India's Modi Hails 'Strong Ties' Ahead Of Visit

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins a three-day visit later as his country seeks to strengthen commercial ties with Britain.

Mr Modi will meet Prime Minister David Cameron for talks in London, and later at Chequers, with Mr Cameron hailing the trip as an "historic opportunity".

The visit is the first by an Indian Prime Minister in almost a decade.

Britain is already the largest investor in India among G20 nations, and India invests more in the UK than it does in the rest of the EU combined.

Billions of pounds worth of commercial deals between the two are expected to be signed over the coming days.

One of the major events on Mr Modi's itinerary will be an address at London's Wembley Stadium on Friday evening.

Mr Modi will also address British Parliament, despite the fact Parliament is not in session, and tour the Jaguar Land Rover factory in Solihull.

But the visit comes at a difficult time for Mr Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party at home in India.

The party was defeated recently in a bitterly-fought regional election, which many attributed to Mr Modi's waning influence.

Protests have been planned for outside Downing Street against Mr Modi, whose government has been criticised for undermining Indian democracy.

Writing on Facebook before the visit began, Mr Modi said the trip was aimed at "strengthening cooperation with a traditional friend".

The visit will also build on the "strong ties" between the two countries on defence and security, he wrote.

"I am confident my UK visit will deepen our ties and we will cooperate extensively in a range of areas of shared interests," Mr Modi wrote.

Speaking ahead of the visit, Mr Cameron said: "This isn't just a historic visit; it's a historic opportunity.

"It's an opportunity for two countries, tied by history, people and values, to work together to overcome the biggest challenges of our age.

"Prime Minister Modi and I intend to grab that opportunity with both hands. Because in doing so, we can make two of the greatest countries in the world even greater."

Egypt will lose £181m ($280m) a month because of Britain and Russia's decision to suspend all flights to Sharm el Sheikh after a plane crash killed 224 people, the tourism minister said.

The Metrojet plane crashed in the Sinai peninsula shortly after take-off en route to St Petersburg on 31 October.

Russia stopped all flights to all destinations in Egypt two days after Britain halted flights to Sharm el Sheikh amid fears that the  aircraft was downed by a bomb.

Tourism minister Hesham Zaazou said Russian and British holidaymakers accounted for two-thirds of tourist traffic to Sharm el Sheikh, while Russians alone made up half the tourists in Egypt's other main Red Sea destination, Hurghada.

A £3.3m ($5m) public relations campaign has been planned to promote Egypt in Britain and Russia, he added.

Sergei Ivanov, the head of the Russian presidential administration, has said it likely to be a "long time" before flights are resumed.

Thousands of tourists from both countries were trapped for days after the crash and the complete backlog will not be cleared until Sunday.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the delay was caused by "significantly increased security requirements".

Meanwhile, members of a Russian search and rescue team investigating the crash have left Egypt to return to Moscow

The team of 48 had been recovering bodies at the crash site in Sinai's Hassana area, some 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of the peninsula's city of el Arish.

Other Russian officials are still in Egypt as part of the investigation committee looking to discover why the plane crashed.

US and British officials have cited intelligence reports as indicating the passenger plane was probably caused by a bomb on board.

Egypt has come under criticism over the investigation with sources saying there has been an "unacceptable" lack of transparency following the crash.

MTN CONTINUES TO WORRY OVER NIGERIA’S $5.2BILLION FINE

Presently in talks with Nigerian regulators, Africa’s largest telecoms provider, MTN Group is working tirelessly to review Nigeria’s $5.2 billion (N1.04 trillion) fine to $1.04 million (N208 million ) as the company cooperates with the Nigerian banking sector for loans to balance out the huge fine.

This development was revealed by the head of research, Renaissance Capital (RenCap) Nigeria, Adesoji Solanke, in his note to clients on Wednesday. “MTN is pushing to reduce the fine by 60 to 80 percent,” Bloomberg quoted Solanke to have said.

