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Nuclear Power in India
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tenderalert
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The deadlock between India and United States for nuclear deal has been solved. this is latest news, hope a good conversation on this topic.
India-U.S. BIT: not a done deal yet
India is revising the model draft agreement of its existing bilateral investment treaties. Some of the new clauses are unlikely to be accepted by either U.S. negotiators or U.S. corporations without substantial dilution
U.S. President Barack Obama's second visit to India has resurrected hopes that the two countries will revive talks on the dormant but in-progress Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). A BIT is being eagerly sought by both sides—from the U.S., to provide comfort to American companies that they will not be treated unfairly, and from India in the belief that it will help increase foreign investment inflows into India.
But negotiating the many tripwires of the BIT will take time and effort. It may therefore be wise to rein in the optimism that is usually generated by high-profile state visits and the associated optics. More so because every significant India-U.S. bilateral visit in recent times—by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington DC in September 2014, by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to India in June 2014 and January 2015, and by U.S. Trade representative Michael Froman in November 2014—has rekindled expectations about the abandoned BIT.
Talks on a BIT between the two countries have been on hold since February 2014. [1] Preparations to restart the conversation resumed in the backrooms soon after Modi's swearing-in on 26 May 2014. Kerry discussed the pending BIT agreement with Modi on the sidelines of the Vibrant Gujarat Summit earlier in January. Diane Farrell, acting president of the U.S. Indian Business Council, confirmed this in a press statement. [2]
However, many hurdles will have to be cleared before any real progress can be made on the BIT. One of the obstacles is that India's own BIT regime—the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA)—is in cold storage. India is currently reviewing the draft of the existing model agreement and is yet to produce a blueprint that is acceptable to all stakeholders, including different ministries (such as Finance, Commerce, Law and External Affairs). India has signed 83 BIPPAs since 1994 and enforced 72 of these agreements.
The existing text has been under review since early 2013 because many international companies have initiated overseas arbitration against the Indian government—17 new arbitration proceedings over issues as varied as Supreme Court's cancellation of 2G licences and retrospective taxation notices were filed in the past two years alone. The companies which have sued the Indian government include Deutsche Telecom, Vodafone, and White Industries, under India's BIPPAs with Germany, The Netherlands, and Australia, respectively.
Another speed-breaker is conflict within the government. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP, in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry) is opposed to BIPPAs in general [3, 4]. The DIPP is responsible for framing India's foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy, as well as promoting, approving, and facilitating FDI. The DIPP believes that a conducive economic and legal environment is sufficient to attract foreign investments. It also believes that the existing BIPPAs are likely to result in increased lawsuits and has suggested that the sunset clause in these agreements be invoked to annul them. On the other hand, India's finance and external affairs ministries are both in favour of an overhaul of the existing template, which will then have to be applied to all existing 83 agreements.
The conflict also arises from the government's duality in matters of foreign investment—while the DIPP is responsible for FDI, the Ministry of Finance is responsible for administering the BIPPAs.
Talks could face headwinds due to certain new clauses in the draft model agreement. There is a proposal to dilute the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) system. Unlike the existing contract, henceforth foreign investors will not be able to take the Indian government to international arbitration unless they have first exhausted all legal and administrative options within India.
Clearly, this is a reaction to the spate of offshore arbitration proceedings. It is likely that this defensive move was inspired by external developments. Brazil has eschewed ISDS and South Africa is likely to follow. Australia is under pressure from its civil society to drop ISDS from all its agreements (especially the one with U.S.) and not from a select few, as is the case currently.[5]
The entire ecosystem of perverse incentives built around the international arbitration system could have also compelled the Indian government to dilute ISDS—armies of highly-paid, ambulance-chasing lawyers who have created an entire business model out of arbitrations and arbitrators who keep dragging cases on because they get paid handsomely by the hour—all operating in a highly secretive system. [6] The reworked BIPPA draft tries to ensure a transparent arbitration system by stipulating certain conditions.
