A looming global shortage of diesel in Europe presents India with more than one opportunity to profit from strong margins. A shortage of the fuel, a key contributor to inflation, has been exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine, and western sanctions on Russian fuel supplies. The slowdown in natural gas supply means the West needs diesel to heat their homes this winter.
International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Gita Gopinath tells Indivjal Dhasmana high-frequency indicators for the third quarter of 2021 indicate momentum in economic recovery in India.
With rapid adoption of emerging technologies, the Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) industry is expected to generate about 3 lakh jobs this fiscal year, according to a report. The IT-BPM workforce is on the trajectory to grow 7 per cent in FY23, with the overall headcount increasing from 5.1 million to 5.45 million (close to 3 lakh jobs being created), the report by TeamLease Digital, the specialised staffing division of TeamLease Services said. The 'Digital Employment Outlook Report for H1-2023' highlighted that the demand for digital skills will grow 8.4 per cent by the end of this fiscal year.
A few years ago, when top officials of Indian state-run refiners went to Dubai to negotiate a crude oil supply contract, a senior official from state-owned Saudi Aramco told them, "We can negotiate on anything, but I am the last man standing for you. "Nobody can offer the range of crudes we do with certainty," an official who was part of the negotiating team recalls. Perhaps that explains why Saudi Arabia is less concerned about losing its place as India's premier oil supplier to an upstart like Russia, which emerged from nowhere to become India's biggest crude oil supplier in September and October.
Does this Budget deserve cheers or boos? You decide
'A lot of the emphasis when we hire graduates is the learning for these new technologies -- whether it's cloud and digital data analytics, cybersecurity, or IoT, but also some of the new ones, such as Metaverse or other newer areas.'
The Nifty Bank index has come off 15 per cent from its peak in February, underperforming the benchmark Nifty which is down 6%.
Having issued over 21 lakh cards since lifting of curbs last year, the country's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank is planning to launch a slew of digital initiatives over the next few quarters, a top official said. The Reserve Bank had barred HDFC Bank from issuing new credit cards following incidents of outages in the lender's internet banking /mobile banking/ payment utilities over the previous two years. The curbs were partially lifted after eight months in August last year. Finally, in March 2022, the RBI lifted all restrictions placed on the bank, including digital launches.
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.
The Budget kept away from mood dampeners such as an increase in taxes (capital gain taxes) and even the much-feared introduction of Covid cess and wealth taxes, says Nimesh Kampani, chairman, JM Financial.
The number of times public sector undertakings (PSUs) have held conference calls with investors, their capital management, and debt financing are among the parameters that the Centre will use to judge their performance for the first time, a senior official in the know said. The government will evaluate PSUs for FY22 based on new parameters that were finalised by the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) in consultation with the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) last year, the official said. The government had included more conditions in the memorandum of understandings (MoUs) - used to set annual targets - that public sector enterprises sign with the DPE every year. These included a consistent dividend policy, which seeks to transfer dividends by PSUs every quarter; and market capitalisation or share price improvement over the sectoral index on an annual average basis for listed companies.
The much-talked-about sale of Ambuja Cement and ACC by Holcim Group will see the single-biggest outflow of foreign capital from the country if the two cement firms are acquired by Indian investors. The deal, valued at nearly $10.35 billion, will put in the shade Cairn Energy Plc's exit from India in 2010, when it sold Cairn India to Vedanta Group for $4.48 billion. According to various reports, big business groups such as AV Birla, JSW Group, and Adani Group are in the fray to acquire Holcim's assets in India.
The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday expectedly left interest rates unchanged and maintained an accommodative stance as the economy faces a renewed threat to growth due to the resurgence of coronavirus cases.
'The overall death claims have gone up.'
'Last year (FY21), we had about 1 million intimated claims for Covid.' 'This year (FY22), in six months, we got about 1.6 million claims.'
Despite the demonetisation of 2016 and the rise in digital transactions that followed, the economy's dependence on cash has remained as high as ever. So when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced a pilot project of its version of digital cash - called the central bank digital currency (CBDC) - on December 1, many questions were asked. Can the CBDC replace physical cash, even partially? Can it match cash in terms of convenience? Are CBDC transactions truly anonymous?
