In a business friendly move, the Reserve Bank of India on Friday said that Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS), used for large value transactions, will be made available round-the-clock from December. In December 2019, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system was made available on a 24x7x365 basis. Currently, RTGS is available for customers from 7.00 am to 6.00 pm on all working days of a week, except second and fourth Saturdays of every month.
In wake of the coronavirus pandemic, US auto major Ford has asked its 10,000 employees in India, except those in business-critical roles, to work from home, a step which has also been taken up by Swedish luxury car maker Volvo. A Ford India spokesperson said, in recent days, the company has concluded that the issue of coronavirus has taken on a different dimension.
Hemmed in by barricades and police and paramilitary swarming all over the place, the troubled Jahangirpuri on Friday showed signs of returning to normalcy, with the local peace committee calling for communal harmony and members of the warring communities embracing each other, agreeing to let bygones be bygones.
With Goods and Services Tax (GST) officers under pressure to exceed the Rs 1-trillion collection mark per month, industry has faced a barrage of recovery notices and summons issued over the last one month across sectors, according to company executives. Industry bodies have claimed harassment by field officers, blocking of input tax credit, cancellation of GST registration, threats of arrest and steep penalties, impacting their working capital and operations. Company executives pointed at an atmosphere of apprehension and fear due to such notices and summons.
'Aquaponics can effectively cushion the impact of a calamity like COVID.'
The farmers stuck to their demand of taking out the rally on Delhi's busy Outer Ring Road.
Telecom regulator Trai on Monday recommended about 39 per cent reduction in the reserve or floor price for the sale of spectrum for mobile services, including the latest 5G offering, as it looked to match revenue expectations with the industry's paying capacity. With large swathes of spectrum remaining unsold in the last two auctions, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recommended to the government for selling airwaves in all existing bands of 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 2500 MHz and new slots of 600 MHz, 3300-3670 MHz and 24.25-28.5 GHz. It has suggested a lower reserve price for all bands, compared to the prices proposed in the previous recommendations in 2018.
Paytm said the global tech giant's move was hypocritical as Google, too, regularly runs similar scratch card campaigns in India under its Google Pay app.
Why can't we have a sunset clause for the ARCs, which is a global norm? questions Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
While the Narendra Modi government has stuck to its stand that pending payment is Rs 12,343 crore, MSMEs calim outstanding amount is Rs 2-3 trillion. Moreover, MSME ministry's SAMADHAN portal has been of little help.
To cement India's position as a preferred global outsourcing destination, the government on Wednesday liberalised guidelines for voice-based BPOs removing the distinction between domestic and international units as well as permitting interconnectivity between all types of OSP centres. Broadly, the rules would allow global companies, say an airline, with a voice-based centre in India to now serve global and domestic customers with common telecom resources, something that required dedicated, separate infrastructure previously. Moreover, the restrictions on data interconnectivity between any BPO (business process outsourcing) centre of the same company, a group company or any unrelated company has been done away with, allowing for massive flexibility in resource management for BPO operations.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in India has increased by 16 per cent year-on-year to $27.1 billion during April-August this year, the Commerce and Industry Ministry said on Tuesday. During April-August last year, India had received FDI worth $23.35 billion. The ministry said that the total FDI, which includes reinvested earnings, grew by 13 per cent to $35.73 billion.
However, before the Moderna and Pfizer messenger ribonucleic acid (or mRNA) vaccines come to India via this route, the legalities around the indemnity clause will have to be settled, reports Sohini Das.
Skylark Drones, a leading drone platform company that counts Tata Steel, Ultratech Cement, Softbank Energy among its customers has secured $3 million in a pre-series A funding round. It would use the funding to strengthen its product offerings and fuel international expansion.
If they can sit together and hammer out 'Black Sea Initiative' deal for much needed food shipments, surely, they should be able to address the madness of the larger military conflict?
India needs a National Trade Policy Council, chaired by a minister who reports directly to the PM, says Jayanta Roy, former economic advisor to the Union commerce ministry.
Deputy US Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen on Wednesday announced that three indictments have been unsealed in the matter that collectively charge five Chinese nationals with computer hacking and charge two Malaysian nationals with helping some of those hackers target victims and sell the fruits of their crime.
Tier-II and tier-III towns have a reason to rejoice.
In terms of expansion, a little more than half of the family businesses are open to internationalisation, while 40 per cent are looking at diversification, a PWC survey said. Even Indian family businesses are increasingly looking at diversification and exploring newer markets, it added.
