Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday presented the Budget for 2021-22 in the Lok Sabha that is expected to provide relief to the pandemic-hit common man as well as focus more on driving economic recovery through higher spending on healthcare, infrastructure and defence amid rising tensions with neighbours, As India emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, the ninth Budget under the Modi government, including an interim one, is widely expected to focus on boosting spending on job creation and rural development, generous allocations for development schemes, putting more money in the hands of the average taxpayer and easing rules to attract foreign investments.
Despite a shaky Q3, conviction over the stock remained high, with 65 per cent of the analysts polled on Bloomberg retaining their 'buy' recommendation.
'Market feels this Budget will promote all-round growth and that is what is giving it confidence.'
Flush with liquidity, banks are eager to lend. And, therein lies the problem, warns Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'The robust tax collections give the finance minister a fair amount of headroom for an expansionary fiscal policy.'
Conversion of debt of the stressed telecom player Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) into equity could be an option to emerge out of the crisis, lenders led by State Bank of India (SBI) have suggested to Department of Telecommunications (DoT). DoT had called senior bank officials on Friday to discuss the stress in the telecom sector arising out of the Supreme Court order last month on the adjusted gross revenue (AGR)-related dues payable by telecom majors, including Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, sources said. The top court has given a time period of 10 years to telecom service providers struggling to pay Rs 93,520 crore of AGR-related dues to clear their outstanding amount to the government.
Last year, major tea companies performed well on the back of higher prices. However, a drop in prices over the past month and a half, is threatening to put a spanner in a repeat performance. Tea prices started on a strong note this year with prices ruling higher than last year on the back of crop loss due to adverse weather conditions. After mid-June, however, prices started dropping, though they are still higher than 2019-levels for north Indian teas (which account for more than 80 per cent of total production).
Amid fears of a third wave of coronavirus pandemic and hardening of retail inflation, the Reserve Bank is likely to maintain status quo on interest rate and watch the developing macroeconomic situation for some more time before taking any decisive action on monetary policy. The RBI is scheduled to announce its bi-monthly monetary policy review on August 6 at the end of the three-day meeting -- August 4-6 -- of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). The RBI Governor-headed six-member MPC decides on the key policy rates.
India Inc on Friday said it is looking forward to a repo rate cut in future as cost of funds has to come down in coming times, and expects continuation of accommodative policy stance by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The RBI decided to leave the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4 per cent but maintained an accommodative stance, as the economy faces the brunt of the second COVID-19 wave. Sanjay Aggarwal, president of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the RBI has maintained an accommodative stance as long as necessary to revive and sustain growth on a durable basis and to mitigate impact of COVID-19, apart from an aim to keep inflation within the target.
LIC identifies the problems well, but what the markets will watch is how nimble it is with the solutions.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman cut fuel subsidies while slapping additional fuel taxes on unblended transport fuels in the latest Union Budget. The former will hit the rural poor, households that secured a subsidised LPG connection under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a programme that was partly instrumental in helping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win the 2019 general elections. The latter will pretty much hurt the entire population after it kicks in from October. That's what it looks like. Or, perhaps, it's not as it appears to be, at least on the subsidy front.
Highlights of Economic Survey 2020-21, tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday.
'We can go somewhere between 35 per cent and 40 per cent.'
Paytm's Rs 18,300 crore IPO was oversubscribed 1.89 times on the last day of India's biggest share sale on Wednesday, making it one of the country's most valued companies. The initial public offering of Paytm's parent company One97 Communications Ltd received bids for 9.14 crore equity shares against the offer size of 4.83 crore shares, according to information available from stock exchanges. While the portion set aside for retail investors was oversubscribed early, institutional buyers including FIIs flooded the share sale with offers on Wednesday, seeking 2.79 times the number of shares reserved for them.
The gains came on expectations that the company will post strong growth given its presence in application to peer services and the fast-growing communication platform as a service segment.