Ratings impact

The Market fluctuations reflected by movements of Sensex and Nifty in the recent past reflect by and large, realities. But there’s one area where it takes longer time to absorb positive indicators and that is the rating of India and Indian institutions by international bodies.

One could have ignored it but for its impact on costs of external borrowings and value of Indian currency. It is time to for an India-based Global Rating Agency.

MG Warrier

Mumbai

Online worries

Your editorial, ‘Playing with Patterns’ is timely. Online buying has become easy but so has cheating consumers. There is also no licensing or monitoring system for online selling.

Even to open a petty shop one needs to produce documents and is subjected to stick to laid down by a number of authorities. But one is able to sell even medicines through online mode. So it is time for the government to regulate this sector.

AG Rajmohan

Anantapur

Gatishakti initiative

This is with reference to the article, ‘World Bank must revisit India’s Logistics ranking’. The government believes that the biennial index — Logistics Performance Index (LPI) — by the World Bank, to assess ease of trade across countries, is purely ‘perception based’ and ‘narrow.’ Earlier this year, India’s rank went up by six places to 38th out of 139 countries in the seventh edition of the LPI 2023.

India wants the World Bank to take into account several measures taken by the government on the logistics front, such as the GatiShakti initiative, while determining the logistics ranking of countries. India has started engaging with World Bank’s key officials, drawing their attention towards emphasis on objective-based methodology for the ranking.

We want our ranking to improve and it will improve only when there is a realistic and factual reflection of the kind of reforms. We would like to showcase those and it (World Bank) should take into account these while determining our ranking,

S Muthulakshmi

Virudhunagar

Carbon tax challenge

Apropos ‘Countdown begins on EU carbon tax’ (September 15), the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism(CBAM) is a tariff imposed on carbon intensive products imported by the European Union.

The tax is intent to ensure that imported goods are subject to the same carbon cost as products produced within the EU. The implementation is to start from October 2023 and as a prelude it demanded data on carbon emission on products from exporting countries with strict rules for compliance.

The government must render ministerial help to exporters for sending the required data and help them to retain their exports to EU with paying the required carbon tax.

NR Nagarajan

Sivakasi

Erratum

The headline of the interview with Gurpreet Chhatwal published in the edition dated September 15, 2023, refers to him as Managing Director, Crisil. Chhatwal is MD, Crisil Ratings. The error is regretted.

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