Adani may not get $900 mn Queensland govt loan

MELBOURNE: Indian energy giant Adani's controversy-hit Carmichael coal mine project in Australia may not receive a 900 million dollar loan after the Labour partyled Queensland government said it will exercise its veto to not support the financial assistance.

The 16.5 billion dollar Carmichael coal mine project, one of the world's largest, will start construction after being given the green light by the federal and Queensland state governments.

The Adani group had applied for Northern Australia Infrastructure facility loan (NAIF) worth 900 million dollars for building a train line to connect its mine to the coast.

Earlier this month before the election day, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced that her Labor party would veto the NAIF loan if it retains the power in the state. However, after reports of conflict of interest emerged, Palaszczuk said her government will exercise its 'veto' to not support the NAIF loan to remove doubt about any perception of conflict.

"This afternoon I announce that my government has had no role to date in the Federal Government's assessment process for Adani now we will have no role in the future," she said and denied any conflict of interest. "To action my decision, I propose to write to the Prime Minister to notify him that my government will exercise its 'veto' to not support the NAIF loan and to remove doubt about any perception of conflict," she was quoted by 'The Australian' as saying.

On Sunday, media reports said that Labour could form a majority government with Palaszczuk on track to win the necessary 48 seats.

A spokesman for the premier was quoted by a media report as saying that it was now up to Adani to ensure the project was financed.

"We expect them to get on with it," he said.

Palaszczuk's team has won 43 seats in the 93 seat parliament and is leading in four of the undecided electorates, which would be enough to form the government.

More than 800,000 people voting before election day, according to the Queensland Electoral Commission.

Meanwhile, in a statement released today, Adani said job creation for regional Queensland was well underway across Adani's mine, rail and port projects.

It also announced the next step in its regional employment strategy which would involve Downer Group, the major mine contractors, who will be touring parts of regional Queensland to meet directly with jobseekers at employment fairs over the next several weeks.

Adani said it hoped that this regional employment roadshow will help to create a positive outlook for the regions moving forward into 2018. NEW DELHI: Global rating agency Fitch has said India's dependency on imported coal may continue to decline as the government moves ahead on the path of self-sufficiency.

“We expect India s thermal coal imports to continue to fall as the government maintains its push for self-sufficiency and as renewable energy output increases,” the global rating agency said. “This is amid lower-than-expected demand because of reduced offtake from financially stressed power distribution companies and subdued industrial performance,” Fitch Ratings said.

In September, the import went up temporarily as generators stocked up the fossil fuel ahead of winter, it said.

Coal import for October came in flat at 16.65 million tonnes, underpinned by cautious buying by consumers due to high prices in the overseas market, according to the data from mjunction services, a leading name in the e-auction space. NEW DELHI: India's GDP growth rate is expected to rise to 6.2 per cent in the second quarter of the current fiscal as the adverse impact of demonetisation and GST appears to be bottoming out, Ficci's latest Economic Outlook Survey said on Monday.

The growth rate had dipped to a 3-year low of 5.7 per cent in the April-june quarter of 201718. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is scheduled to release the economic growth data for the July-september quarter on November 30.

The economists participating in the survey also mentioned that the government should continue with its emphasis on productive capital investments in the social and physical infrastructure space even if this requires some calibration of the fiscal deficit target, the industry body said.

The projected fiscal deficit number for the current financial year is likely to be slightly higher at 3.3 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal as against the government's tar- get of 3.2 per cent, it said.

GDP growth is expected to improve to 6.2 per cent in July -September period of 2017-18 and further improve to to 6.7 per cent in the third quarter.

"The slowdown in the economy due to demonetisation and the adjustment impact of GST implementation seems to be bottoming out and as the new indirect tax regime stabilises, the economy would see an improvement in its performance," it said.

Even as these steps are taken by the government, the economists participating in the survey emphasised that reviving consumption, particularly in the rural and semi-urban areas, will be important to give a boost to overall demand in the economy.

The survey also indicated that the wholesale price based inflation for 2017-18 is likely to be around 2.8 per cent, although retail inflation would be a bit higher at 3.4 per cent.

"Given this outlook and the fact that supply side issues are largely responsible for the inflation movement in case of India, some of the economists mentioned that inflation targeting by the central bank may not be the correct approach," the survey said.

Ficci further said that it was also suggested that RBI can undertake a reassessment of various loan rates and other ratios based on their historical trends and corresponding economic impact to identify a possible way of promoting credit take-off across various sectors.

As per the survey, most of the economists felt that linking the pricing of loans to an external benchmark will make the monetary transmission mechanism more effective.

In the current MCLR regime, loan pricing decisions by banks are based on internal factors such as cost of funds which are not sensitive to changes in the policy rates.

"It was felt that the shift to an external benchmark will improve the response time and will bring greater flexibility in the lending rates of banks," the survey said.