President's Message
Pramod Goyal
Jai Hind!
India and Indians across the world will be celebrating the 74th Independence Day later this week on 15 August. Among the significant developments in recent months that have spurred the India growth story and – have focused global attention on India include:
- Foreign direct investment in the Indian information technology and communication (ITC) sector
- Indian government’s push for more liberalisation in coal, minerals, defence production, civil aviation, power distribution, social infrastructure, space and atomic energy
- The cooling of ties between the G7 countries and China, resulting in India coming under the radar of US and Europe-based tech and infrastructure companies
- Indian government’s policy of self-reliance – Atmanirbhar Bharat – which focuses on encouraging and building a robust manufacturing base in India
Read full message: Jai Hind!
15 % off on 15 August
ICCC's Special Independence Day Offer
In the News
India is a constructive, dependable ally globally
By Harsh Vardhan Shringla
Harsh Vardhan Shringla is India's Foreign Secretary
Through the pandemic, India has not only
met its domestic requirements
but it has also taken
a range of steps for global good
Covid-19 continues to exact a heavy toll worldwide. In India too, positive cases are rising. However, our effective domestic response has led to a significant improvement in our recovery rate, which is now 68.78%. The case fatality rate at 2.01% remains one of the lowest in the world.
India’s response has not been confined to meeting our domestic requirements. We have been significantly engaged with the international community in providing the leadership that the global situation demanded. As a responsible stakeholder in global health supply chains, we ensured timely access to essential drugs and medical items for over 150 countries, while meeting our own domestic requirements. We reaffirmed our position as the first responder to humanitarian crises in the region by deploying medical teams to help Maldives, Mauritius, Comoros and Kuwait deal with the pandemic. India also dispatched naval assets to the Maldives, Mauritius, Madagascar, Comoros and Seychelles to deliver assistance. This demonstrated our strong commitment to the PM’s vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR).
Read more: India - a dependable ally
India introduces radical transformation in its tax regime
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a platform for Transparent Taxation – Honouring the Honest on 13 August 2020. Speaking on the occasion he said that the process of Structural Reforms in the country has reached new heights today. The Prime Minister said the platform of Transparent Taxation – Honouring the Honest, has been launched to meet the requirements of the 21st century taxation system. He elaborated that the platform has major reforms like Faceless Assessment, Faceless Appeal and Taxpayers Charter.
He said that Faceless Assessment and Taxpayers Charter have come into force from today while the facility of faceless appeal will be available for citizens across the country from 25th September i.e. Deen Dayal Upadhyay's birth anniversary. The new platform apart from being faceless is also aimed at boosting the confidence of the taxpayer and making him/her fearless.
Read the full report, click here: In the News
Programs & Events
ICCC Board's Meeting with Consulate General of India
Screen grab of WebEx meeting between
ICCC directors & CGI diplomats
The Board of Directors of Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) discussed different ways of collaborating with the Consulate General of India Toronto during a WebEx meeting with Consul General Apoorva Srivastava and Commercial Consul Saifullah Khan on 5 August 2020.
CG Apoorva Srivastava lauded the ICCC's role in enhancing trade between India and Canada. "We look forward to closer interaction with the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce in the near future." She said the focus for India is Trade, Technology, Tourism, and suggested many specific measures to be jointly initiated to sustain the momentum that ICCC and CGI-Toronto built during 2019 when ICCC hosted three trade delegations from India.
Pramod Goyal, President, ICCC, emphasized that the ICCC would continue to robustly engage the CGI-Toronto in trade promotion events. He outlined the various programs that the ICCC would be implementing in the near future, and sought CGI-Toronto's involvement in them. Other members of the Board of ICCC also participated in the discussion.
ICCC's popular webinar series
19 webinars in 18 weeks between April and July 2020
Average audience size: 2,500 per week
Objectives:
- To meet information demand of members about the pandemic, the impact of the lockdown on their businesses, and different government assistance programs, ICCC launched Thursday Talks, a weekly webinar series
- Its purpose was to help small business owners understand the impact of the pandemic on different sectors
- ICCC gave open access on Facebook Live; over 2,500 people participate every week – asking questions, leaving comments, and networking virtually through social media
- ICCC launched another series called Knowledge on the Go, where we explored sectors that are have strong presence in the Canadian economy, such as cannabis, alternative energy, the ethnic media, cybersecurity and paywalls
And to get firsthand information from the government, we also invited decisionmakers to discuss reopening plans and schedules, and assistance to small businesses
In case you missed any of the webinars, here’s your chance to catch up. Programs & Events
Insight
Fostering Growth in Digital Trade
By Don Stephenson
Don Stephenson is Former Chief Trade Negotiator, India-Canada Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement
The shifting trends in trade, especially given the growth in communications capacity and reduced cost of computing have altered traditional economic development. India and Canada have a shared commercial interest in E-trade. Both countries need to align their resources to frame trade rules of the new digital economy, to mutual benefit.
Trade is important for both Canada and India. For Canada, as an industrialized economy endowed with enormous resource gifts but a small domestic market, trade is essential. Trade represents a large share of the economy and makes an important contribution to Canadians’ high standard of living. For India, while it is less dependent on trade due to a much larger domestic market, expanding exports and attracting investment are essential to sustain rapid economic growth and to create jobs and economic prosperity for a large and growing labour force.
Trade is changing. Technology has been the principal driver of trade growth, through improvements in production, transportation and communications. Growth in communications capacity and decreases in the cost of computing have altered traditional economic development and, together with the internet, created the foundations for the most recent tectonic shift in the nature of business and trade, the emergence of an economy in which the most important resource is data.
In trade policy fora, the digital economy is most often viewed from the perspective of electronic commerce — goods and services purchased and sold over electronic networks. However, the digital economy — including digital trade — is much more than electronic commerce. The digital trade agenda is a subset of the broader digital governance universe, which spans issues of infrastructure, internet administration and myriad economic and social policy issues and involves innumerable stakeholders.
Read more: Fostering Digital Trade