But a BIT bereft of ISDS is bound to be opposed by American negotiators and potential U.S. investors. The popular narrative has portrayed the Indian judicial system as slow and inefficient. Indian authorities, on the other hand, are wary of biases in the overseas arbitration tribunals. Achieving a consensus between India and the U.S. on this count is going to be tricky, but India seems to have global precedent set by Brazil, Australia and South Africa in its favour.
A deal-breaker could be intellectual property rights (IPR), a vexed issue on both sides. The U.S.'s private sector has been persistently lobbying with its government for extracting concessions from India, with the National Association of Manufacturers even pushing the U.S. Trade Representative to label India as a "priority foreign country", an epithet reserved for the worst IPR offenders.
India's counter-argument has been that its IPR regime is compliant with the World Trade Organisation's TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) multilateral agreement, and it considers the U.S.'s Special 301 report—an annual publication from the United States Trade Representative (USTR) identifying trade barriers to U.S. companies and countries which do not provide "adequate and effective" protection of intellectual property rights—unilateral.
Several other prickly issues could sabotage talks—a proposal to drop the most favoured nation status from the agreement, re-phrased expropriation clauses, and re-worded text that ensures that the BIT/BIPPA does not end up favouring foreign investors while discomfiting domestic ones.
Negotiations are all about give-and-take, ceding some strategic space while appropriating critical concessions. This is, admittedly, a time-consuming process. A lot will, however, depend on American corporations and their attitude to doing business in one of the world's biggest and fastest growing markets in the world.
Source - gatewayhouse
India is revising the model draft agreement of its existing bilateral investment treaties. Some of the new clauses are unlikely to be accepted by either U.S. negotiators or U.S. corporations without substantial dilution
U.S. President Barack Obama's second visit to India has resurrected hopes that the two countries will revive talks on the dormant but in-progress Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). A BIT is being eagerly sought by both sides—from the U.S., to provide comfort to American companies that they will not be treated unfairly, and from India in the belief that it will help increase foreign investment inflows into India.
But negotiating the many tripwires of the BIT will take time and effort. It may therefore be wise to rein in the optimism that is usually generated by high-profile state visits and the associated optics. More so because every significant India-U.S. bilateral visit in recent times—by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington DC in September 2014, by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to India in June 2014 and January 2015, and by U.S. Trade representative Michael Froman in November 2014—has rekindled expectations about the abandoned BIT.
Talks on a BIT between the two countries have been on hold since February 2014. [1] Preparations to restart the conversation resumed in the backrooms soon after Modi's swearing-in on 26 May 2014. Kerry discussed the pending BIT agreement with Modi on the sidelines of the Vibrant Gujarat Summit earlier in January. Diane Farrell, acting president of the U.S. Indian Business Council, confirmed this in a press statement. [2]
However, many hurdles will have to be cleared before any real progress can be made on the BIT. One of the obstacles is that India's own BIT regime—the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA)—is in cold storage. India is currently reviewing the draft of the existing model agreement and is yet to produce a blueprint that is acceptable to all stakeholders, including different ministries (such as Finance, Commerce, Law and External Affairs). India has signed 83 BIPPAs since 1994 and enforced 72 of these agreements.
The existing text has been under review since early 2013 because many international companies have initiated overseas arbitration against the Indian government—17 new arbitration proceedings over issues as varied as Supreme Court's cancellation of 2G licences and retrospective taxation notices were filed in the past two years alone. The companies which have sued the Indian government include Deutsche Telecom, Vodafone, and White Industries, under India's BIPPAs with Germany, The Netherlands, and Australia, respectively.
Another speed-breaker is conflict within the government. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP, in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry) is opposed to BIPPAs in general [3, 4]. The DIPP is responsible for framing India's foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy, as well as promoting, approving, and facilitating FDI. The DIPP believes that a conducive economic and legal environment is sufficient to attract foreign investments. It also believes that the existing BIPPAs are likely to result in increased lawsuits and has suggested that the sunset clause in these agreements be invoked to annul them. On the other hand, India's finance and external affairs ministries are both in favour of an overhaul of the existing template, which will then have to be applied to all existing 83 agreements.
