Caracas, Nov 4 : Venezuela has called foreign creditors to a November 13 meeting in Caracas aiming to restructure its estimated USD 150 billion debt, as credit- rating agencies dealt the crisis-stricken country another blow with double downgrades.
Standard & Poor’s yesterday cut the nation’s long-term foreign currency rating to “CC” from “CCC-” over growing concerns of the risk of a debt default in the oil-producing country, while fellow agency Fitch cut the long-term debt rating to “C” from “CC.”
The increasingly dire warnings followed President Nicolas Maduro’s calls to “investors across the whole world and to holders of Venezuelan debt” to attend a Caracas meeting November 13 “to start a process to refinance and renegotiate the external debt.”
His vice president, Tareck El Aissami, who is leading a commission tasked with the restructuring, said the government is seeking “sovereign commitments” for a debt renegotiation.
Flanked by the ministers in charge of the economy, finance and energy, El Aissami confirmed the country had yesterday started to pay out USD 1.2 billion due to service the debt of state oil company PDVSA.
Maduro announced on Thursday that Venezuela would begin talks to refinance the debt immediately after that payment was made.
El Aissami, one of the Venezuelan officials sanctioned by the United States due to alleged ties to drug trafficking, said the talks with creditors will “establish the groundwork to renegotiate the terms of the foreign debt of the Republic and of PDVSA.”
“We will begin a sovereign renegotiation of our debt and we will continue to comply fully, transparently, as our government has done historically,” he said in a televised statement.
He noted that since 2014 Venezuela, which has the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, has paid nearly USD 72 billion in principal and interest payments on the debt.
Maduro has repeatedly blamed the United States for the country’s woes, saying Washington is trying to strangle Venezuela with sanctions.
US sanctions imposed on Venezuela in August ban US trade in any new bonds issued by the Venezuelan government or PDVSA — a needed step in any restructuring.
El Aissami denounced the “continued aggression, permanent sabotage, blockade and financial persecution” he said US President Donald Trump has imposed on the people of Venezuela.
But he said the sanctions really hurt bondholders and financial institutions.
Much of Venezuela’s debt is held by China and Russia, to be paid off in oil — the resource that underpins the Venezuelan economy. The country has less than USD 10 billion in foreign currency reserves.
Analysts were pessimistic about Venezuela’s chances of successfully restructuring its debt.
“Venezuela’s options to keep up with its payments are shrinking rapidly, mainly because any restructuring needs to be matched with clear and credible economic reforms capable of winning the trust and support of bond-holders,” said Diego Moya-Ocampos, an analyst at London-based IHS Markit.
Another analyst, Asdrubal Oliveros, director of Ecoanalitica in Caracas, said that while investors had anticipated a debt renegotiation, they wanted “a plan of restructuring and reorganization, of putting accounts in order — this isn’t that plan.”
According to estimates by private consultancies, Venezuela has a debt mountain of USD 150 billion, of which USD 45 billion is public debt, USD 45 billion is owed by PDVSA, USD 23 billion is owed to China, and USD 8 billion is owed to Russia.
A default could see investors try to lay claim to PDVSA assets, including tankers, oil in shipment and subsidiaries such as the Citgo refiner and service station network in the US.
“The government has mortgaged the future of Venezuelans in an irresponsible way,” said Stalin Gonzalez, head of a grouping of opposition lawmakers who dominate Venezuela’s parliament.
Venezuela’s economy is in dire shape, shrinking by 36 percent in the past four years, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and is now suffering hyperinflation estimated to top 2,300 per cent next year.
Production of its primary resource, oil, is declining, in large part because of rundown PDVSA infrastructure and neglected fields.
The IMF yesterday sanctioned Venezuela for not providing economic data as required of all its 189 member states. The move carries no financial penalty, but is another sign of Venezuela’s strained relations with the fund.
Venezuela was failing to give data on the operations of the social security institute, exports and imports, and other key economic indicators, the Washington-based lender said.
