Sales of commercial vehicles rose 8.59 per cent to 56,140 units in September, SIAM said.
Positive cues from China - which accounts for 56.5 per cent of global crude steel production - are likely to keep demand-supply in balance and provide support to prices. All eyes have been on China, which opened after New Year holidays, as it was widely expected that prices would recover post-holidays after the weakness in January. Jayanta Roy, senior vice president, ICRA pointed out, barring last year when Covid-related restrictions affected China's steel demand in February 2020, historical trends show a typical upward movement in steel prices post-new year festivities. China's opening post-holidays was keenly awaited, especially in the wake of the sluggishness in the market in January.
The Union Budget on Wednesday outlined several initiatives to drive India's technology agenda and boost digital infrastructure, including new centres of excellence for artificial intelligence, National Data Governance Policy, and Entity DigiLocker.
Eminent economist Arvind Panagariya has said India is on the cusp of returning to a high growth trajectory and voiced confidence that the country will become the world's third-largest economy by 2027-28. Currently, India is the fifth largest economy "so it's another five years.We are already in (the year) 2023. "So 2027-28, India should be the third-largest economy," Panagariya, Columbia University Professor and former Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, told PTI in an interview in New York.
The Telecommunications Bill, 2023, which was passed by a voice vote after a short debate, also allows the Centre to take possession of a telecom network in case of any public emergency or in the interest of public safety.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) will invest nearly $4.4 billion (Rs 36,000 crore) in India by 2030 and support more than 48,000 jobs externally through a new regional service launched on Tuesday, said the on-demand Cloud computing company. AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) is the company's second infrastructure region in India, six years after it opened its first Cloud region in Mumbai in 2016. The Hyderabad region will give customers access to AWS technologies for data analytics, security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
An infra-focussed portfolio requires careful assessment of news and its impact on balance sheets.
The recent surge in crude oil prices could shave off the gains made by India Inc in profit margins in the past few quarters. Worse, it comes at a time when consumer demand in the country is slipping and major global economies are witnessing a slowdown. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the margin expansion accounted for three-fourths of the rise in the listed firms' operating profit between the April-June quarter (Q1) of FY23 and Q1FY24, and only a quarter of profits gains came from revenue growth.
'We are at $2.7 trillion and 2024 is not far away.' 'The country will need to grow by 9% every year for 5 years continuously and raise the aggregate investment rate to 38% of GDP to achieve the government's target of turning India into a $5 trillion economy.' 'Given the fact that we are only growing at about 5% and our investment rates are only about 30%, it may take a number of years before we can reach that targeted level.'
The automobile sector is considered a good indicator of economic health. It has a very long value chain, from primary materials, like metals, glass and plastic, to value-added high-end electronic components, specialised alloys, and software.
When Vineet Mittal first got into solar power, sometime around 2009, and was planting solar panels in Gujarat, renewable energy looked like a sector ripe for startups. Renewables were clearly the future of energy, and the big boys - Mukesh Ambani's Reliance, Adani Group, and the Tatas - were focusing much more on coal and petroleum. Little did Mittal know that things were going to change drastically.
RIL accounted for over a quarter of the country's LPG production of around 8.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) last year. Around 2.5 mtpa LPG - the only petroleum product in which India is not self-sufficient - was imported last year to meet the domestic demand of 11 mtpa. RIL is planning to cut LPG production at Jamnagar from 2.3 mtpa to around 1.6 mtpa from mid-2008 following the grant of export-oriented-unit (EoU) status to the refinery.
After bumbling for years since 2014, the Modi government seems to believe that massive government expenditure will lead us to prosperity supported by 'seat-of-the-pants' decision-making, observes Debashis Basu.
With no signs of economic revival under the current political circumstances, SIAM said it expected a turnaround in the fortune of the auto industry only after a new government is formed after the general elections next year.
The National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India is going to indefinitely defer the internal deadline set for extending trading hours, according to sources in the know. The exchange aimed to introduce a three-hour evening session exclusively for index derivatives by March 2024, contingent upon regulatory clearance from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). Sources indicate that the market regulator has not provided a favourable indication, dimming optimism surrounding the proposal.
Fitch on Tuesday affirmed India's sovereign rating at 'BBB-' with a stable outlook, on robust growth and resilient external finances, but said weak public finances remain a challenge. India's rating has been unchanged at 'BBB-', which is the lowest investment grade, since August 2006. "Fitch Ratings has affirmed India's Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'BBB-' with a Stable Outlook," it said in a statement, adding strong growth potential is a key supporting factor for the sovereign rating.
As a percentage contributor to nominal GDP, PFCE's share was 60.1 per cent in FY23, compared with 59.6 per cent and 60.8 per cent in the two preceding fiscal years. "Although PFCE is expected to grow 7.7 per cent in FY23, we believe it is still short of a broad-based recovery. "The current consumption demand is highly skewed in favour of goods and services consumed largely by the households falling in the upper income bracket. "A broad-based consumption recovery, therefore, is still some distance away," said Sunil Kumar Sinha, principal economist with India Ratings.
'As the Indian economy continues to expand over the next three years, mid- and small-caps should do well as they have higher exposure to the domestic economy than large-caps.'
The recent rally in small and midcap (SMID) stocks is not backed by fundamentals and is a case of irrational exuberance, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said in a recent report. The fundamentals of most of these companies have, in fact, worsened over the last few months, they noted. Yet, some analysts expect the bull run in these stocks to continue amid intermittent corrections.
