News Wrap
AGD

India is home to many of the world’s leading software outsourcing companies. The government of India wants to replicate the success by creating a homegrown industry for computer hardware. While software requires little infrastructure, electronics builders and chip makers require vast quantities of clean water and reliable electricity. The computer and tablet assemblers depend on economics of scale and easy access to inexpensive parts. China has spent many years building up an electronics infrastructure. The Indian import bill for semi-conductors alone is $ 6.6 billion a year, and demand is growing about 20% a year. Fast growing imports of electronics are projected to eclipse oil as the largest import expense for India, by 2020. The government accounts for about 40% of India’s electronic purchases. Since few electronics are manufactured in India, the government has made broad definitions of what it considers locally made. A computer will qualify locally made, if at least 30% of a computers components are made in India. The policy also allows prospective suppliers to show ‘‘value addition’’, instead of actually manufacturing the goods in India. Under the policy, a hard drive that is assembled in India, would be considered to have been made in the country. A computer processor plant cost about $ 5 billion to build, and India aims to make it a part of the high-tech hardware sector, it hopes to create. A computer processor accounts for 2.5% to 35% of the total cost of a Desktop or Laptop computer. But costs in India are higher because of lack of reliable electricity power and time consuming road transportation.

Drug Patents
In April 2013, India’s Supreme Court rejected a patent for Glivce, Novartis’ huge selling leukaemia drug. India will be receiving lower quality copies of Glivce and other drugs, and are less likely to receive efficient products in the future. Indian pharmacies offer generic drugs at lower cost, but also of lower quality. India currently exports more pharaceutical products to the USA than any other emerging market. But India’s drugs have consistently had quality-control problems. Uncertain rules over intellectual property will discourage foreign investment through infrastructure funding, technology transfers and changes in management culture. Indian pharaceutical manufacturers are free to copy and sell beneficial new drugs. Yet there is no guarantee these local companies can reproduce them as safely or effectively as the original. There is no data sharing agreement with the company that designed the original drug. India’s pharaceutical regulator is plagued with extensive corruption and mis-representation of pharaceutical drug data. Novartis cut off infrastructure investment in India in 2007, because of the Glivece decision. There are fears that other companies will curtail similar investments.

New Politics in Paraguay
The Paraguay nation, producing soya, beef and electricity, is set for a strong economic growth of 13% in 2013. But 40% of Paraguay’s 6.6 million people are poor. The Colorado Party ruled the country for six decades until 2008. The Colorado Party has returned to power, with Horatio Cartes, a tobacco millionaire and political novice, winning a resounding victory in the presidential elections of April 2013. Mr Cartes’s past includes association with currency fraud and cigarettes and drug smuggling. He is new to politics, and joined the party of former dictator Alfredo Storesner only in 2009. Vowing to bring business acumen, he aims for ‘a renewed party’ committed to unity and working to improve the lot of the poor. However, the Colorado Party is not showing signs of ‘updating’ and reform, and could clash with Mr Cartes’s pledges to change the country and appoint officials on merit.

Historic sites in Gaza

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 47, June 2-8, 2013

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