India may be lagging behind China in terms of economic growth or becoming a global manufacturing hub, but it has outpaced the Communist giant in creating the maximum number of jobs among the BRIC nations.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in its Employment Outlook 2007 report released on Tuesday said India, the world's second-fastest growing economy after China, generated more than 11 million new jobs every year during 2000 and 2005-higher than Brazil, Russia and China.

The four countries together created over 22 million net new jobs on an average per year during 2000 and 2005, which is more than five times the net employment gains recorded in the OECD area as a whole over the same period.

India generated 11.3 million net new jobs per year on an average during this period, higher than 7 million in China, 2.7 million in Brazil and 0.7 million in Russia. In contrast, the average was 3.7 million in the OECD area as a whole.

Paris-based OECD comprises 30 developed countries including the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan.

The famour-four emerging nations club of BRIC account for about 42 per cent of world population and 45 per cent of the world's total workforce. This is far more than the 19 per cent share of the 30-member club of developed economies for both population and labour force, OECD said.

OECD economists said in the report ‘the rapid recent economic expansion in the BRIC countries has led to significant employment gains in these countries’.

These significant net employment gains have translated into higher employment rates in the BRIC region. The employment rates have gone up in Brazil, India and Russia, while it has remained high in China.

The OECD report said India also had the lowest percentage of jobless people among the BRIC nations. The country's unemployment rate stood at 6 per cent in 2005. In contrast, China's unemployment rate was at 8.3 per cent, Russia 7.9 per cent and Brazil 9.3 per cent during 2005.

But the employment to population ratio was also lowest in India, the world's second most populous nation after China, at 50.5 per cent in 2005. In comparison, this ratio stood at between 66-71 per cent in the other three countries.

The report also said there was still significant under-employment in all the four countries, especially among women in Brazil and India and older workers in Russia.

"In China and India, the rural sector is characterised by excess labour and remains large: despite significant rural-urban migration, almost two-thirds of Chinese workers are employed in rural areas and 79 per cent in India."

Labour surplus in rural areas may be around 170 million workers in China and 130 million in India, it said.

According to OECD, another major employment challenge in the BRIC region lies in the significant incidence of ‘employment informality’ in most of these countries.

Employment in the informal sector represents about 45 per cent of total employment in Brazil, 53 per cent in China and over 90 per cent in India.

"Despite faster economic growth, the incidence of informal-sector employment remains stubbornly high in the three countries, which shows that the phenomenon reflects pervasive structural barriers to transitions to formal employment," it added.

OECD also said the elasticity of employment to economic growth is relatively low in China and India.

This suggests that these economies need to grow rapidly in order to be able to absorb the relatively high number of young people who will enter the labour market over the next few years.

Already, China's economy is growing at the rate of more than 10 per cent a year, while India is close behind with 8-9 per cent GDP growth rate.

The report also noted that while overall the employment trends have continued to improve, projections suggest that 32 million persons would be unemployed in 2007 across the world, down from 33.6 million a year ago.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

Even as the State’s new Wind Power Policy comes into force from Wednesday, Gujarat is all set to register by this year end an additional 624 MW of wind energy, with some leading private players in the wind energy sector like Suzlon, Enercon and Vestas having already installed wind turbine generators (WTGs) on their wind farms in the Suarashtra/Kutch region.

Since 1993 when it was decided to harness the wind energy in coastal parts of the State, a total of only 568 MW of wind power had been recorded till March 2007. Now that the private companies have started implementing their respective wind power generation projects signed during the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit, the generation is expected to reach about 1,192 MW, with 624 MW of wind energy to be added to the present installed capacity.

Suzlon that had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a 1,000 MW project has already set up WTGs on its wind farm generating 226 MW of electricity, while the company has plans to generate 300 MW more by this year end. Similarly, Enercon has already started generating 126 MW out of its total 1,000 MW project, and it plans to produce 200 MW more by December. Another private firm that had signed an MoU for the 500 MW project is producing 24 MW of wind energy, and has mooted a plan to add 100 MW more by this year end.