The conflict also arises from the government's duality in matters of foreign investment—while the DIPP is responsible for FDI, the Ministry of Finance is responsible for administering the BIPPAs.
Talks could face headwinds due to certain new clauses in the draft model agreement. There is a proposal to dilute the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) system. Unlike the existing contract, henceforth foreign investors will not be able to take the Indian government to international arbitration unless they have first exhausted all legal and administrative options within India.
Clearly, this is a reaction to the spate of offshore arbitration proceedings. It is likely that this defensive move was inspired by external developments. Brazil has eschewed ISDS and South Africa is likely to follow. Australia is under pressure from its civil society to drop ISDS from all its agreements (especially the one with U.S.) and not from a select few, as is the case currently.[5]
The entire ecosystem of perverse incentives built around the international arbitration system could have also compelled the Indian government to dilute ISDS—armies of highly-paid, ambulance-chasing lawyers who have created an entire business model out of arbitrations and arbitrators who keep dragging cases on because they get paid handsomely by the hour—all operating in a highly secretive system. [6] The reworked BIPPA draft tries to ensure a transparent arbitration system by stipulating certain conditions.
But a BIT bereft of ISDS is bound to be opposed by American negotiators and potential U.S. investors. The popular narrative has portrayed the Indian judicial system as slow and inefficient. Indian authorities, on the other hand, are wary of biases in the overseas arbitration tribunals. Achieving a consensus between India and the U.S. on this count is going to be tricky, but India seems to have global precedent set by Brazil, Australia and South Africa in its favour.
A deal-breaker could be intellectual property rights (IPR), a vexed issue on both sides. The U.S.'s private sector has been persistently lobbying with its government for extracting concessions from India, with the National Association of Manufacturers even pushing the U.S. Trade Representative to label India as a "priority foreign country", an epithet reserved for the worst IPR offenders.
India's counter-argument has been that its IPR regime is compliant with the World Trade Organisation's TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) multilateral agreement, and it considers the U.S.'s Special 301 report—an annual publication from the United States Trade Representative (USTR) identifying trade barriers to U.S. companies and countries which do not provide "adequate and effective" protection of intellectual property rights—unilateral.
Several other prickly issues could sabotage talks—a proposal to drop the most favoured nation status from the agreement, re-phrased expropriation clauses, and re-worded text that ensures that the BIT/BIPPA does not end up favouring foreign investors while discomfiting domestic ones.
Negotiations are all about give-and-take, ceding some strategic space while appropriating critical concessions. This is, admittedly, a time-consuming process. A lot will, however, depend on American corporations and their attitude to doing business in one of the world's biggest and fastest growing markets in the world.
Source - gatewayhouse
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'AP, Karnataka keen on providing sites for Russian nuke reactors'
New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have shown interest in giving sites for Russian atomic power reactors after protests made it impossible to have these plants at the initially-allocated site of Haripur in West Bengal, government sources have said. The positive response from the two states has come as a respite for the government which had approached Kerala and Odisha, apart from West Bengal for possible nuclear plant sites. These states had, however, expressed reluctance in providing sites. The site selection committee had allocated the Haripur site to Russians to build nuclear power reactors. But the project could not take off due to stiff resistance from the locals, backed by political parties. In 2011, Rosatom, the Russian counterpart of India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), asked India for an alternate site. During President Vladimir Putin's visit to India in December last year, Russia - which wants to build 12 more nuclear power reactors - had again pressed India on the issue. The government started working on it and approached the coastal states that do not have any nuclear power reactor and started discussions with West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala governments. "These states are not keen to have any nuclear site," said a senior government official. The government has, however, found some respite as Karnataka, a Congress ruling state, and Andhra Pradesh, which is being ruled by NDA's alliance partner - the TDP, have shown interest in the project.
