India's flexible (flex) office segment, having breached pre-pandemic levels, is thriving as corporates, startups, multinational corporations, and global capability centres (GCCs) expand in India, seeking low-capital yet Grade A plug-and-play facilities. In the first quarter (Q1) of 2025, the flex office segment continued to grow, with flex space leasing rising by 22 per cent to 2.2 million square feet (msf), according to Colliers.
The government may save over Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) on capital and revenue expenditure allocated towards new schemes in the FY25 Budget that are yet to be implemented.
With Donald Trump all set to become US president, Indian exporters may face high customs duties for goods like automobiles, textiles and pharmaceuticals if the new US administration decides to pursue the 'America First' agenda, opined trade experts. Experts also said that Trump could also tighten H-1B visa rules, impacting costs and growth for Indian IT firms. Over 80 per cent of India's IT export earnings come from the US, making it vulnerable to changes in visa policies.
Data compiled by National Collateral Management Services (NCML, a non-government body) shows a 6.3 per cent rise to 109 million tonnes (mt). The Union ministry of agriculture's first advance estimate was 100.5 mt, as compared to 102 mt in last year's fourth advance estimate.
India's potato and tomato production could be marginally less in 2021-22 as compared to the previous year while onion output could be almost 17 per cent more than last year. This was stated in the first advance estimate of horticulture production released on Monday. The government also said total horticulture production is estimated to be at 333.3 million tonnes, a slight decrease of about 1.35 million tonnes (mt)?(or 0.4 per cent) over 2020-21.
'Amaravati will be a game changer for Andhra Pradesh.'
Amid the political blame game over Bengal's potato ban, which led to shortages in Jharkhand and Odisha, Uttar Pradesh farmers are the unlikely winners.
'Militarily, it risks escalating tensions with Pakistan, potentially triggering conflict due to Pakistan's heavy reliance on the Indus.'
The maiden Africa India Key Maritime Engagement exercise will be held from April 13 to 18 off the coast of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The central government is likely to further consolidate its fiscal deficit by 50 basis points (bps) to 5.9 per cent in FY24 from 6.4 per cent in FY23, according to a recent report released by Goldman Sachs on Tuesday. In the current fiscal year, there is going to be an upside of 0.5 per cent on the receipts side due to higher nominal GDP growth, and higher tax buoyancy because of the formalisation, the report said. The upside to expenditure is mainly going to come from incremental subsidies (0.8 per cent of GDP), in both food and fertilizer, it said. The upcoming pre-election Budget will carry forward the trend of the increased capital expenditure seen in recent years.
Children below the age of 15 years account for about 10 to 12 per cent of India's overall TB burden.
News reports that GE Aerospace has delivered the first of 99 F404-IN20 engines ordered by Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) for the Tejas Mk-1A has revived interest in the HAL stock.
There have been 41 cases of Covid in the most recent four-week period ending mid-January, with three deaths.
India's economy grew 7.8 per cent in the March quarter, pushing up the annual growth rate to 8.2 per cent, according to official data released on Friday. Growth in the January-March period was lower than the 8.6 per cent expansion in the December quarter.
Ask rediffGURU and PF and MF expert Janak Patel your mutual fund and personal finance-related questions.
September 15 is the deadline for paying the second instalment of advance tax. This is income-tax (I-T) taxpayers need to pay every quarter, instead of a lump sum at the end of the year. Ashutosh K Srivastava, senior associate, SKV Law Offices, says, "The tax has to be usually paid when income is earned. "Nonetheless, according to the I-T Act, the taxpayer has to estimate his income for the entire financial year. Based on that, he/she pays tax at specific intervals."
Analysts have largely maintained their positive outlook on HDFC Bank, as the private lender reported in-line results for the October-December quarter (Q3) of the current financial year (2024-25/FY25). They believe the results were 'strong' given the tough macro environment, and relative to peers.
Updated new base years for national accounts and other macro-indicators are expected to come into effect from January-February 2026, coinciding with the first and second advance estimates of national income for FY26, senior official sources aware of the development told Business Standard. "The statistics ministry set up the Advisory Committee on National Accounts Statistics (ACNAS) earlier this week. "It will advise on the base year for GDP (gross domestic product) and its alignment with other macro-indicators.
Acutely conscious that he's left with less than four years to create his legacy, Trump is undoubtedly a man in a hurry, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Cheaper ripoffs was how China powered its way as an economic superpower but hitherto the tech realm had remained out of bounds. With DeepSeek's AI model the West, it seemed, was about to lose its competitive edge in cutting edge generative AI technology. And this is what is causing deep furrows in the forehead of tech titans in Silicon Valley.
