India pitched for common international standards for green hydrogen at the BRICS Green Hydrogen Summit, to ensure safe transportation and storage of the new age emission-free fuel. India had organised the two-day summit on green hydrogen involving Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, also referred to as the BRICS nations, on their initiatives around the green fuel.  Ministry of Power stated that Government and industry must work together to ensure existing regulations are not an unnecessary barrier to investment. Trade will benefit from common international standards for the safety of transporting and storing large volumes of hydrogen and having appropriate certificate of origin

The railways currently rely on optical fibre for their communication network but with the allocation of fresh spectrum, it will be able to use high-speed radio on a real-time basis. It will help in augmenting both communication and signalling networks of the railways. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the allotment of a 5 MHz spectrum in 700 MHz frequency band to the Railways for public safety and security services at stations and in trains. The spectrum allocation is in line with the Railways’ objective to provide Long Term Evolution (LTE) based mobile train radio communication on its route, a project with an estimated investment of Rs 25,000 crore (€2.9 Bn).

Meity had released the draft data centre policy which proposed to designate data centres as infrastructure and to group centres under the essential services category among other measures. The government is formulating a scheme to incentivise investments to set-up hyperscale data centres in India and boost the capacity of the existing data centre ecosystem, besides working on new segments like drones and robotics to develop their manufacturing ecosystem in India. “The current scale of hyperscale data centres in India compared in terms of power consumed is 200 MegaWatts and our effort will be to come out with a policy and scheme that aims for a tenfold growth in this, in a very short time,” Secretary - MEITY, said in a virtual session.

The India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA) has welcomed the Rs 18,100 crore (€2.1 Bn) Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme that has been approved for Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) battery storage in the country. In a statement, ICEA that represents mobile and component manufacturers such as Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Foxconn, Wistron, Flextronics, Lava, Vivo and others, said that it would promote newer and niche cell technologies in the country. PLI scheme would give thrust to 'Make in India' initiative and will attract huge investments of Rs 45,000 crore (€5.2 Bn) plus in the coming years. With this push for ACC batteries, the sector would witness robust growth in the coming years.

India wants negotiations on bilateral trade and free trade agreement with EU to be pursued parallelly and concluded soon. Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal has written to his counterpart Valdis Dombrovskis last week to initiate the process for resumption of trade & investment negotiations following a decision in this regard arrived at the India-EU Leaders' Summit on May 8. This would involve setting up negotiating groups on different tracks and to begin formal engagement by the two sides. A decision to resume negotiations was a key deliverable of the Porto Summit on 8 May.

The Measures taken by the Government on the fronts of FDI policy reforms, investment facilitation and ease of doing business have resulted in increased FDI inflows into the country as India has attracted total FDI inflow of US$ 72.12 billion during April to January, 2021. It is the highest ever for the first ten months of a financial year and 15% higher as compared to the first ten months of 2019-20 (US$ 62.72 billion). The trends show that the FDI equity inflow grew by 28% in the first ten months of F.Y. 2020-21 (US$ 54.18 billion) compared to the year ago period (US$ 42.34 billion). 

The Government of India and European Investment Bank (EIB) signed the finance contract for second tranche of Euro 150 million for Pune Metro Rail project through a virtual signing ceremony. EIB had approved the total loan of Euro 600 million to fund the Pune Metro Rail project. The Finance Contract for first tranche of Euro 200 million was signed between GoI and EIB on 22.7.2019. The project aims to provide efficient, safe, economic and pollution-free Mass Rapid Transit System in densely populated area in the city of Pune served with heterogeneous traffic options.