BusinessDay 24 May 2017

Wednesday 24 May 2017
A4 BUSINESS DAY
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NATIONAL NEWS
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US files lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler alleging diesel emissions violations
DAVID LYNCH
The US has filed a suit against
Fiat Chrysler, accusing the
Italian- American carmaker
of violating diesel emissions
standards but stopping short of alleging
it had intentionally designed its vehicles
to cheat environmental testing.
The US justice department had
been in talks with Fiat to try and avoid
the lawsuit, with the carmaker making
a last-ditch effort to settle the case by
proposing a fix for 104,000 dieselpowered
vehicles in the US that failed
to satisfy environmental regulators.
The decision to move ahead with
the suit is a setback for the carmaker,
raising the prospect of large fines and
penalties. But the charges allow Fiat
to avoid the fate of European rival
Volkswagen, which was accused by the
justice department of developing software
to intentionally cheat nitrogen
oxide emissions tests. Fiat shares fell
nearly 3 per cent on news of the suit.
The allegations have been hanging
over Fiat since January, when the US
Environmental Protection Agency accused
the company of violating emissions
laws in its diesel vehicles. The
charges were made public a day after
VW agreed to pay a $4.3bn criminal
fine for evading US pollution laws. Fiat
said it was “disappointed” with the suit
but would “defend itself vigorously”.
In its settlement with Washington,
VW acknowledged that “defeat
devices” it used in its diesel vehicles
allowed them to perform differently
under test conditions than during
normal driving. This enabled them to
trick the government emissions testing
meant to catch vehicles that emit
excess pollutants.
Although Fiat vehicles have also
been accused of having “defeat devices”,
sources close to the company
insisted the designation was an umbrella
term under US environmental
law which could include less egregious
conduct than that admitted by VW.
“It does not mean [Fiat] did the same
thing,” said one person close to the
company.
Manchester man identified...
Continued from page A3
western European governments
struggling to contain the threat
from Isis and other Islamists.
The bomber detonated his
device, loaded with metal objects,
near one of the main exits of the
21,000-seater Manchester Arena,
the biggest indoor venue in the
UK, as mostly young female fans
were leaving a concert by US pop
star Ariana Grande. The attack
echoed the bloody assault on the
Bataclan concert hall in Paris in
November 2015.
A friend of the family told the
Financial Times that Abedi had a
history of gang membership and
had only recently turned to radical
Islam.
“We struggle to comprehend
the warped and twisted mind that
sees a room of young people as an
opportunity for carnage,” Theresa
May, the prime minister, said in
a sombre statement outside 10
Downing Street.
Britain’s political parties suspended
campaigning for the June
8 general election in response to
the killings. Donald Trump, US
president, condemned the attack,
saying such perpetrators were
“evil losers in life”.
“Terrorists must be driven from
our society forever. This wicked
ideology must be obliterated.
Completely obliterated. Innocent
life must be protected,” he said on
a visit to Bethlehem for a meeting
with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian
president.
In France, the western country
hardest hit by Islamist attacks
recently, President Emmanuel
Macron expressed “compassion
and solidarity with the people of
Britain”. His office said Mr Macron
would “pursue with the government
and with British forces the
fight against terrorism”.
Isis claimed responsibility for
the attack, although the jihadi
group has in the past taken credit
for terror incidents with which
it was later found to be unconnected.
Dan Coats, US director of
national intelligence, said Isis’s
role had yet to be confirmed.
Nitin Gadkari
India takes on challenge of port expansion
SIMON MUNDY
Off a dusty stretch of coast
under the scorching Gujarat
sun, dredgers are
reclaiming hundreds of
hectares of land from the Arabian
Sea in the latest challenge to India’s
once-dominant state-owned ports:
a private deepwater terminal that
will handle 20m tonnes a year of
everything from textiles to cement.
