INDIA, U.S. TO CONCLUDE THREE TRADE PACTS

 The two countries issued a joint statement at the India-U.S. Trade Policy Forum  India and the U.S. agreed to fast-track and conclude within a given timeframe agreements on enhancing and deepening trade and investment engagement, and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) cooperation agreement and an agreement for putting in place traditional knowledge digital library.  The two countries also issued a joint statement at the end of the Sixth Ministerial Level meeting of the India-U.S. Trade Policy Forum (TPF) with readiness to continue focus on agriculture, innovation and creativity, investment, services and tariff and non-tariff barriers. The Indian team was headed by the Commerce and Industry Minister, Anand Sharma, and the U.S. delegation was headed by the U.S. Trade Representative, Ron Kirk. KANNAN TO HEAD TEXTILES COMMITTEE  The Union Ministry of Textiles has reconstituted its Textiles Committee.  T. Kannan, Managing Director of Thiagaraja Mills, Madurai, will be the new Chairman. COUNTRY’S FIRST GREENFIELD MERCHANT AIRPORT  India’s first greenfield airport to be set up as a joint venture with Changi Airports International (CAI) of Singapore will be ready by 2011-12. The project is set to come up as part of a Rs. 10,000-crore airport city in Durgapur.  Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Ltd (BAPL), which will be setting up the country’s first greenfield merchant airport near Durgapur in West Bengal, has got the first tranche of land of 533.5 acres.  The project, which had hit hurdles following objections raised by Coal India Ltd (CIL) over the issue of its coal deposits getting blocked by the proposed airport city, now expected to start construction by March 2010 and become operational by September 2011, 
RBI BUYS 200 TONNES OF GOLD WORTH $6.7 B FROM IMF  The Fund is offering 403.3 tonnes of the metal to increase its resources for lending to low-income countries  The apex bank’s gold reserves to touch 557.7 tonnes  The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has concluded the purchase of 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at an estimated price of around Rs. 31,490 crore ($6.70 billion), under the IMF’s limited gold sales programme.  Under the Fund’s Articles of Agreement, all gold sales must be conducted at prices based on market prices, including direct sales to official holders as in the case of this transaction.  "This was done as part of the RBI’s foreign exchange reserves management operations," the apex bank stated. As India bought half the quantity offered by the IMF, this purchase is expected to boost the confidence in bullion among investors. However, this sale, according to market participants, will not have an impact on domestic bullion prices.  The Executive Board of the IMF, on September 18, announced its decision to sell 403.3 tonnes (or 12.97 million fine troy ounces) of gold as a central element of its New Income Model and to increase its resources for lending to low-income countries. This represents one eighth of the Fund’s total holdings. The IMF also decided that the initial offer of the sale of the gold would be directly to official holders, including central banks.  Foreign exchange reserves held by the RBI was at $285.50 billion as on October 23, of which gold comprised more than $10 billion. Now with the current purchase from the IMF the share of gold in its foreign exchange reserves is expected to go up to around 6 per cent of total foreign exchange reserves, that is, the gold reserve to touch 557.7 tonnes from 357.7 tonnes.  Even though India is the world’s biggest consumer of gold, its gold reserves — with the central bank — are much less than most of the developed world. However, India’s gold reserves are higher than China’s share. But China, recently, emerged as the world’s biggest producer of gold, pushing the U.S. to the second position. The RBI’s purchase of gold surprised markets as the Chinese officials, reportedly, have been in talks with the IMF to shift some of its more than $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to gold, in a move to be away from the US dollar.  Gold played a central role in the international monetary system until the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1973. Since then, the role of gold has been gradually reduced. However, it is still an important asset in the reserve holdings of a number of countries, and the IMF remains one of the largest official holders of gold in the world. THE BRETTON WOODS SYSTEM  The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states in the mid 20th century. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent nation-states.  Preparing to rebuild the international economic system as World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The delegates deliberated upon and signed the Bretton Woods Agreements during the first three weeks of July 1944. 

Group. These organizations became operational in 1945 after a sufficient number of countries had ratified the agreement.  The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value—plus or minus one percent—in terms of gold and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments. Then, on August 15, 1971 the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the dollar to gold. This action created the situation whereby the United States dollar became the sole backing of currencies and a reserve currency for the member states. In the face of increasing financial strain, the system collapsed in 1971. SUDHA MURTHY SELLS 2 MILLION INFOSYS SHARES FOR RS. 430 CRORE  Infosys’s co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy’s wife Sudha Murthy sold 20 lakh company shares owned by her for over Rs. 430 crore in the open market.  The money raised would go into the corpus of Catamaran, a venture capital fund founded by her husband.Mr. Narayana Murthy has informed the company that the proceeds of the sale will be used as a corpus for the venture capital fund that is being set up in India by him to assist young entrepreneurs in their business, primarily in India. SEBI ANNOUNCES NORMS FOR LISTING SMES  The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) prescribed norms for listing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on stock exchanges, including a minimum initial public offering (IPO) application size of Rs. 1 lakh,  The minimum trading lot would be Rs. 1 lakh. An upper limit of Rs. 25 crore paid-up capital would be prescribed for a company to be listed on the SME platform/exchange and a minimum paid-up capital of Rs. 10 crore would be prescribed for listing on the main boards of the NSE and the BSE. Further, if the follow on offer/rights issue results in triggering of the limit of Rs. 25 crore, then the company would have to migrate to the main board.  Companies listed on the SME exchanges would be exempted from the eligibility norms applicable for IPOs and FPOs prescribed in the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2009 (ICDR). The board decided to accord the QIB status to insurance funds set up by armed forces such as Army Group Insurance Fund.  At present the ICDR regulations permit reservation up to 10 per cent of the issue size to employees in public issues. However, there is no ceiling on the number of shares that could be allotted. The board decided to put a ceiling of Rs. 1 lakh on the value of allotment that can be made to an employee under the employee reservation category and to permit reservation up to 5 per cent of the post-issued capital instead of 10 per cent of the issue size.  The board decided to make it mandatory to disclose only limited review or audited results within 45 days of the end of the quarter. Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, the planners at Bretton Woods established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Arvind Pande - Chairman, BAPL.