Indian Westerlies

In my day job, I come across complaints from various small time exporters and importers of goods regarding cheating/dispute by their overseas counterparts and vice versa. The overseas complaints usually get routed through the commercial or diplomatic consulates or Indian missions abroad. Indian complaints pour in through various export promotion bodies, export inspection agency, DGFT and so on. Usually, the complaints might be related to quality or payment. The payment related disputes are usually rooted again in quality or quantity related disagreements.  A recurrent feature I have observed in these complaints is that there is no good commercial contract agreement, in writing, between the parties. At times, parties do have a contract, but they lack an arbitration clause in case of dispute. Trade is usually based on trust in such cases. Emails or telecons are usual methods of sealing the deals. Many a times, I have seen disputes arising after the parties have been dealing with ea

RBI (and the Govt.) has managed yet again to continue to tie itself in knots over the policy issue when it comes to Gold import controls relaxation. I had written about futility of Gold control measures earlier  when the controls were introduced. Now they are being relaxed . RBI has come up with this circular that relaxes the 20:80 rule to include star and premium trading houses (big gold exporters basically). The rule operates as follows: Revised working example of the operations of 20/80  scheme for import of gold:   1. A Nominated Bank / Agency / any other entity, ABC, imports say 100 kg of gold, which shall be routed through custom bonded warehouses only. If considered necessary, the lot can be procured through two invoices – one for exporters (i.e. 20%) and the other one for domestic users (80%). 2. Out of the above import of 100 kg, 20 kg gold held in the bonded warehouse can be got released, in part or full, to be made available to the exporters of gold against an