Mutual funds, as experts and custodians of another set of retail investors' savings, play a speculative game they are neither supposed to nor equipped to do, cautions Debashis Basu.
Reliance Industries on Friday reported a 41.5 per cent jump in its third quarter net profit as oil, retail and telecom businesses fired on all cylinders. Net profit of Rs 18,549 crore in October-December compared with Rs 13,101 crore a year back, the company said in a stock exchange filing. Income from operations rose to Rs 1.91 lakh crore from Rs 1.28 lakh crore.
However, rural demand continued to remain a concern for FMCG companies during the quarter.
Some of these nations are India's biggest export market. India is also dependent on these countries to meet its energy needs.
Domestic equity markets are in elite company. In May, Indian markets joined select developed markets (DMs) such as the US, UK and Germany to record new all-time highs. Among emerging markets (EMs), Brazil is the other market to have logged new highs this month. Asian peers such as South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand are currently between 2 per cent and 10 per cent below their previous highs made earlier this year. The domestic markets were among the worst-performing major global markets in April amid a lethal second-wave of covid-19 infections.
Despite near-term headwinds of rising input costs and the possibility of lower demand for products as Covid dented rural & urban India, and impacts both production & consumption, analysts remain bullish on stocks of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies and expect the index to relatively outperform its peers in the second half of fiscal 2021-22 (FY22). In the past one year, prices of key commodities such as groundnut oil, mustard oil, Vanaspati, soya oil, sunflower oil and palm oil have shot up in the range of 20 per cent to 60 per cent, data show. The FMCG sector macros in this backdrop, according to analysts, have further deteriorated because of weakness in consumer demand and likely margin pressure due to elevated crude oil, palm oil and global food prices.
Reliance has significant investments in telecom, consumer retail and media businesses in India.
It's a busy season for Indian producers of orthodox tea. As Sri Lanka, the world's largest supplier of orthodox tea, struggles with its worst economic crisis, a window of opportunity has opened up in neighbouring India. Calls to Indian planters and exporters from foreign buyers of Sri Lankan orthodox tea are pouring in and the buoyant sentiment is reflecting in prices at auction centres. Orthodox tea refers to loose-leaf tea which is produced using traditional or orthodox methods such as plucking, withering, rolling, oxidation and drying.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd's plans for investing Rs 75,000 crore in solar, batteries, fuel cells and hydrogen could create valuation of $36 billion (Rs 2.6 lakh crore) for the new energy business, Wall Street brokerage Bernstein Research said in a report. Reliance currently has three verticals -- oil-to-chemical (O2C) business that houses its oil refineries, petrochemical plants and fuel retailing business; digital services that comprises telecom arm Jio; and retail including e-commerce. New Energy will be the fourth vertical. At the company's annual general meeting of shareholders last month, Ambani announced a plan to invest Rs 75,000 crore in a new energy business over the next 3 years in the next stage in its transformation.
In a bull-case scenario it sees the Sensex at 61,000 levels, while it's bear case scenario pegs the Sensex at 41,000 levels by December 2021.
Will 2022 be a year of contrasting narratives -- one filled with caution and the other with continued optimism?
Gautam Adani on Tuesday said his ports-to-energy conglomerate never slowed or stopped investing in the country as the group's success is based on its alignment with the India growth story. Speaking at the annual shareholder meeting of the group companies, he said the previously announced $70 billion investment in new energy business will help turn India from being a net importer of oil and gas to an exporter of clean energy. "Never have we walked away from investing in India, never have we slowed our investments," he said. "We believe our scale, our diversified business, and our track record of performance positions us very strongly to continue to perform well in a variety of market conditions."
Debt-ridden telecom operator Vodafone Idea on Friday reported widening of its consolidated loss to Rs 7,230.9 crore for the third quarter ended December 2021. The company had posted a loss Rs 4,532.1 crore in the same period a year ago. Consolidated revenue from operations declined by 10.8 per cent to Rs 9,717.3 crore from Rs 10,894.1 crore in the year-ago period.
