The proclamation that comes into effect on June 24, is expected to impact a large number of Indian IT professionals and several American and Indian companies who were issued H-1B visas by the US government for the fiscal year 2021 beginning October 1.
India's services activity expanded at the fastest rate in a year during February, while employment fell further and companies noted the sharpest rise in overall expenses, a monthly survey said on Wednesday. The seasonally adjusted India Services Business Activity Index rose from 52.8 in January to 55.3 in February, pointing to the sharpest rate of expansion in output in a year amid improved demand and more favourable market conditions. The index was above the critical 50 mark that separates growth from contraction for the fifth month in a row during February as the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines led to an improvement in business confidence towards growth prospects.
Union Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Friday announced that a high-level committee will be constituted to probe into the leakage of toxic gas at SAIL's Bhilai Plant in Chhattisgarh in which six people were killed and about 30 others injured.
A week after violence broke out at its Narasapura facility in Karnataka, contract manufacturer Wistron on Saturday said it has fired its vice-president who was heading India operations even as iPhone maker Apple placed the Taiwanese firm on probation. Wistron, which assembles the latest version of the iPhone SE at the violence-hit plant, admitted that there were faults in its wage payment processes. A section of workers at Wistron Corporation's facility in Narasapura Industrial Area in Kolar district near Bengaluru went on rampage last week over non-payment of their wages.
A senior official in the central labour commissioner's office said the efforts of the government were to resolve the cases amicably and not to press for legal action against employers. "Everyone is going through tough times. We could initiate legal action if we want but that's not the idea. We want to address the issues amicably," the official said.
'We completed Rs 17 trillion worth of projects in the first term and currently Rs 9 trillion worth of contracts are under construction.'
The economy faces more downside risks now as economic disruptions arising from the second wave are likely to stabilise only from July, warned the Swiss brokerage USB Securities. Last month, the brokerage had cut its GDP forecast by 150 bps to 10 per cent for FY22, which though is much higher than the consensus projections by others with some pegging it at as low as 8 per cent. Though adverse impacts on sequential growth is less severe than in the June 2020 quarter when it plunged by 23.9 per cent, as lockdowns are more targeted and localised and households and businesses have adjusted to the new normal now, still, it is increasingly possible that normalcy returns only by July as against our baseline assumption of June.
With a surge in coronavirus cases in Delhi and its neighbouring cities, migrant workers and daily wagers fear another round of lockdown could push them into a severe financial crisis from which they might never recover.
The thing is that unemployment and joblessness are a personally felt shame. It is not easy to mobilise a set of people who identify with others as a group that cannot get work, asserts Aakar Patel.
A joint forum of central trade unions has given a call for a nationwide strike on March 28 and 29 to protest against the government policies affecting workers, farmers, and people.
The government's second round of stimulus will spur consumer spending in the near term but support to economic growth will be minimal, Moody's Investors Service said.
Drawn in by fuzzy promises about unleashing the entrepreneur in each of us and the benefits of being one's own boss, people find themselves instead oppressed by an algorithm, notes Rahul Jacob.
Business activity has fallen by a fourth of the pre-COVID levels due to lockdowns imposed by states to contain the spread of the second wave of COVID-19, Japanese brokerage Nomura said on Tuesday. However, it said the falling activity levels will have a muted economic impact and maintained its growth estimates for the year, saying the lockdowns present "downside risks". As of April 25, the Nomura India Business Resumption Index (NIBRI) registered its steepest weekly fall in over a year of 8.5 percentage points to 75.9, which is 24 percentage points below pre-pandemic normal, the brokerage said in a statement.
At a time when finding out who is paying for labourers' train tickets is a task for Sherlock Holmes, Hemant Soren's Jharkhand government has flown in stranded workers from Ladakh, and is probably the only state that has tried to give 'migrant workers' a modicum of respect, observes Debashish Chatterjee.
A Goldman Sachs report said, in the past also, major crisis have led to a sharp increase in outsourcing and even offshoring particularly to India , thanks to lower wages for technology developers as compared to developed economies, and an increasing annual base of engineering graduates.
The IMF on Tuesday cut India's economic growth forecast by 0.5 percentage points to 9 per cent for the current fiscal year, with its chief economist Gita Gopinath saying that the slight downgrade is mainly due to the impact of the spread of the Omicron variant. "If you look at the 2021-22 fiscal year, we have a slight downgrade of -0.5 percentage points and for the next fiscal year 2022-23 we have a slight upgrade of 0.5 percentage points. So, growth for the previous fiscal year is now nine per cent and for this year now is at nine per cent. We moved it up slightly," Gopinath told reporters during a news conference in Washington. In its latest update of World Economic Outlook on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund has cut India's economic growth forecast to 9 per cent for the current fiscal year ending March 31, joining a host of agencies which have downgraded their projections on concerns over the impact of the spread of Omicron on business activity and mobility.
Wistron, which earlier pegged the losses at Rs 437 crore, later notified the Taiwan stock exchange that the total losses were around Rs 50 crore.