New Delhi, Nov 4: The Supreme Court today disposed of 14 petitions seeking its nod to deposit demonetised notes and said that a five-judge Constitution Bench would deal with this aspect besides deciding the validity of Centre’s decision to demonetise currency notes.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said the Constitution Bench would also deal with the individual plea of those who could not deposit their currency notes during the window period provided by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Some petitioners claim that they have not challenged the constitutional validity of either certain provisions of the RBI Act and Centre’s November 8, 2016, notification, rather they want to deposit their demonetised currency notes.
“Our hard-earned money has been confiscated without due process of law and without granting fair opportunity,” lawyer Pranav Sachdeva, appering for one of the petitioners said adding the Constitution bench be constituted as expeditiously as possible.
The bench asked the petitioners to file two to three page-long interlocutory applications in the pending petitions which would be dealt by the constitution bench later.
It then disposed of individual petitions filed by 14 persons seeking permission to deposit currency notes on the ground that they could not deposit the notes with banks due to some unavoidable and compelling reasons.
The apex court had on December 16, last year referred to a Constitution Bench, the issue of validity of government’s decision to demonetise currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500.
While holding that the challenge to November 8 notification was in the arena of “public importance” as complaints of inconvenience have been brought, it said there was a need for a direction for referring it to a larger bench for “authoritative pronouncement by five judges”.
Moscow, Nov 3: Russia dismissed today a report by a UN-led panel that blamed the Syrian regime for a sarin attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun and said the use of the substance was part of a “theatrical performance” by rebels.
A panel including diplomats and military officers presented Moscow’s version of events complete with diagrams and satellite imagery, saying the Syrian regime did not carry the blame for the April attack which killed over 80 people.
“We believe that the report turned out to be superficial, unprofessional and amateurish,” said Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the foreign ministry’s security and disarmament department.
“The mission did their research from a distance, that in itself is a scandal.”
He said “the use of sarin has been confirmed” but insisted it was not delivered by an aerial bomb but rather used “as a theatrical performance, a provocation” by the rebels.
At least 87 people died on April 4 this year when sarin nerve agent projectiles were fired into Khan Sheikhun, a town in the Idlib province of northwestern Syria.
Images of dead and dying victims, including young children, in the aftermath of the attack provoked global outrage and a US cruise missile strike on a regime air base.
A joint panel by the United Nations and the world’s chemical watchdog Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded that the Syrian regime was responsible, and that the air force had dropped a bomb on the town, releasing the deadly nerve agent.
Russia and Syria have, however, presented an alternative theory that an explosive device was set off on the ground.
Ulyanov today suggested the sarin gas was poured inside the crater left by the bomb.
Ulyanov spoke as part of a panel of foreign ministry, air force and other Russian officials presenting slides that showed elaborate diagrams of regime war planes’ trajectories and satellite images in an effort to cast doubt on the UN report.
The Russian officials also showed video footage of rescue personnel working in the crater wearing “only respirators and cotton gloves.”
Ulyanov claimed the video had been filmed after rebels detonated the bomb on the asphalt and before the sarin gas was poured into the crater.
“If it were an aerial bomb, the bomb’s tail would be in the crater, but there are no traces of an aerial bomb,” he said.
Ulyanov also said witnesses cited in the UN report were not confirmed to have been in the town on April 4 and “could have been sunning themselves on a beach in the United Arab Emirates.”
“The verdict against Damascus that has been issued so confidently turned out to be baseless,” he said. “You cannot issue a verdict against Damascus based on newspaper publications.”
Ulyanov’s intervention came after US President Donald Trump’s White House issued a string statement denouncing Moscow’s previous attempts to undermine the work of the UN- OPCW’s Joint Investigative Mechanism.
“This unconscionable attack marks the fourth time that the JIM has confirmed that the Assad regime used chemical weapons, underscoring the brutal and horrifying barbarism of Bashar al-Assad and making the protection provided by Russia even more egregious,” Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee- Sanders said.
“Russia’s attempts to undermine and eliminate the JIM show a callous disregard for the suffering and loss of life caused by the use of chemical weapons and an utter lack of respect for international norms,” she added.
Despite criticising the work of the UN-OPCW on the report, Ulyanov said Russia would present a draft resolution extending its mission in Syria, following a veto on a similar US proposal in the Security Council last week.
Russia previously opposed renewing the mandate of the panel, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism, prior to the release of the Khan Sheikhun report.