The ongoing key reforms such as sops for manufacturing, easier labour laws, wooing FDI inflows and privatisation will help improve productivity and support long-term growth at 7.5-8 per cent levels, which if played out well, can help India contribute 15 per cent of global GDP growth by FY2026, says a report. According to a report pencilled by the India economist at UBS Securities, Tanvee Gupta Jain, the country has the lowest manufacturing costs among peers, even though China retains significant ecosystem advantages and despite that India and Vietnam appear most likely to benefit from a shift out of China.
For non-banks, the IL&FS crisis was nothing short of India's Lehman moment, which has for a foreseeable future reset the sector on multiple grounds.
The Indian economy is rapidly normalising towards pre-pandemic activity levels, even as uncertainty exists about coronavirus mutations and repeated infection waves, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla said on Wednesday. Vaccination is picking up pace, which would improve India's resilience against a potential third wave, the chairman of Aditya Birla Group said while virtually addressing shareholders at the AGM of group firm UltraTech Cement Ltd. Moreover, various steps taken by the RBI and the government have helped in containing the economic disruptions of the pandemic, Birla added.
After consumer price index jumped the 6.3-per cent mark in May and wholesale inflation set a record of 12.94 per cent, house economists at Swiss brokerage UBS Securities have warned that the country is facing more upside risks on the inflation front that is set to averaging at 5 per cent for the year. Rising prices of edible oils and protein rich items pushed retail inflation to a six-month high of 6.3 per cent in May, breaching the comfort level of the Reserve Bank and thus rendering reduction in interest rates a difficult proposition in the near term. Led by petrol price, that has crossed the Rs 100-mark in many states, wholesale inflation too accelerated to a record 12.94 per cent in May. While crude oil has crossed $70 a barrel on account of rising prices of crude oil and manufactured goods due to spike in commodities, and the low base of last year due to the lockdown.
Recently, TPEM's first born electric concept, Avinya broke cover. The model promises a minimum range of 500 kilometres and advanced technology features, aimed at buyers in India and outside. TPEM, the newly formed entity may also consider a separate dedicated sales channel for the EVs with a distinctive corporate identity once the volumes reach a critical mass and throughput is large enough for the dealers to be profitable, said Chandra. Elaborating further on the hiring strategy he said, "We will hire from everywhere-wherever the talent of the required competency is available."
IT services major Infosys on Wednesday posted a 17.5 per cent rise in net profit to Rs 5,076 crore for the March quarter, and announced up to Rs 9,200 crore buyback offer at a maximum price of Rs 1,750 per share.
Many years during which monsoons were poor saw high returns, while normal or excess rainfall has also coincided with poor calendar year gains.
The market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies jumped to a record high of Rs 2,40,04,664.28 crore on Tuesday, driven by a rally in stocks that also saw the benchmark Sensex touching its lifetime peak of 53,887.98 points. Rallying for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, the 30-share BSE index closed at a fresh closing peak of 53,823.36 points, a jump of 872.73 points or 1.65 per cent. During the day, it zoomed 937.35 points to 53,887.98 points.
GST collections in February grew 18 per cent to over Rs 1.33 lakh crore in February even as the Omicron wave dented the month-on-month collection momentum. This is for the fifth time in the current fiscal that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection has crossed Rs 1.30 lakh crore mark. Also, this is the first time, cess collection has crossed the Rs 10,000 crore mark, signifying recovery in certain key sectors, especially automobile sales, the finance ministry said on Tuesday.
India's economy has bounced back amazingly from the Covid-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown over the last one year, but it is not out of the woods yet, according to the World Bank, which in its latest report has predicted that the country's real GDP growth for fiscal year 21/22 could range from 7.5 to 12.5 per cent.
After a gap of three years, direct tax collections -- which include corporate tax and personal income tax -- have exceeded the Budget estimates for FY'22, indicating economic recovery.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances