulator stated in its directives that Paytm Payments Bank will not be able to take new credit transactions, top-ups, or deposits into its accounts after February 29.

Fintech major Paytm set for small win as govt close to approving investment

Shruti Srivastava and Sankalp Phartiyal Paytm is close to winning India’s approval to invest in its key payments gateway arm, a decision which has been pending for two years and which would give the troubled fintech company some respite. The government grew more supportive of the investment after Paytm’s Chinese shareholder Ant Group Co. lowered its stake in the Indian firm, people familiar with the matter said, with one of the people saying the approval could come within days. A federal approval is needed because Ant’s stake in Paytm makes its outlay in the Paytm Payments Services Ltd. arm a direct foreign investment.   The investment allows Paytm to beef up its arm which processes online transactions. While the investment is less than Rs 1 billion ($12 million), an approval would signal Paytm is still in the government’s good books even as the country’s banking regulator has tightened its grip on the company.  The Reserve Bank of India in 2022 held back Paytm Payments Services’ application to become a so-called payments aggregator — an entity which makes it easier for online retailers and merchants to accept customers’ digital payments. The banking regulator also asked the unit to seek permission from the federal government for a past investment from Paytm, whose official name is One97 Communications Ltd. At the time, Ant owned a nearly 25% stake in One97, and New Delhi had stepped up scrutiny of investments from China.Paytm’s billionaire founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma acquired 10.3% stake from Ant last year in a cashless deal that made him the biggest shareholder in One97 with just over 24% equity. The deal likely boosted the government’s confidence toward giving Paytm Payments Services security clearance for foreign direct investment, the people said, declining to be named as the matter is private. The proposal will now go to an inter-ministerial committee for a final decision, one of the people said.  Paytm’s application to qualify as a payments aggregator is still pending before the RBI, which in 2022 also barred the company from onboarding new online merchants. The RBI approves such applications if they fulfill regulatory requirements and match compliance norms it has set.       

Govt urges RBI to issue FAQs for Paytm users

“The action against Paytm should be followed up by some sort of clarification. RBI has been urged to bring in FAQs as many customers won't be aware of many issues,” an official said. Given the broad customer base of Paytm — India’s biggest fintech that has a wide presence among both individual users and merchants — the government is learnt to have nudged the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to issue a follow-up clarification in the form of frequently asked questions (FAQs). “The action against Paytm should be followed up by some sort of clarification. RBI has been urged to bring in FAQs as many customers won’t be aware of many issues,” an official said. Onboarding of customers without proper verification of know-your-customer (KYC) norms is learnt to have been one of the key issues for prompting the action by the RBI against Paytm last week. The RBI had taken action in the form of imposing penalty against Paytm Payments Bank last year and even then the issue did not get resolved, so the action by the RBI this time around is unlikely to be rolled back, the official said. On Tuesday, Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma had met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and RBI officials, days after the regulator imposed a ban on Paytm Payments Bank (PPBL). On January 31, the RBI barred Paytm Payments Bank from accepting deposits or top-ups in any customer account, prepaid instruments, wallets, FASTags and NCMC card after February 29, 2024, in the wake of persistent non-compliances and material supervisory concerns. The crackdown on PPBL came after a comprehensive system audit report and subsequent compliance validation report of the external auditors, the RBI had said. The RBI had directed that the Nodal Accounts of One97 Communications Ltd (OCL), which owns Paytm, and Paytm Payments Services Ltd are to be terminated at the earliest, in any case not later than February 29, 2024. Paytm Payments Bank has been facing RBI scrutiny since 2018. The RBI’s recent action on PPBL came after it was found that the bank had violated KYC norms and also had linked the same PAN to multiple customers. It was also observed that the bank was allowing transactions above the permissible limit, which raised concerns over money laundering.   

