If there is no third wave of the pandemic, the fiscal position of the Centre and the states will be much better than budgeted for FY22 and the states may garner Rs 60,000 crore more in tax collections at Rs 8.27 lakh crore this fiscal year than they have budgeted, a report said. The report by SBI Research on Monday bases its optimism on GST collection so far this fiscal, which has been the best ever in spite of the fact that the two months bore the maximum brunt of the second wave -- with April setting a record Rs 1.41 lakh crore and May collection a tad low at Rs 1.03 lakh crore. The report also said overall government finances do not look overstretched as GST collections have continued to maintain pace so far and the additional fiscal impact arising from free vaccination and more food supplies will only be around Rs 28,512 crore.
Portfolio returns, say analysts at Morgan Stanley, are more likely to be driven by bottom-up stock-picking rather than top-down macro forces.
The liquidity-fuelled rally will continue for some time, however, fundamentals are getting stretched.
Economic growth is likely to plummet to a multi-decade low of 1.6 per cent in fiscal year 2020-21 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing measures like lockdowns and social distancing, an American brokerage said on Wednesday in one of the bleakest forecasts on GDP yet. Indian policymakers have not been aggressive enough in their response till now to the crisis, and will need to eventually intensify their efforts, economists at Goldman Sachs said.
'The growth drivers are mostly invisible, but the growth is undeniable at least for now,' notes Debashis Basu.
The stimulus measures include extension of the 90-day moratorium on recognition of impaired loans to 180 days, in addition to several relaxations in bank lending limits, including allowing banks to fund interest on working capital loans.
Instead of getting swayed by market gyrations, investors must stay invested for the long term, advises Sarbajeet K Sen.
Investment in market leaders with a safety-first approach could yield reasonable returns across sectors.
The RBI had on August 7 announced a five-member expert panel under former ICICI Bank chairman Kamath to make recommendations on the required financial parameters for recasting corporate loans.
This year, the combined net profit of 24 index companies, which have declared their June-20 numbers, has declined by 37 per cent year on year, while their revenues, including other income, is down by 21 per cent YoY so far.
Experts pointed out the move will only help taxpayers temporarily, as the tax liability remained the same and the date for advance tax has not been extended.
Currently, the investor and his family's net worth in listed firms stands at Rs 8,517 crore, compared to Rs 8,388 crore as of March 31, 2020.
India's industrial production contracted by 3.6 per cent in February, official data showed on Monday. According to the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), manufacturing sector output declined by 3.7 per cent in February 2021. Retail inflation rose to 5.52 per cent in March, mainly on account of higher food prices, government data showed on Monday. The consumer price index (CPI) based retail inflation stood at 5.03 per cent in February.
Even when large businesses said they were flying blind in mid-2020, the markets rallied and an incredible business boom followed. This is not to say that the markets will continue to rally and there is nothing to worry about, observes Debashis Basu.
Ehile the Centre had projected tax revenues to touch 12.1 per cent of GDP in FY19, Revised Estimates peg the collections at 11.9 per cent, owing to a shortfall in the goods and service tax (GST) collections, reports Ishan Bakshi.
At $37 per dose, the Pfizer vaccine is much more expensive compared to $3 per dose for the Covishield.
Existing trade deals, especially the 2009 pact with the Asean bloc, have been panned by the Centre for not boosting exports but flooding the domestic market with cheap imports. Subsequently, New Delhi has called for reviewing FTAs with Japan and South Korea. Going by that, a trade deal with the US is unlikely to be beneficial, say experts.
Since April, India has seen multiple strains of the coronanavirus sweep the nation, upending life and businesses alike. Out-of-home retail and discretionary categories such as durables, auto, fashion, lifestyle, hospitality, food services, travel, and tourism have been the worst-hit as Covid cases remain high, leaving state governments with no option but to curtail mobility and economic activity.
To attract bidders, the government had decided to hive of around Rs 35,000 crore of the company's debt into a separate subsidiary, leaving around Rs 23,286 crore to be absorbed by the new bidder.
While the overall loan disbursements stood strong at 15 per cent YoY in Q2, pockets such as vehicle finance, loans to NBFCs, and business banking showed some weakness. A continued fall in these numbers may make it tough for AU SFB to defend its valuations under the current circumstances.
