MMFs invest in fixed-income instruments maturing in less than one year, minimising interest-rate risk.
Moody's Investors Service on Friday affirmed India's rating at the lowest investment grade of 'Baa3', with a stable outlook, saying high growth will support a gradual increase in income levels, but flagged risks of populist policies due to rise in political tensions. Moody's said although India's potential growth has come down in the past 7-10 years, the growth would outpace all other G20 economies through at least the next two years, driven by domestic demand. Moody's said the restoration of robust growth prospects post-pandemic, the effective commitment to inflation targeting and the rehabilitation of the financial system aided by reform supports its view of strengthening monetary and macro policy effectiveness.
Moody's Ratings on Tuesday projected general government debt to stabilise above 80 per cent of GDP over the next three years, down from 89.3 per cent in 2020-21. "General government interest payments to fall to around 24 per cent of general government revenue over the next two years from over 28 per cent in fiscal 2020-21, although this remains much higher than the median 8.7 per cent recorded by Baa-rated peers," Moody's Ratings associate managing director Gene Fang said in a post-Budget reaction.
Ask rediffGURU and PF expert Nitin Narkhede your mutual fund and personal finance-related questions.
The banking sector emerged as an outlier when the rest of India Inc witnessed a slowdown in earnings in FY23. The combined net profit of listed public and private sector banks was up 39.4 per cent year-on-year (YoY) last financial year and their share in India's gross value added (GVA) or gross domestic product (GDP) at factor cost rose to a record high of nearly 1 per cent up, from 0.8 per cent a year ago. Listed banks' combined net profit grew to Rs 2.36 trillion in FY23, from Rs 1.69 trillion a year ago. In comparison, India GVA at current prices was up 15.2 per cent YoY at Rs 247 trillion in FY23; it was around Rs 214 trillion a year ago.
'As we enter 2025, it must be acknowledged that there is a convergence of capital, influential people (from business and politics) and technology deciding the destiny of others in the name of pride, patriotism, nationalism, nation building, all of it thinly veiled disguises for personal profit and glory,' asserts Shyam G Menon.
There hasn't been any dramatic moment in the first act (the Budget) but nobody would complain. It's par for the course as long as the figures don't change in the main Budget, which will be presented after general elections.
Kotak Mahindra Bank on Saturday reported a 25 per cent growth in its March quarter net profit at Rs 5,302 crore, limited by a drop in the core income due to narrow interest margins. On a standalone basis, the city-headquartered lender's Q4 net profit grew 18 per cent to Rs 4,133 crore. The FY24 consolidated net profit grew 22 per cent to Rs 18,213 crore.
"We will raise Rs 300 crore via bonds of two-, three- and five-year tenures. This will be our maiden bond issuance and is part of our effort to widen funding sources," says Vimal Bhandari, executive vice-chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), Arka Fincap. The firm, a subsidiary of Kirloskar Oil, is only five years old and small (assets of around Rs 5,000 crore with an "AA" rating), but the response to this float will be closely watched: It would be the first by a non-banking finance company (NBFC) after Mint Road upped the risk weights on bank exposures to them by 25 percentage points. The move by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has caught NBFCs off guard even though the issue had been flagged by Governor Shaktikanta Das with their corner-room occupants (and that of banks) in July and August 2023 - on consumer credit and the dependency on bank borrowings.
That's the only way to convince those who have money to return to the bank fold, ditching other asset classes, says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
State-owned Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency's (Ireda's) chairman and managing director Pradip Kumar Das has announced that the company has requested the government to allow it to carry out a follow-on public offer (FPO) as it will need further equity infusion to maintain the pace of growth. The FPO would aim to raise between Rs 4,000 crore and Rs 5,000 crore. Ireda, which provides funding assistance and other services to renewable energy and energy efficiency/conservation projects and is 75 per cent owned by the government of India, has requested the Union Finance Ministry to be included under Section 54EC of the Income Tax Act, which will help reduce borrowing costs.
'India represents one of the top opportunities with robust growth, solid fundamentals, and openness to foreign investment.'
SBI Cards & Payment Services reported mixed results for the January-March quarter (Q4) of FY24. While it managed to deliver strong earnings growth, it saw a perceptible decline in net interest margin (NIM) and suffered deteriorating asset quality. Taken together, the market was disappointed with the share dropping 3.5 per cent.
The meeting in New Delhi etc is just the BJP being nice to the man who helped it realise its dream by stabbing Uddhav in the back, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
India's exports recorded a flat growth of 0.59 per cent to $31.99 billion in November, even as trade deficit widened to $23.89 billion during the month, according to the data released by the government on Thursday. Exports stood at $31.8 billion in November last year. Imports rose by 5.37 per cent to $55.88 billion in November as compared to $53.03 billion in the corresponding month a year ago, the data showed. During April-November 2022, exports rose by 11 per cent to $295.26 billion as against $265.77 billion in the same month last year.
Survey calls for reorienting policies to promote young firms which have the potential to become big, rather than small MSME firms which remain small.
Had you invested Rs 10,000 each in JSW Steel, Titan Company and Bajaj Finance 20 years ago, when they were just penny stocks (trading below Rs 10), you would have become a millionaire by now.
Looking under the hood, I see India on the terrible, but commonplace, road to prosperity failure, warns Rathin Roy.
'RBI is already late in addressing inflation pressures.'
The outstanding credit card base dropped to 77.99 million in August from over 80 million in July, mainly on account of the new norms of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that warrant the deactivation of cards that are inactive for a year. While there was a 2.8 per cent decline in net card additions on a month-on-month (MoM) basis in August, a first in many months, credit card spends slipped 3 per cent on a high base. Still, spends topped the Rs 1-trillion mark for the sixth consecutive month.