Tata Sons to invest $1 billion more in digital arm

Tata Sons is poised to invest about $1 billion in Tata Digital, over the next few years, people familiar with the matter said. This comes as the parent of the diversified Tata group puts a pause on external fundraising for the ecommerce entity, which houses the superapp, Tata Neu as it reviews its digital strategy with the appointment of a new chief executive officer this week, the people said. Tata Digital will only tap external investors after the new CEO sets down to focus on execution and scale, one of the persons said. Earlier this week, Tata Digital appointed Naveen Tahilyani, the former managing director of Tata AIA Life Insurance, as its CEO & MD. Tahilyani replaced Pratik Pal who had been holding the charge since the company’s inception in 2019.Tata Sons has invested more than $2 billion in Neu so far and has board approvals for further capital infusion over a five-year period, the people said.  A spokesperson for Tata Sons did not respond to ET’s queries. Multiple people aware of the management changes said Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran wanted a senior hand with consumer background to steer the next stage of expansion for Neu. “The top brass wants Tata Digital to work on making its operational structure more efficient and agile and scale up the business,” a person said.   

‘WTO not place for discussing labour, environment issues’

International trade experts have pointed out that developed nations have been pushing for non-trade issues in the garb of sustainability to reverse the growing trade deficit that it has with the developing nations. rules of the WTO but also have systemic implications for international law as a whole, since unilateral action undermines multilaterally negotiated rights and obligations of countries,” the official said. Last year in May, India had submitted a paper in the WTO to express its concern over use of environmental measures as protectionist non-tariff measures emphasizing unilateral measures such as EU’s carbon tax and deforestation law could disrupt global trade. India has been joined by countries including Russia, and Brazil, who have also flagged similar concerns over European Union’s (EU) carbon tax and deforestation regulation in a meeting of the WTO in Geneva, arguing that these measures would affect their industries. The EU has decided to impose a carbon tax CBAM on certain sectors like steel, cement, fertilizer, aluminum and hydrocarbon products from 2026. In 2022, India’s 27 per cent exports of iron, steel and aluminum products worth $8.2 billion went to the EU. India’s exports of products like coffee, leather hides and paperboard worth $1.3 billion annually to the EU will get impacted due to the deforestation regulation adopted by the EU last year, as per think-tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI).  

Paytm asks merchants to link QRs to other banks’ accounts

Following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) strictures on Paytm Payments Bank (PPB) last week, Paytm has directed its field sales executives to migrate merchant QR codes from their existing PPB accounts to accounts with other banks. For example, Manoj Kumar, who works for a retail chain ‘More’ in Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, said that representatives of the fintech major asked them to move the store’s funds from PPB to other bank accounts before February 29. The process has started over the weekend itself and the fintech major is trying to sensitise as many merchants as possible before the deadline of February 29 to ensure that their business transactions can continue unhindered. “We have been asked to migrate as many QRs as possible to alternate bank accounts by the end of the month,” said area sales executives Fe spoke to. This comes against the backdrop of panic that has spread among a section of merchants. As per a survey of 5,000 retailers on Paytm by Kirana Club, 68% of the respondents said that they have decreased their trust on the firm since RBI’s announcement. While merchants need to shift their PPB accounts, the good news is that the QR code, soundbox or card machine will not require any physical changes, the company confirmed. “In instances, where our associate PPB operates as a back-end bank, these services can seamlessly be transitioned to other partner banks. This means that for our merchant partners, there will be no disruptions, no need to revisit existing setups, and no additional effort,” said a company spokesperson.  

