The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
Have you heard about “Honey Laundering”? Well, its a complete operation and art that the Chinese have now perfected. And countries like India are sitting ducks! So China is exporting honey to US with label “Made in India” to escape anti-dumping duty!
A torrent of illegal Chinese honey labeled in India is slipping into the U.S. potentially laden with untraceable antibiotics and heavy metals, according to accusations in several new reports. The American Honey Producers Assn. said that more than 60 million pounds of Indian honey exports reached the U.S. in the first half of 2011 and that much of it is believed to have been first produced in China, then rerouted to skirt American trade restrictions. The “unimpeded colossal flow of honey” puts the U.S. honey industry in a sticky spot, potentially depressing wholesale prices, the producers group said.
And as a result, more than three-quarters of the product that ends up on American grocery shelves labeled as “honey” is actually far from it, according to Food Safety News. (source: LATimes)
The amount of duties evaded is huge – $80mn.
Chinese honey is cheap and the US had been a major importer. But in 2001, in the wake of a US government investigation that found domestic honey producers being harmed by significant price disparities between Chinese and American honey, the US levied an anti-dumping duty of roughly $1.20 per pound (454 gm) on Chinese honey. This tariff, its imposition implying that this honey was being sold below its real cost of production, was intended to level the playing field for American beekeepers who could not compete with imported honey selling in America at half their cost.
For companies like ALW that were importing tonnes of Chinese honey into the US every year, this was a big business setback. To evade the duty, some of them started getting shipments via third countries, with the honey’s point-of-origin relabelled accordingly. After all, no tariff was due on honey from India, Malaysia, Mongolia or Russia.
The operation soon came to be called ‘honey laundering’. ALW was one among several firms doing it, but it has been in the spotlight ever since the arrests. According to a 44-count indictment of the firm, over 2004-06, it laundered over 2 million pounds—900 tonnes—of Chinese honey through India, evading nearly $80 million in duties. (Source: OPEN Magazine)
Here is a graph which shows something that the Indian Government can probably feel very proud about, but it actually has a different reality.
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
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