Print article Add to basket
 Essar Ports, which is developing
the Hazira site, is one of
several companies to have spied an
opportunity as government facilities
struggle to keep pace with India’s
booming international trade. The
big 12 state-owned ports’ share of
the country’s shipping by volume
has fallen from 72 per cent to 55 per
cent in less than a decade.
The future of these marine gateways
is crucial to the economy,
the fastest-growing of any leading
nation, with an annual growth rate
above 7 per cent. To maintain that
pace, India needs to handle ever
larger volumes of trade. And if the
government is to realise its hopes of
boosting India’s status as an exporting
power, it will need to narrow
the logistical gap with rivals such
as China.
To some, the answer is a continued
shift away from public ports.
“Productivity and efficiency are
much higher at the private ports,”
says Subhas Das, the Hazira port’s
chief executive. “None of the state
ports are yet modern.”
But Nitin Gadkari, the minister
for road and maritime infrastructure,
is fighting back against such
criticism with a vast campaign to
improve the state ports’ efficiency
and scale that has earmarked Rs8tn
($124bn) in spending over the next
18 years.
“It will be the biggest project in
the history of the country,” Gadkari
said in December of the Sagarmala
scheme, which includes upgrades to
the big 12 state ports, the construction
of six new ones and improved
ship-to-rail links.
The government sees it as a main
plank in its ambitious plans for
infrastructure in India, which has
already witnessed blistering growth
in sea trade since the liberalisation
of the 1990s.
Container shipping volumes,
which in 1991 amounted to just
602,000 twenty foot equivalent units
(TEUs), hit 13.2m last year. Given
this was only about half that of South
Korea, Malaysia or Japan, and one
15th that of China, the government
expects expansion to continue.
Yet little detail has been given
on funding for the Sagarmala programme.
And the state’s performance
in other industries gives
grounds for scepticism about its ability
to compete with the private sector.
The state-owned flag carrier Air India
has racked up eight annual losses in
the past decade after losing share to
more efficient private airlines.
Nonetheless, the government’s
focus on port improvement is
prompting optimism for the likes of
Cyril George, vice-chairman of the
Port of Chennai.
The port, one of India’s oldest, is
working to boost efficiency through
measures such as automated gates
that allow trucks swifter passage - but
it is still hampered by “legacy issues”
including a large manpower surplus,
Mr George warns. By comparison,
he says, the private ports “enjoy a lot
of freedom in all respects” - a gap he
thinks will be closed by passage of a
bill giving greater autonomy to state
ports to invest and form partnerships
with private companies.
Greek bailout
deal moves a
step closer
JIM BRUNSDEN
Eurozone finance ministers
and the International
Monetary Fund are exploring
a compromise plan for
Greece’s bailout that would allow
the country to receive much-needed
funds this summer while delaying
sensitive discussions on whether it
will get debt relief.
Diplomats said the proposal, put
forward by the IMF, would involve
the fund taking a formal decision to
join Greece’s bailout, but with the
proviso that it would not provide any
money until the eurozone gave further
details on how it was prepared
to ease Athens’ debts.
Supporters of the plan argue that
it would deliver formal IMF backing
for the Greek programme, which
Germany has made a prerequisite for
Athens to receive any further tranches
of aid from its €86bn bailout.
At the same time, the approach
would buy time for politically sensitive
talks about a debt relief package,
which the IMF says is essential for
Greece to recover. The approach
won support from finance ministers,
including Germany’s Wolfgang
Schäuble, during seven hours of
negotiations in Brussels on Monday
evening.
Although talks ended without
agreement, diplomats expect the
plan to form the basis of discussions
when IMF officials and eurozone
ministers regroup on June 15 to try
to broker a deal.
Greece’s need for money is pressing.
It faces more than €7bn of debt
repayments in July.
The Washington-based fund had
previously insisted it would decide to
join the bailout only if the eurozone
provided much more detail on the
debt relief it would give. But people
involved in the talks said the IMF’s
plan to initially withhold its bailout
loans would remove this urgency
and allow talks on debt relief after
Germany’s elections in September.
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