Category: South Asia

June 04, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka and India has an opportunity to move towards closer economic ties as the end of a 30-year war opened up new opportunities, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said. “We have a common heritage in trading with each other and the rest of the world,” President Rajapaksa told a business forum […]

SINGAPORE, June 2, 2010 (AFP) – India, Indonesia and the Philippines have Asia’s most inefficient bureaucracies, with red tape a constant blight to citizens and deterrent to foreign investment, a survey said Wednesday. Regional financial centres Singapore and Hong Kong have the most efficient bureaucracies, according to the survey of expatriate business executives by the […]

NEW DELHI, May 30, 2010 (AFP) – Sanjay Malhotra, the owner of an Indian travel company, knows his target market — so he seeks out and recruits gay-friendly guides, taxi drivers and hotel managers. “Nobody who works for me laughs or passes a silly remark if two men are obviously partners. They treat gays as […]

MUMBAI, May 30, 2010 (AFP) – British bank Standard Chartered on Sunday said it had raised 530 million dollars through a first-of-a-kind sale of shares in India. The lender, which makes most of its profits in Asia, will issue 240 million Indian Depository Receipts (IDRs) at a price of 104 rupees each, the bank said […]

MUMBAI, May 23, 2010 (AFP) – India’s warring billionaire Ambani brothers, who have battled in court over gas supplies, on Sunday called a truce and scrapped their contentious business pacts signed in 2006. Reliance Industries, led by Mukesh Ambani, and Reliance ADAG, led by Anil Ambani, pledged in a statement to create “an environment of […]

MUMBAI, May 24, 2010 (AFP) – Nissan Motor said Monday that production its Micra model had started in India and would be on sale from July to compete in the country’s fast-growing passenger car market. Bookings will open Tuesday for the small hatchback, which is being produced by the Indian arm of Japan’s Nissan in […]

MUMBAI, May 22, 2010 (AFP) – US healthcare group Abbott Laboratories has announced a 3. 7 billion-dollar buyout of the generic drugs unit of India’s Piramal Healthcare, as it moves to boost its presence in emerging markets. Abbott, which announced the acquisition in a statement late Friday, said the deal would make it the leading […]

CAIRO, May 23, 2010 (AFP) – Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Sunday that his country plans to boost trade with Egypt, during a visit to Cairo where he met with President Hosni Mubarak. Qureshi, who was accompanied on his trip by several ministers and a large delegation of businessmen, praised the “excellent” […]

BANGALORE, May 22, 2010 (AFP) – Some of the seven survivors who crawled or were carried from the burning remains of a plane that crashed in India on Saturday told of their escape amid scenes of horror and death. At least 159 people died after the plane overshot the runaway and plunged down a steep […]

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2010 (AFP) – Facebook is disappointed at being blocked in Pakistan over a contest that encourages users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and may make the offending page inaccessible to users there, the social network said late Wednesday. “We are very disappointed with the Pakistani courts’ decision to block Facebook […]

NEW DELHI, May 18, 2010 (AFP) – In a labyrinthine district of New Delhi, Kalpana Singh is busy knocking on doors, straining to make out house numbers scratched on the walls and warmly greeting residents with a smile. She is on a mission to record and document the occupants of the teeming and decrepit area […]

May 16, 2010 (AFP) – The Maldives has offered to take two detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, in what it described as a humanitarian gesture, the foreign minister said Sunday. US President Barack Obama, who has vowed to close the “war on terror” camp, has asked […]