As Nigeria is MTN’s largest and profitable market, the fine is a massive blow to the company, as it has led to a 16% drop of the company’s share on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The company’s shares reportedly lost almost a quarter of its value after this fine was disclosed, before managing to recover nine percent in the past two sessions. Also, South African vice president, Cyril Ramaphosa, says MTN must respect any laws given by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

The Nigerian government’s decision to impose such an excessive fine on a multinational company is not out of place, considering the imposition of a $10million and $3.9 bn fine in 2010 and 2014 respectively on Shell for the oil spillage and environmental damage it has caused in the Bodo Community.

According the the commission, the telecommunications company failed to comply despite being given a 12-month warning on the importance of ensuring that only SIM cards with valid SIM registration details should be active on telecommunications networks. They also said that the fine issued to the company was imperative.

MTN Nigeria currently controls 43 percent of the country’s telecommunications market and the failure to fully deactivate unregistered subscribers would impede the government’s ability to tracecriminal activity especially in the fight against terrorism. Nigeria’s state security has alleged that unregistered SIM cards were being used for criminal activity.

MTN has 11 days to meet its November 16 deadline for paying up the fine it has been slammed with, making it one of the biggest fine cases in Nigeria’s history of telecommunications.

Museveni’s Chinese lifeline

A mid a new round of economic uncertainties, China’s willingness to take on more of the risks associated with Uganda’s resource management ambitions looks set to boost President Yoweri Museveni’s domestic and regional standing for a while longer. With the next general elections two years away, the government can be expected to design some of its political messages around China’s new commitment to fast-track the kind of major projects that promise business opportunities for Ugandans.
Once China gets started in earnest, sometime in 2014, on the heavy work of developing Uganda’s oil, minerals and energy industries, the scale of its involvement can be fully assessed. With the largest deals now signed, Ugandans can get a sense of just how deeply the Asian heavyweight will dig into the economy, and how this will affect the country’s political power games. Each of the schemes China has backed had previously been held up by high-stakes infighting within the corridors of power.

POWER AND OIL

The two largest commitments have come from Sinohydro and China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC). Sinohydrohas started preparing the ground for the construction of a $2.2bn hydroelectric dam at Karuma with a capacity to produce 600MW. CNOOC, the first company to receive an oil production licence in Uganda,will spend $2bn getting Lake Albert’s Kingfisher field into production over the next four years. Some 196m barrels are recoverable and production will be at 30,000-40,000 barrels per day. The project includes a refinery and road construction where no roads currently exist.

A third project involves Tibet-Hima, a consortium of Chinese investors,which has won the bid to revive copper production at Kilembe, the country’s largest mine. The investors have promised to sink $175m into the scheme in the first three years, including putting a railway line in place to reduce the cost of transporting machinery and minerals.

FREEDOMS DIMINISHED

Trouble will arise, however, when Museveni finally signs into law the Public Order Management Bill, which has come under heavy criticism from civil rights groups and opposition politicians. Requiring police consent for gatherings of more than three people, the bill seems certain to narrow the space for political debate and to set opposition groups and the police on a collision course.

Such developments worry Elly Karuhanga, chairman of the Uganda Chamber of Mines and Petroleum, a body that promotes the interests of investors in the oil and minerals sectors. “Capital is a coward. If it senses any trouble, it will flee,” he said.

CRITICAL DECISIONS ON THE OIL ECONOMY STILL TO COME

INVESTORS WILL BE KEEPING a close eye on the government’s plans for the National Oil Company and the Petroleum Authority, both of which should be set up before the end of 2014. There is avid speculation over who will head these institutions, but of greater importance will be how the country goes about the next round of licensing of blocks and speeds up its move towards oil production.

In achieving commercial viability, the government’s stated priority of installing a local refinery ahead of building a crude oil export pipeline is still to be tested. The plan is to start small with a refinery to process 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) and expand this to 60,000 bpd by the end of the decade. The government has invited its partner states in the East African Community to take a 10% equity stake in the refinery. Their participation could be decisive.