Rising demand for premium devices, led by Apple and Samsung, is expected to increase India's smartphone market size to over $50 billion (about Rs 428,900 crore) this year, market research firm Counterpoint Technology Market Research said on Friday. The Indian smartphone market size was estimated at $37.9 billion (about Rs 3.25 lakh crore) in 2021, according to the research firm.
States are on track of fiscal consolidation with their total borrowings reaching Rs 5 trillion till October, which is 60 per cent of the projected borrowings of Rs 8.38 trillion till December 2024, according to data from official sources. Government officials said the lower-than-projected borrowings by states were a sign of prudent fiscal management by them. States announce their borrowing plans every quarter.
Pushpa 2's advance bookings have set a new record, with advance bookings standing at Rs 50 crore on Day One.
The Interim Budget for 2024-25 (FY25) to be presented on February 1 is likely to assume 10-10.5 per cent nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth against 8.9 per cent estimated for FY24 by the National Statistical Office (NSO). "We were waiting for the First Advance Estimates GDP numbers for FY24. "We will finalise the nominal GDP growth assumption for FY25 Interim Budget in a couple of days.
The Trump trade shock is a chance to push long-overdue reforms, rather than tinker with tariffs to appease the US, suggests M Govinda Rao.
The finance minister, in her Budget speech, should focus more on what she is directly responsible for, rather than on programmes where her role is largely supportive, notes Nitin Desai.
Usually, turmeric is grown over 290,000-330,000 hectares of land. But in 2022-2023, according to official estimates, there has been a drop of about 10,000 hectares.
'The intensity and frequency of heatwaves will be much higher than in previous years over Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.'
Analysts estimate that Pushpa 2 (in all languages) will become the fastest film to cross the Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) mark.
According to the first advance estimates of crop production for 2007-08 report that was released on Wednesday, India can expect record production in maize, oybean, cotton and sugarcane crops.
'Our production capacity ramp-up initiatives are expected to meet the critical requirements of our armed forces.'
Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) V Anantha Nageswaran on Thursday said describing India's recovery as 'K-shaped' was wrong as both rural and urban economies were recovering, albeit at different paces. Speaking to reporters at the Finance Ministry, Nageswaran said the gross domestic product (GDP) growth print for the recent October-December quarter (Q3FY23) will likely be revised upwards. "The notion of using the letter 'K' to denote urban and rural is somewhat wrong because it is almost as if one is growing and one is contracting. "I would say one segment's slope is more positive, and the other one slope is less positive but it is positive," Nageswaran said.
Gross value added in agriculture and allied activities clocked a healthy growth rate of 4.5 per cent at constant prices in the second quarter of FY22, up from 3 per cent during the same period last fiscal year and 3.5 per cent in Q2 of 2019-20. In the first quarter of FY22, gross value added in the sector was also 4.5 per cent. Growth in current prices was also a healthy 7.9 per cent in July-September 2021-22, up from 7.3 per cent in the same quarter last fiscal year. It was slightly less than the 8.7 per cent of the second quarter of 2019-20.
Naval assets take years to build, and therefore, not only is futuristic force planning essential, but indigenous projects must also be put into the pipeline, technologies developed and contracts for assets signed regularly so that the Indian Navy always remains a future-focussed force, asserts Vice Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta (retd).
India's economic growth slowed down to 4.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2022-23 mainly due to poor performance of the manufacturing sector. In October-December 2021, the economy grew by 11.2 per cent and by 6.3 per cent in the July-September 2022 quarter, according to data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on Tuesday.
The finance minister's assertion that industry should not expect any spectacular announcements in the 2024 interim Budget suggest that the electoral imperatives of more tax concessions or higher expenditure on welfarist programmes could be far less pronounced than they were before the 2019 interim Budget, expects A K Bhattacharya.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a defiant tone as he testified in open court for the first time in Tel Aviv in his years-long corruption trial on Sunday.
A ramp-up in COVID-19 vaccination, healthy advance estimates of kharif (summer) crop and faster government spending were the factors which led to the revision, the agency said in a statement. It can be noted that after the 7.3 per cent contraction in 2020-21, there were expectations of a higher growth number in 2021-22.
India's GDP estimates for 2020-21 show that the economy is expected to perform much better than earlier projections by different agencies, indicating a sustained V-shape post-lockdown recovery, experts said. The first Advance Estimates (AE) by the National Statistics Office (NSO) has projected a contraction of 7.7 per cent in the real GDP during 2020-21. This was better than the projections by certain international agencies like the IMF and World Bank.
Will allowing business correspondents to hawk insurance products help in reviving 5-lakh strong field agents as a viable channel?
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