Consumer Affairs Minister launched an online directory, which provides information about Indian standards of various products and testing infrastructure in the country for the benefit of various stakeholders such as start-ups.

There are estimated 10,000 labs across the country. Currently, about 4,500 labs owned by public and private academic institutions are listed on the online directory.

The link for the National Laboratoy Directory is www.labdirectory.bis.gov.in

The Indian Parliament has passed the landmark Consumer Protection Bill, 2019 which aims to provide the timely and effective administration and settlement of consumer disputes. Key Highlights of the New Act:

• Covers E-Commerce Transactions
• Enhancement of Pecuniary Jurisdiction
• E-Filing of Complaints
• Establishment of Central Consumer Protection Authority
• Product Liability & Penal Consequences
• Unfair Trade Practices
• Penalties for Misleading Advertisement
• Provision for Alternate Dispute Resolution

Nine months after the Central government first notified the draft Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2018 on the 4^th of December 2018, the Patents (Amendment) Rules, 2019 have now come into effect through a notification by the Central Government on the 18^th of September 2019 in its official gazette. In line with the draft rules, the new rules now primarily entitle the following categories of patent applicants to seek expedited examination of their patent applications:

1. Small entities / MSME’s;
2. Female applicants;
3. Departments of the Government;
4. Institutions owned or controlled by the Government;
5. Institutions wholly or substantially financed by the Government;
6. Government companies; and
7. Applicants of those countries whose patent offices are in an agreement / arrangement with the Indian patent office.

In addition to this certain fee will no longer be applicable, giving PCT applicants a reason to be cheerful about.

The Commerce Ministry will soon come out with a new foreign trade policy, which provides guidelines and incentives for increasing exports for the next five financial years 2020-25. The Ministry is giving final touches to the new policy as the validity for the old one will end on March 31, 2020. The Ministry’s arm Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) is formulating the policy.

The new policy would focus on simplifying procedures for exporters and importers, besides providing incentives to boost outbound shipments. At present, tax benefits are provided under the ‘merchandise export from India’ scheme (MEIS) for goods and ‘services export from India’ scheme (SEIS).

In the new policy, changes are expected in the incentives given to goods as the current export promotion schemes are challenged by the US in the dispute resolution mechanism of WTO. In this backdrop, the government is recasting the incentives to make them compliant with global trade rules.

DGFT has issued followings trade notices keeping in mind the review of the existing Foreign Trade Policy :

• Trade notice No. 21/2019-20 and Trade Notice No. 22/2019-20 

The time has come to take on the policies of protectionism and unilateral measures by some developed countries that are having an adverse effect on global free trade and if this continues there will be recession in the world and no country will escape it, said Union Minister of Commerce & Industry.

Commerce and Industry Minister urged that all member countries must take up reforms of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and not deal with issues in a piecemeal manner. We cannot afford to walk away from the current system but all member countries of the WTO must re-engage to ensure that  the rule-based, transparent, and non-discriminatory governance that free-trade requires is taken forward honestly and in a non-discriminatory manner and keeping in mind the interests of different member countries with disparate GDP. He further stated that the policies of protectionism being followed by some countries in the developed world are affecting engagement between countries for trade in goods, services and protection of investments.

After first Smart Cities Mission for 100 cities, the government will expand the Smart Cities Mission to all 4,000 cities in the country. The ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA), the nodal department for Smart City Mission, is set to roll out smart city 2.0 mission in 2020. The central government’s second version of the smart city initiative will be rolled out across the country, said a government official.

The ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) is also looking at alternative funding mechanisms such as pool finance, fund of fund approach, bonds, fiscal money, monetisation of unused land and tapping foreign capital.

The mission has started rating the existing projects under five parameters - planning, technology, governance, services and finance, along with climate sensitive action and ease of living sensitive action. So far, about 10% of the planned projects have been completed in the past three years.

Under Smart City Mission, projects worth over Rs 2.05 lakh crore (~26 bn Euro) are proposed in 100 cities and a significant progress has been made in terms of implementation of these projects, the Economic Survey 2018-19 said.

The strategic components of this mission are area-based development involving city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment), city extension (greenfield development) and a Pan-city development in which smart solutions are applied covering larger parts of the city.

• The 100 cities under the mission have proposed to execute 5,151 projects worth 2,05,018 crore (~26 bn Euro) in five years from their respective dates of selection.
• Financial innovation is in-built in the design of the programme. The distribution of funding from the central and state government is Rs 93,552 crore (~12 bn Euro) (45%) and funds from PPP is Rs 41,022 crore (~5 bn Euro) (21%).

The government is planning to make health, education and financial data — collected from more than 4,000 urban local bodies under its Smart Cities Mission — public by 2024 and eventually monetising it, reports The Hindu. The government will start with an open data platform for 100 cities under the mission and expand it to cover data from 500 cities by 2022, the report said. By 2024, all urban centres would be covered in this platform. Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ (MoHUA) India Urban Data Exchange – set up for the Smart Cities project – will be expanded, and eventually become a “marketplace”, the report continues. 

The open data platform has 2,783 data catalogs from 99 Smart Cities, and by 2020, all data sets for the Smart Cities would be available, officials said.

The Centre has got into a mission rethink mode to speed up the implementation of projects under the Smart City Mission. In the fifth and final year of ‘Smart City Mission’, the Centre has set a new target - Mission Rs 2 lakh crore (~26 bn Euro). With the current trajectory of project tendering and completion, the government would have awarded contracts till 2022. However, in the last mile, the ministry of housing and urban affairs has decided to issue tenders for all projects under the mission over the next six months, that is till March 2020. The projects would be worth Rs 2 lakh crore (~26 bn Euro).

As the mission would complete five years on June 25, 2020, the Centre has set another target for its fifth anniversary celebrations - to award all works and begin work on projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore (~26 bn Euro) on the ground.

The amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act were passed by the Parliament recently but most have come into effect from September 1, 2019. This means that driving errors are going to be penalized hugely.  The transport ministry issued a notification dated August 28, listing out all the laws that have come into effect from September 1, 2019.