If India wants to become a globally competitive manufacturing hub, it will have to rethink the notion that the traditional SMEs will form the manufacturing backbone, argues Prosenjit Datta.
The output of eight core sectors grew by 16.8 per cent in May, mainly due to a low base effect and uptick in production of natural gas, refinery products, steel, cement and electricity, official data released on Wednesday showed. The eight infrastructure sectors of coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilisers, steel, cement and electricity had contracted by 21.4 per cent in May 2020 due to the lockdown restrictions imposed to control the spread of the COVID-19 infections. In March this year, these key sectors had recorded a growth of 11.4 per cent, and 60.9 per cent in April.
'Nobody is talking about the inequality that is going to come.'
Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday promised an array of initiatives in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls like bringing a strong Jan Lokpal Bill, installing CCTV cameras in court rooms and bringing down the age to contest elections to 21 from 25.
The strike notices were given by workers' unions of various sectors such as coal, steel, oil, telecom, postal, income tax, copper, banks and insurance.
Apple Inc's leading contract manufacturer, Taiwanese giant Wistron, has exceeded its investment obligation in India in just eight months, although the government's production-linked investment (PLI) scheme allowed it to complete the investment in four years. Between August 2020 and end March 2021, Wistron made an investment of Rs 1255 crore - 25 per cent more than the total investment it had committed to the government. Under the PLI scheme for mobile devices, the government had stipulated that each of the five participating global companies needed to invest Rs 250 crore every year for the first four years, totalling Rs 1,000 crore.
Ratings agency Moody's on Tuesday affirmed India's sovereign rating and upgraded the country's outlook to 'stable' from 'negative', citing receding downside risks to the economy and financial system.
'The rise in unemployment, underemployment, discouraged workers and job insecurity is likely to continue, with very adverse consequences for the nation's economic well-being and social cohesion,' warns Shankar Acharya.
Rajasthan has taken the lead on structural reforms which could help India attract business and employ a fast-growing workforce.
Vipul Agarwal and Vivek Agarwal, the developers and partners in Alcon Landmarks, were arrested on Saturday after a portion of a 22-ft-high compound wall of a housing society collapsed on adjoining shanties of construction workers following incessant rainfall.
However, the Indian economy is expected to bounce back in 2021, the World Bank said.
Kisan Mazdoor Sangh (KMS) and Kisan Sena (KS) made a representation, which also included a demand for strengthening the dispute resolution system in case of any trouble in contract farming.
'Revival is happening slowly.' 'But that is, if the pandemic is controlled.'
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According to industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers and Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India, with demand continuing to be low and factories not operating at full scale, this may lead to temporary excess overheads.
The number of new jobs created declined by around 65 per cent to 64,000 in April-June 2017, from 185,000 in January-March 2017, according to the Labour Bureau's quarterly report on employment.
'There are 8-12 members living in the same accommodation. While in pre-lockdown days, since most were out on work, social tension among them was less because of limited interaction. But now, no food and livelihood, along with having to live in cramped conditions, is taking a toll on their mental health.'
At present, Indian indices are under-performing as compared to others and a package from the government can help cover the ground.
Terming the 23.9 per cent fall in economic growth in the June quarter alarming, former Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has said bureaucracy should come out of complacency and take meaningful action. The current crisis requires a more thoughtful and active government, he said, adding, "Unfortunately, after an initial burst of activity, it seems to have retreated into a shell."
The country's economy will start witnessing a growth of 6.5 to 7 per cent from fiscal 2023 onwards, helped by various reforms undertaken by the government so far and also as COVID-19 vaccination drive progresses, Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian said. He said the second wave of COVID-19 is unlikely to have a very significant on the economy. The country's economy contracted by 7.3 per cent in fiscal 2020-21. "Together with the reforms and focus on vaccination, I expect growth to start hitting close 6.5 to 7 per cent from FY23 onwards and accelerate from there on," Subramanian said at a virtual event organised by Dun & Bradstreet.
Buoyed by an increase in public investment and incentives to boost manufacturing, India's economy is expected to grow by 8.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2021-22, less than the previous projection early this year before the country was hit by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank has said in its latest report. World Bank chief economist for the South Asia Region Hans Timmer told PTI here that when one looks at the high frequency data, they see that as a result of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the recovery paused, and some indicate that the recovery actually declined briefly. "We project for this fiscal year 8.3 per cent (growth rate for Indian economy) that is less than we projected early in the year before the health crisis caused by the second wave. "Given the sharp contraction of the economy last year, it might not look like a lot, but in my view, that is actually very positive news, given the violent second wave and the severity of the health crisis," he said on Thursday.
What is more worrying, according to the report, is the fact that in over 20 per cent of the topic caseload districts where the second has ebbed, the third wave has set in firmly, which was only 5 per cent a month ago.
The contractual workers at Halol were severed by 2016 as the contracts were not renewed, while the permanent workers were offered a separation package in the form of a voluntary retirement scheme
More than 40% of the companies surveyed showed job contraction in FY18, says a report by CARE Ratings
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