The UK government is under increasing pressure on Monday to review its COVID-19 vaccine protocol in place for travellers from India, after its updated rules effective from next month failed to recognise Indian vaccines under an expanded list of countries.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will on Monday meet chief ministers and state finance ministers to discuss measures to attract private investments to help boost the economy. Finance secretary T V Somanathan said the meeting comes in the backdrop of strong economic recovery post the two COVID waves, and the central government has made a big push in Capex. The focus of this interaction will be on state-level issues, opportunities and challenges, which will enable us to go to a higher trajectory of investment and growth, he said.
Life will hardly remain the same when we get to the other side of the Covid-19 pandemic. Economists and social scientists are predicting lasting changes in the way we live, work and eat. Already many eateries around the world are adapating to the virus in order to facilitate sales. Here's how dining out will look during the coronavirus pandemic.
The job placement rate for students trained by NIIT in China is over 90 per cent.' A revealing excerpt from Saibal Dasgupta's Running With The Dragon: How India Should Do Business With China.
Saudi Aramco had right from the beginning resisted the price tag Reliance had put for the 20 per cent stake in O2C business, which comprises the company's twin refineries at Jamnagar in Gujarat, petrochemical plants and 51 per cent in fuel retailing venture.
The future of cryptocurrencies in India appears uncertain but that has not deterred young Indians from embracing the so-called 'fourth industrial revolution' world, where interconnectivity and smart automation, much of it relying on blockchain technology, drive human civilisation. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das has repeatedly warned of macroeconomic instability and even "serious consequences" if cryptocurrencies turn mainstream. The country's monetary authority wants a China-like total ban on crypto, not even allowing these currencies to be treated as investments. Though Parliament's website had listed the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill as one seeking a total ban of cryptocurrencies in the country, it was not presented in the Winter Session. India now has the highest number of cryptocurrency investors in the world.
The chairman of mortgage giant HDFC Ltd in his annual letter to shareholders, also suggested a one-time restructuring of real estate loans, easing of external commercial borrowing rules and immediate changes in regulations to allow end-to-end execution of housing loans online.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in India Thursday evening in the highest-level visit between the two countries after the ties came under severe strain following the eastern Ladakh standoff nearly two years ago.
In a major blow to Nirav Modi, a bankruptcy court in the US has rejected a petition of the fugitive diamond merchant and two of his associates, seeking dismissal of fraud allegations against them by the trustee of three companies they previously owned indirectly.
Capping a visit that attracted controversy and opposition ire, EU parliamentarians visiting Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday termed Article 370 an internal issue of India and said they stand by the country in its fight against terrorism.
Paytm will not be available for download now but there will be no impact on existing users of the app. 'The app was blocked for violation of play policies - a clarification of our policy was released earlier today ahead of the IPL (Indian Premier League) tournament,' Google said in an e-mailed response on Friday.
A business in India wanting access to maps and geospatial data would typically have to wait months before it got what it wanted. All this is set to change with the new guidelines on geospatial data, report Neha Alawadhi and Peerzada Abrar.
The NSE held 25 to 100 per cent stakes in these entities through its subsidiary NSE Investments as of September.
'Life has been my greatest teacher.'
'Start-ups that generate a majority of their income in India are likely to opt for an Indian listing.'
Many banks' profits will take a hit and a few of them could even end up being in the red because of treasury losses, triggered by a sudden spike in government bond yields in the rising interest rate cycle, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The government has been waiting for the expansion by the private sector, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while reminding India Inc of various measures including corporate tax rate cut, policy consistency, ease of doing business, among others to facilitate investment.
China on Monday defended its visa curbs which have prevented thousands of stranded Indians from returning to Beijing, saying they are "appropriate" to control the spread of COVID-19 and do not target India alone, but are applied to even Chinese citizens coming back from overseas.
In a show of solidarity, the CEOs of some 40 top American companies have come together to create a global task force to mobilise resources to help India fight the battle against Covid-19.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is the world's main banking messaging service which links around 11,000 banks and institutions in more than 200 countries, including India.
In a bid to support revival of sectors hit most by the Covid-19 pandemic, Reserve Bank of India on Friday decided to open a separate liquidity window of Rs 15,000 crore for certain contact-intensive sectors like hotels and restaurants, tourism and aviation ancillary services.