Setting India on the innovation journey

Innovation has often been an important aspect that distinguishes entities across the world. A business that keeps innovating survives and thrives. A country that inculcates innovation in its society doesn’t only keep the economy roaring but also empowers entrepreneurship and keeps its businesses growing. The developed block of countries and their businesses understood this advantage and continued their innovation journey by attracting the best global minds to their geographies.  India, in the past few years, has started this journey, and the trajectory of becoming a $10 trillion economy and a developed nation hinges significantly on its transformation to a scientifically advanced country and a global leader in innovation. Government initiatives aimed at fostering creativity in education and incentivising careers in science underscore India’s steadfast commitment towards nurturing its innovation ecosystem. India’s ancient history is full of innovators and researchers who were constantly contributing to research and innovation that has withstood the test of time.  India’s remarkable rise in the Global Innovation Index (GII), soaring to the 40th position out of 132 countries in 2023, reflects its resolute dedication to promoting innovation. The GII, complemented by the India Innovation Index published by Niti Aayog and the Institute for Competitiveness, also empowers states to measure their innovation-driven progress against global benchmarks. In a landmark move, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman outlined a bold vision for India’s technological future as she presented the interim Budget 2024. Central to her announcement was the allocation of a substantial Rs 1 trillion corpus to bolster technology research, signalling a transformative leap towards fostering innovation and self-reliance. While the specifics are awaited, the announcement heralds a new era for India’s tech landscape, highlighting the pivotal role of innovation as the cornerstone of national development.  

Morgan Stanley sees opportunity, buys shares worth ₹244 crore

Morgan Stanley on Friday bought shares worth ₹244 crore in Paytm's parent company One97 Communications, representing a 0.8 per cent stake Financial services giant Morgan Stanley on Friday made an investment in Paytm's parent company, One97 Communications, by acquiring shares worth ₹244 crore through an open market transaction.Morgan Stanley, via its affiliate Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) Pte - ODI, purchased 50 lakh shares on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), representing a 0.8 per cent stake in Paytm. The average price per share was ₹487.20, resulting in a total deal size of ₹243.60 crore. However, details about the sellers remain undisclosed, PTI reported.This comes after the banking sector regulator has found potential violations, including the misuse of customer documentation rules and non-disclosure of material transactions. Paytm shares price faced another 20 per cent decline on the NSE. This adds to a total of 36 per cent drop in the share price in just 2 days after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed Paytm Payments Bank Ltd (PPBL), an associate of Paytm, to cease accepting deposits or top-ups in various accounts, wallets, and instruments from March 1. Morgan Stanley, via its affiliate Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) Pte - ODI, purchased 50 lakh shares on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), representing a 0.8 per cent stake in Paytm. The average price per share was ₹487.20, resulting in a total deal size of ₹243.60 crore. However, details about the sellers remain undisclosed, PTI reported.In related news, there are reports that the RBI is contemplating revoking the license of Paytm Payments Bank as early as next month.    

Orios Venture Partners sells nearly 3% stake in Country Delight for Rs 225 crore

Orios Venture Partners has made a partial exit from direct-to-consumer (D2C) fresh food brand Country Delight for around Rs 225 crore. People familiar with the matter said the early-stage venture capital firm has sold about a 3% stake in Country Delight to Temasek-backed asset management group Seviora. Orios had invested Rs 15 crore in Country Delight from its Fund-I, of which the first cheque of Rs 3 crore was infused in 2017. The firm had subsequently invested additional sums in Country Delight through its later funds.Across all its investments in the D2C company, Orios held 21-22% stake in Country Delight prior to the partial exit.On January 5, ET reported that the Gurugram-based company raised around $20 million (around Rs 164 crore) in a funding round led by one of its existing investors, Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek. Another existing backer, Venturi Partners, also participated, in addition to Seviora, which invested through its agriculture and food-focused investment vehicle Seviora T3F Fund. The round valued Country Delight at around $820 million. Orios launched Fund-I in 2014, with a final close of Rs 300 crore in 2015. In January, the Mumbai-based investment firm announced that it had returned the initial corpus to its limited partners, or sponsors of the fund. Among the various sectors, Fund-I allocated 27% of its corpus to ecommerce marketplaces, followed by D2C at 18%, and healthtech at 14%. Key portfolio companies that emerged from the fund include Country Delight, PharmEasy, Intelligence Node, and Zostel. Orios also counts BatterySmart, Vedantu, Ixigo, Mobikwik and CarDekho among its portfolio companies. It had also backed beleaguered car repair startup GoMechanic but had to eventually write off the investment after GoMechanic’s founders admitted to financial wrongdoing. The Rehan Yar Khan-led investment firm also saw two of its managing partners Anup Jain and Rajeev Suri depart in September 2023.