For maintaining sustained demand in domestic consumption and household investment, the economy must generate enough jobs in the formal sector,says Shubhashis Gangopadhyay.
Maintaining a rapid pace of the vaccination drive and quickly bridging healthcare infrastructure gaps across both urban and rural areas would emerge as the most sustainable stimulus for durable recovery of the Indian economy, says a report by the department of economic affairs.
The engineering and construction (E&C) sector delivered an excellent performance in the last two financial years (FY2021-22 or FY22 and FY23's nine-months) and there's reason to believe that FY24 will also see outperformance. The sector has emerged from the pandemic with stronger balance sheets and more rational cost structures. It has a big order book and it should see new order flows accelerate in FY24.
The Reserve Bank's growth projection for next financial year is lower than 8-8.5 per cent projected by the finance ministry in the recent Economic Survey which was tabled in Parliament on January 31. Unveiling the bi-monthly policy, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said, "Recovery in domestic economic activity is yet to be broad-based, as private consumption and contact-intensive services remain below pre-pandemic levels."
China's economy, which suffered 6.8 per cent slump in the first quarter due to the coronavirus pandemic -- the worst in 44 years -- bounced back posting 4.9 per cent growth between July and September buoyed by the government's sweeping efforts to stimulate demand and consumption.
Major General S C N Jatar, who passed into the ages on Monday night, thwarted anti-national forces at the peak of the Assam agitation. Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) salutes this officer and gentleman.
IMF attributes the slower growth rate to supply-side bottlenecks.
On June 30, mining and metals giant Vedanta, announced that it had decided to initiate a strategic review of its steel and steel-making raw material businesses. The review would begin immediately and evaluate a broad range of options, including but not limited to a potential strategic sale of some or all of the steel businesses, the company said in its stock exchange filing. The signs have been there - approaches had been made to steel players over the past year. Last December, Anil Agarwal, chairman Vedanta group, told Business Standard that the steel plant capacity was about 3 million tonnes (mt).
The earnings of India Inc hit a record high in the 2022-23 (FY23) January-March quarter (fourth quarter, or Q4), compared with their poor showing in the previous two quarters of the financial year. The rise in earnings, however, is exclusively led by banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) companies. A better-than-expected showing by banks and non-bank lenders in Q4FY23 more than compensated for the earnings contraction in the non-BFSI space.
Aided by the new initiatives of the government, there has been a huge drop in imports
Clawing the economy back to an 8 per cent growth path will require bringing savings and investment rates closer to 35 per cent on a sustained basis, which were 30.2 and 29.6 per cent, respectively, in FY22, according to a report. As per India Ratings, a large part of investments will have to be in infrastructure, which can help revive private investments by easing supply constraints and offset the weakening of external demand due to global headwinds. Higher investments will have to be accompanied by higher domestic savings to keep the savings-investments gap under check.
'India is in a slowdown which most of us have not seen in our living memory.'
'I believe that as we produce more, our cost will come down further. We will maintain our competitiveness.'
10 non-bank and non-finance stocks from the BSE500 Index universe that offer an optimal blend of low valuation, reasonably robust revenue and earnings growth in recent quarters, a strong balance sheet, and most importantly, positive cash flow from their operations.
'It really doesn't matter that investors getting allotments sell their IPO stock holdings on listing day because a new set of investors are entering.' 'This explains the continued rise in stock prices even after the first day of listing.'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will have to do a tight-rope walk between staying fiscally prudent and general public expectations of lower taxes and a wider social security net, while at the same time firing the engines of the economy before general elections. Sitharaman will on Wednesday present her fifth straight Budget at a time when the economy is slowing due to global headwinds and specific sectors need attention. In the run-up to the Budget presentation, expectations are rife that she may tweak income-tax slabs to provide relief to the middle class and increase spending on the poor through programmes such as the rural job scheme while ramping up financial incentives for local manufacturing.
Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) V Anantha Nageswaran on Thursday said describing India's recovery as 'K-shaped' was wrong as both rural and urban economies were recovering, albeit at different paces. Speaking to reporters at the Finance Ministry, Nageswaran said the gross domestic product (GDP) growth print for the recent October-December quarter (Q3FY23) will likely be revised upwards. "The notion of using the letter 'K' to denote urban and rural is somewhat wrong because it is almost as if one is growing and one is contracting. "I would say one segment's slope is more positive, and the other one slope is less positive but it is positive," Nageswaran said.
The oil ministry has stopped making fresh allocation of natural gas from domestic fields to the city gas sector, threatening the viability of Rs 2 lakh crore investment planned in the sector besides leading to a hike in CNG and piped cooking gas prices to record levels, sources said. Despite a decision of the Union Cabinet to give 100 per cent gas supply under 'no cut' priority to the city gas distribution (CGD) sector, current supplies have been maintained at March 2021 demand level. Besides, the process of allocating gas on a six-monthly average drawl also is punishing the CGD entities driving growth.
'The aim is also to probe how the ministry and testing agencies made negligence in examining these OEMs, so that such negligence is avoided in the future.'
Cummins India will soon start producing fuel-agnostic engine systems at the Tata-Cummins plant in Phaltan in Satara district of Maharashtra, senior officials at Cummins India said. The firm will start limited production by the end of 2023 and mass production will likely begin by 2024, the officials said.