'AP, Karnataka keen on providing sites for Russian nuke reactors' | Zee News
New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have shown interest in giving sites for Russian atomic power reactors after protests made it impossible to have these plants at the initially-allocated site of Haripur in West Bengal, government sources have said. The positive response from the two states has come as a respite for the government which had approached Kerala and Odisha, apart from West Bengal for possible nuclear plant sites. These states had, however, expressed reluctance in providing sites. The site selection committee had allocated the Haripur site to Russians to build nuclear power reactors. But the project could not take off due to stiff resistance from the locals, backed by political parties. In 2011, Rosatom, the Russian counterpart of India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), asked India for an alternate site. During President Vladimir Putin's visit to India in December last year, Russia - which wants to build 12 more nuclear power reactors - had again pressed India on the issue. The government started working on it and approached the coastal states that do not have any nuclear power reactor and started discussions with West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala governments. "These states are not keen to have any nuclear site," said a senior government official. The government has, however, found some respite as Karnataka, a Congress ruling state, and Andhra Pradesh, which is being ruled by NDA's alliance partner - the TDP, have shown interest in the project.
'AP, Karnataka keen on providing sites for Russian nuke reactors' | Zee News
jamesvaikom
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The problem is if a state Govt. allow construction of power plant then they will face protest from environmentalists. If they don't allow construction of power plants they can still buy power from central pool. According to me Central Govt. should sell power from central pool at higher rate and share that money with power exporting states. In my state Kerala environmentalists who protest against power plants are getting support from people because we are getting enough power from central pool. People will allow construction of power plants only if they understand the value of power. Its easy to claim that coal, power etc. are national assets and all states have equal rights for those assets. But what is the use if state governments/panchayats don't allow mining of coal, uranium etc. and construction of power plants?
The government is giving more money to states with natural resources as can bee seen with the coal auctions incentivising co operation from state governments. This should be the case in the future as well . AFIK Tamil Nadu is taking more than the 50% of the power from the kudankulam plant ( as per norms the state in which the nuclear plant sits is entitled to half of its power) and I don't disagree with that . I agree with you suggestion of increasing the cost of central pool BUT this has already being implemented hydro projects sell power for free or very cheap to states where the dam is and I think similar incentives exist for state governments also . I mean states that have taken the trouble to find land and provided infrastructure should be rewarded appropriately.
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anoop_mig25
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jamesvaikom
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Coal auction is a right step. But this is not enough. We need to take more steps to encourage power production. Delhi is getting uninterrupted cheap power from central pool. I don't have problem if people of Delhi getting uninterrupted power. But the problem is the Govt. of state which imports power is encouraging people to consume more power by providing subsidy. If Central Govt. increase rate of power then power importing states will try to construct more power plants.
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NEW DELHI: The government has "in principle" approved 10 sites for setting up new nuclear power projects, parliament was told on Wednesday. Listing out the 10 sites located in nine states, Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh told the Lok Sabha in a written reply that "the government had accorded "in principle" approval of the sites for locating nuclear power projects in future, based on both indigenous technologies and with foreign co- operation". He said the indigenous reactors would be set up at Gorakhpur in Haryana's Fatehabad, Chutka and Bhimpur in Madhya Pradesh, Kaiga at Karnataka and Mahi Banswara in Rajasthan. Reactors with foreign cooperation would be set up in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, Jaitapur at Maharashtra, Chhaya Mithi Virdhi in Gujarat, Kovvada at Andhra Pradesh and Haripur in West Bengal. Singh also said that BHAVINI, an undertaking of the department of atomic energy is presently constructing a Prototype Fast Breeder Reaction (PFBR) of 500 MW capacity at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu. In addition, two Fast Breeder Reactors of 600 MW are also proposed to be constructed at Kalpakkam. Responding to another question, the minister said the government has proposed to set up four new nuclear research facilities.
Government Approves 10 Sites for New Nuclear Power Projects - The New Indian Express
Government Approves 10 Sites for New Nuclear Power Projects - The New Indian Express
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