New Delhi, Nov 3: All unwelcome physical contact cannot be called sexual harassment unless it is in the nature of a sexually oriented behaviour, the Delhi High Court has said.
Justice Vibhu Bakhru, who made the observation, also said that even an accidental physical contact, though unwelcome, would not amount to sexual harassment.
“Similarly, a physical contact which has no undertone of a sexual nature and is not occasioned by the gender of the complainant may not necessarily amount to sexual harassment,” the court said.
The observations by the bench came during the hearing of an appeal by a CRRI scientist challenging the clean chit given by the complaints committee and disciplinary authority to her former senior colleague, whom she had accused of sexual harassment.
Both of them were working in the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) which is a part of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
The allegation pertained to an incident of April 2005 when the man had entered the laboratory where the woman was working and had snatched samples from her hand, thrown the materials and pushed her out of the room.
The woman had contended that any unwelcome physical contact would amount to sexual harassment.
The Complaints Committee after examining her complaint had concluded that “it was a case of altercation in the background of the uncongenial environment prevailing in the division”.
Terming the man’s conduct as deplorable, it had also said that while there was evidence of physical contact by the man, “the same was not a sexually determined behaviour but was in the nature of an altercation”.
The disciplinary authority had accepted the committee’s report and passed an order in October 2009 giving clean chit to the man accused of sexual harassment.
Agreeing with the committee’s finding, the high court said, “Undoubtedly, physical contact or advances would constitute sexual harassment provided such physical contact is a part of the sexually determined behaviour. Such physical contact must be in the context of a behaviour which is sexually oriented.”
The court also rejected the woman’s challenge to the constitution of the committee and the disciplinary authority, saying that it finds no infirmity in their set up.
Rae Bareli (UP), Nov 3: The toll in the explosion at NTPC’s Unchahar plant climbed to 29, with nine more deaths reported today, even as Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders descended on the accident site and demanded a judicial probe.
Union Power Minister R K Singh also arrived at the site to oversee relief measures in what is one of the worst tragedies at a power plant in recent history and even came face to face with Rahul Gandhi at one point.
Singh announced Rs 20 lakh ex-gratia for the next of kin of those killed in the accident.
The Centre also ordered a probe by the NTPC’s executive director into the incident while the state administration ordered a magisterial probe.
“Twenty nine persons have succumbed to injuries and 85 were being treated at hospitals in Rae Bareli and Lucknow,” the NTPC said in an official release.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, took a break from campaigning in Gujarat and met the victims and their families.
The Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat is represented by his mother, Congress president, Sonia Gandhi.
His office tweeted, “Labourers have said that the accident took place due to negligence and that there should be a judicial probe into the accident”.
I was sad to see the pain of victims of the NTPC incident and their families should get better compensation and government jobs, while the injured should get all possible help, the Congress vice president said.
Rahul Gandhi was accompanied by senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and UP Congress chief Raj Babbar. Azad claimed that a judicial inquiry was important as in the case of a government probe, facts could be concealed.
Uttar Pradesh Energy Minister Shrikant Sharma tweeted, “The Centre has constituted a committee to probe the accident.
The committee headed by executive director of NTPC will submit its report in 30 days.”
During his visit to the site, Rahul Gandhi was heard making enquiries about the number of workers deputed at the plant.
“People are saying that it (the plant unit) was run early (before schedule). It should not have been run that way. We will demand a probe,” he said while speaking to reporters.
Meanwhile, Union Power minister Singh announced a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh to the next of kin of those killed observing that the earlier ex-gratia was not enough.
This amount is in addition to the compensation provided under the workmen compensation rules, he said.
In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased.
“Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident,” the prime minister’s office said on Twitter.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is abroad on an official tour, has also announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured besides Rs 25,000 for the other injured workers.
Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) demanded a probe by a retired high court judge into the boiler explosion.
The families of the deceased should be given a Rs 50 lakh compensation, while those injured should get Rs 10 lakh, senior SP leader Ahmed Hasan said.
Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the UP government over the blast.
Expressing concern, the commission in a statement said that a “high-level probe into the matter is immediately required to ascertain the negligence and errors, if any, behind the incident, which involves the right to life”.