The Gujarat Energy Development Agency (GEDA), which is the nodal agency for the implementation of the new Wind Power Policy, has set a target of about 4,000 MW of wind power generation during the five-year operative period of the policy that expires in 2012. The Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Limited (GACL), a State-owned PSU, has also plunged into the wind energy sector, and has envisaged plans to produce 24 MW by this year end.

When contacted, Director (GEDA) J M Acharya told Express Newsline on Tuesday that private companies had installed their WTGs on wind farms mainly located in the coastal districts of Jamnagar, Kutch, Rajkot and Bhavnagar, with the highest wind power generation being reported, till now, from Jamnagar (311.37 MW), followed by Kutch (190.55 MW), Rajkot (53.19 MW) and Bhavnagar (13.20 MW). As the wind electricity generation reaches 1,192 MW by this year end, there would be a total investment of over Rs 5,300 crore in this sector, he said.

“With the new policy promising more incentives, including the power purchase rates being raised from Rs 2.60 per unit to Rs 3.37 per unit, we expect more and more private firms to set up their wind energy mills in Gujarat in near future”, says Acharya. He agrees that the neighbouring Maharashtra offers higher power purchase rates — Rs 3.50 per unit, with five paise escalation per annum for 13 years.

He said a government resolution (GR) was already issued bringing the State’s new Wind Power Policy into force from June 20, and WTGs installed and commissioned during the five-year operative period will be eligible for the incentives under the policy for a period of 20 years from the date of commissioning. The wheeling of electricity generated from the WTGs will be allowed at a wheeling charge of 4 per cent of the energy fed to the grid as per the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC) order.

Under the policy, except in case of third party sale of wind electricity, the electricity generated from the WTGs will be exempted from payment of electricity duty. The sale of electricity other than to GUVNL and/or any distibution licensee in the State will be considered as the third party sale of electricity. Second hand WTGs will not be eligible for installation under this policy, and only those WTGs that are approved by the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy or by recognised international test houses will be eligible.

The electricity generated from the WTGs will be metered on a monthly basis, jointly by GEDA and GETCO at the sending sub-station of 66 KV or above located at wind farm site. Under the new policy, the supervision charges being paid to GETCO at 15 per cent of the cost of power evacuation has been reduced to 7.5 per cent.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

For commuters who cringe at the thought of travelling to city area via the congested Gita Mandir where traffic snarls are the order of the day, the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) has come up with an international solution.

It plans to shift part of the bus station at Gita Mandir — the hub of state transport buses plying across the state, and its headquarters — to Subhash Bridge.

GSRTC vice-chairman and managing director G R Aloria said, “It will take two years to complete the new bus station, an outcome of private-public-partnership.”

Shifting to Subhash Bridge is part of the corporation’s development plans for setting up seven satellite bus terminals of international standards at Ahmedabad, Mehsana, Vadodara and Surat.

Bus stations in Vadodara will be located at Nizampura, and in Surat at Udhna, even as work to set up such a station is in progress in Naroda.

This should also end the corporation’s ongoing struggle to keep private bus operators at bay who lure major chunk of GSRTC passengers.

Aloria admits that the corporation cannot counter the private operators because of its own limitations that is primarily its inability to accommodate all the passengers.

The corporation, at present caters to 40 million passengers in a year with its fleet of 8,000 buses, none of them now in the “push start” mode compared to 1,200 some time ago.

The satellite stations coming up on the outskirts will reduce the entry of vehicles in the city and thus help cut carbon emissions due to traffic snarls caused by them during peak hours. However, at the same time, the distance may also cause inconvenience to commuters.

Besides the satellite stations, the corporation is in the process of upgrading district and taluka level bus stations under the Nirmal Gujarat campaign, Aloria said.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com