After several years of downgrades to the country's medium-term growth outlook, the estimates are likely to be upgraded now, Credit Suisse said in a report. The country's economy is showing signs of bottoming out, it said. According to the report, the consensus forecasts of GDP growth for FY2022 over FY2020 stopped falling after October 2020 (currently at (-) 1 per cent). Analysts at Credit Suisse expect these estimates to be revised upwards.
Self-employed individuals often face hurdles in buying term insurance due to financial documentation that doesn't fully reflect their earnings. This complicates underwriting.
Preparing for the Paris Olympics along with her teammates, Batra said she has learned from her Tokyo Games experience.
The challenge for the RBI in 2024 is likely to be less about containing elevated inflation and more about curbing excessive financial market exuberance and a 'problem of plenty', notes Sajjid Chinoy, Chief India Economist JP Morgan.
The pace of growth in bank deposits and credit showed a substantial decline in the last quarter of 2009-10, as compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
Private sector lender Yes Bank on Saturday reported a 46.7 per cent growth in net profit to Rs 502 crore for the June 2024 quarter, helped by a reduction in provisions. The city-headquartered bank's core net interest income rose 12.2 per cent to Rs 2,000 crore. Its net interest margin stayed flat at 2.4 per cent.
In the June quarter of FY24, 51 per cent of consumers who took small-ticket personal loans already had more than four credit products at the time of accessing yet another new loan, compared with just 17 per cent in the June quarter of FY20, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
China's post COVID-19 pandemic economic rebound showed signs of slowdown as the economy grew at 7.9 per cent in the second quarter compared to a record 18.3 per cent in Q1, while the GDP expanded 12.7 per cent year on year in the first half amid the continued global spread of the coronavirus and unbalanced domestic recovery. In the second quarter, the GDP of the second largest economy in the world grew 7.9 per cent year on year, the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, (NBS) on Thursday showed. On a quarterly basis, the economy expanded 1.3 per cent in Q2.
The Reserve Bank on Thursday tightened norms for consumer credit as it asked banks and NBFCs to assign a higher risk weight for unsecured personal loans, a move aimed at making the lenders more cautious on such advances. The risk weight on unsecured consumer loans has been raised by 25 percentage points. The new regulations, however, will not be applicable on housing loans, education loans, vehicle loans and loans secured by gold and gold jewellery, the Reserve Bank said in a circular.
S&P Global Ratings has upgraded its long-term ratings on Tata Motors to speculative grade 'BB' with stable outlook on earnings improvements and potential deleveraging. The ratings agency had earlier placed Tata Motors in 'BB-'. As per S&P ratings, a BB grade is less vulnerable in the near-term but faces major ongoing uncertainties to adverse business, financial and economic conditions.
In August, the Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das held a meeting with chief executive officers/ managing directors (CEOs/ MDs) of large non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs). The discussions included diversifying borrowing sources for NBFCs and housing finance companies (HFCs) to contain increasing reliance on bank borrowing, risks associated with high credit growth in retail segment in unsecured loans, prioritising IT upgrades and cyber-security, improving provisioning, monitoring of stressed exposures and slippages, ensuring robust liquidity and asset-liability management, ensuring transparency in pricing, creating robust grievance redress mechanisms.
'It is difficult to write business internationally, without an 'A-' rating. It becomes more expensive.'
'Subject to any worldwide economic collapse.'
'We are sure FY25 is going to be better...But to call out that all problems are behind us is a bit early.' 'The underlying business sentiment has not changed significantly.'
SBI Research has projected the Indian economy to grow at 7.5 per cent in 2022-23, an upward revision of 20 basis points from its earlier estimate. As per official data, the economy grew by 8.7 per cent in FY22, net adding Rs 11.8 lakh crore in the year to Rs 147 lakh crore, the report said, adding this was however only 1.5 per cent higher than the pre-pandemic year of FY20. "Given the high inflation and the subsequent upcoming rate hikes, we believe that real GDP will incrementally increase by Rs 11.1 lakh crore in FY23. "This still translates into a real GDP growth of 7.5 per cent for FY23, up by 20 basis points over our previous forecast," SBI chief economist Soumyakanti Ghosh said in a note on Thursday.
As banks' chase for customers to collect cheap deposits is not fructifying, they are forced to offer inflation-beating real interest rates on fixed deposits now, and state-run banks led by Punjab & Sind Bank tops the chart offering 8-8.50 per cent per annum deposit rate. Banks are forced to offer inflation-beating deposit rates for a tenor ranging from 200 to 800 days as credit growth has been far outpacing deposit mobilization throughout this fiscal, leading to a funding crunch.
Personal loans continued to grow at a robust pace and recorded a 13.5 per cent year-on-year rise in March 2021, while industrial loan growth remained negative during all quarters of the last fiscal, the Reserve Bank of India said on Tuesday. As per the Quarterly Basic Statistical Returns (BSR)-1: Outstanding Credit of Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs), March 2021' released by the RBI, private sector banks registered a higher loan growth compared to the other bank group.
Anil Khandelwal, Chairman of Bank of Baroda, expects a 25% credit growth in FY07. He says that BoB did not bid for UWB due to their existing presence in Maharashtra. He adds that the UWB branches will give IDBI good reach and size.
Really pained by events in Indian wrestling but hopeful of two medals: Yogeshwar Dutt
For the last few years, the assumption in much of the economic discourse has been that India is on an assured path of rapid growth.