Experts disagree with the idea and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which has the sole right to print money, is not comfortable with it as well.
Direct tax collections missed the revised target for 2019-20 by Rs 1.42 trillion at Rs 10.27 trillion, an 8 per cent fall over the previous year.
Reliance Industries on Friday reported more than doubling of its March quarter net profit to Rs 13,227 crore as improvement in petrochemical and consumer business countered continued weakness in refining business.
'It has the potential to add half a trillion dollars to the economy over the next five years.'
With the farmers' protest against the three new laws and in support of legalising the minimum support price (MSP) going strong, state governments have announced a slew of measures in their annual Budgets to placate farmers. The Centre kicked things off in the Union Budget by assuring farmers that the MSP would continue and coming out with a report card to demonstrate its commitment. However, these efforts don't seem to have yielded tangible results. In their respective Budgets, states chose to go a step further by announcing a variety of measures.
To meet the revised estimates for 2019-20, the central government will have to garner Rs 5.03 trillion in total revenues in March, which has seen the worst phase of the coronavirus pandemic so far and the resultant lockdown.
Analysts expect Colgate's overall volume growth to remain in single digits (around 5-6 per cent) for the next two years.
With the lockdown being eased gradually, providing more and more digital solutions, for service delivery and procurement of new policies, is what the corporation is focussing on.
It bounced back from the historic low of 41 recorded in the April-June quarter, during the initial days of the pandemic and lockdown.
'Companies are threatening to terminate them or putting them on unpaid leave.'
The county's largest IT company TCS on Friday reported a 7.2 per cent jump in December quarter net to Rs 8,701 crore on a consolidated basis, and seemed to suggest the worst is behind by projecting double-digit revenue growth for FY22. The company, a cash cow for Tata Sons, saw a 5.4 per cent growth in revenue at Rs 42,015 crore for the quarter. Operating profit margin came in at 26.6 per cent despite implementing wage hikes, after consistently missing the 26-28 per cent aspirational band for many quarters.
Employees of some top Indian companies were in for a pleasant surprise when they received a mail from their HR team announcing a hike in salaries and bonuses. Led by IT firms and start-ups, HR managers say that while some have offered cash and stock options, others are in a wait-and-watch mode and add the trend will pick up in other sectors. For example, IT giant Cognizant - which had an attrition rate of 19 per cent in the December quarter - has established a $30-million employee retention fund in order to bring down the high attrition rate.
While there has been a rash of growth estimate cuts, including a 0.70 percentage point reduction by the RBI last month to 6.1 per cent, the Japanese brokerage's estimate is so far the lowest.
About 50,000 truckers, most of whom are single-truck owners, could be thrown off their businesses due to the recent fuel price hike. "Already the vehicle supply on the road is higher than the requirement. "With the fuel price hike, fleet owners will look to cut down fleet size wherever needed and due to this, small single-truck owners could be at the receiving end," Ashok Goyal, managing director at BLR Logistiks (I) Ltd said. The company has a fleet of 500 vehicles of all types-small, medium and large with pan-India presence.
The BSE Midcap and the Small-cap Index have run up 25.3 per cent and 31.3 per cent respectively over the past year. Valuations are no longer cheap, notes Sanjay Kumar Singh.
India's factory output climbed 22.4 per cent in March, benefiting from the base effect of the lockdown-marred month a year back as well as a turnaround in the manufacturing sector, while retail inflation slipped to a three-month low of 4.29 per cent in April. The high positive annual growth in the index of industrial production (IIP) in March 2021 came on back of a contraction of (-)0.9 per cent and (-)3.4 per cent in January and February 2021 respectively, according to the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on Wednesday. This turnaround was led by recovery in the mining, manufacturing and electricity sectors.
This comes at a time when the COVID-19 crisis is expected to derail the government's revenue maths for 2020-21, hitting the mop-up from sources such as taxes and divestment.
If a salaried employee does not possess Form 16, he can still file the I-T Return with the help of his salary slips and Form 26 AS.
Excluding the pension outgo, the allocation in the Union Budget for the armed forces stands at Rs 3.62 lakh crore.
'The competition between the two is definitely going to be of great interest to the Indian market.'