It said there was need to ensure that such tragedies do not recur. A detailed report is expected from the government within six weeks, the rights panel said.
New Delhi, Nov 2: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi used a Mirza Ghalib couplet and BJP leader Arun Jaitley some deft word play, each hitting out at the other party over conflicting views on the World Bank’s report on ‘ease of doing business’.
A day after the World Bank released its report that India had improved its ranking, Twitter was once again the playing field for the Congress and the BJP leaders.
Gandhi put out a tweet in Urdu, taking off from a famous Ghalib verse to say the Union finance minister was deluding himself.
“Sabko maloom hai ‘ease of doing business’ ki haqeeqat, lekin khud ko khush rakhne ke liye ‘Dr Jaitley’ ye khayal achha hai (everybody knows the reality of ease of doing business, but this thought, Dr Jaitley, is good to keep yourself happy).”
Jaitley said the UPA’s “ease of doing corruption” has been replaced by NDA’s “ease of doing business”, apparently hitting back at Gandhi’s jibe.
“The difference between the UPA and NDA – ‘The ease of doing corruption has been replaced by the ease of doing business’,” he said in his tweet.
According to the World Bank report released yesterday, India’s rank on the ‘ease of doing business’ scale has risen from 130 to 100 this year, helped by a slew of reforms in taxation, licensing, investor protection and bankruptcy resolution.
Addressing a press conference soon after the World Bank ranking was made public, Jaitley had said India is the only major country named for pursuing structural reforms.
Gandhi said at a rally in Gujarat today that Jaitley should ask small and mid-sized businessman if the ease of doing business had really improved.
“The entire country will shout and say ease of doing business is absent, you have destroyed it, your demonetisation and GST have ruined it,” he said.
New Delhi, Nov 2: The Supreme Court directed the Centre to place before it details regarding 1,581 cases involving MPs and MLAs, as declared by politicians at the time of filing their nominations during the 2014 general elections.
The apex court asked the government to apprise it as to how many of these 1,581 cases have been disposed of within one year and how many have ended either in conviction or acquittal of the accused.
A bench comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha also sought the details of criminal cases lodged against politicians from 2014 till date as well as on the disposal of these matters.
During the hearing, the Centre told the bench that decriminalisation of politics has to be done and it was not averse to the setting up of special courts to deal with cases involving politicians and speedy disposal of these matters.
It informed the bench that the recommendations of the Election Commission of India and the Law Commission favouring life-time disqualification of politicians convicted in criminal cases was under the active consideration of the government.
The bench directed the Centre to place before it the scheme for setting up of such special courts and also indicate the amount of funds that could be earmarked for the purpose.
The apex court asked the government to place these details before it within six weeks and fixed the matter for hearing on December 13.
The ECI supported the plea seeking life ban on politicians convicted in criminal cases and said they have already made recommendations on this to the Centre.
The top court was hearing petitions seeking to declare the provisions of the Representation of People (RP) Act, which bar convicted politician from contesting elections for six years after serving jail term, as ultra vires to the Constitution.
Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay has filed a PIL in the matter, while several others have come to the apex court as intervenors.
The apex court had on July 12 pulled up the ECI for not taking a clear stand on a plea seeking barring of convicted politicians for life.
The Centre, in its affidavit, had said the prayer sought by the petitioner seeking life-time bar on convicted lawmakers was not maintainable and the plea should be dismissed.
The petition has also sought a direction to the Centre and the EC to fix minimum educational qualification and a maximum age limit for persons contesting polls.
Washington, Nov 1 : Goa would host the inaugural India-US Ocean Dialogue beginning today, the state department has said.
The dialogue, aimed at promoting sustainable development of the Blue Economy, is being hosted by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO) in Goa.
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, Judith Garber will lead a high-powered American delegation.
Garber will be joined by Dr. Sunil Kumar Singh, Director of CSIR-NIO, and Joint Secretary Americas Division, from the Ministry of External Affairs Munu Mahawar.
She will participate in discussions about the Blue Economy, cooperation in sustainable marine resource management, fisheries governance, marine pollution, maritime law enforcement, and scientific research, State Department said.
According to the World Bank, the Blue Economy is sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health.