China posted the sharpest increase in output for 15 months, while India saw the steepest expansion since February 2013.
India deserves a rating upgrade in view of improvement in macro-economic situation, the conservative outlook of Standard & Poor's notwithstanding, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.
The Reserve Bank remains laser-focused to bring back retail inflation to 4 per cent over a period of time in a non-disruptive manner, Governor Shaktikanta Das stressed while voting for status quo in interest rates, as per minutes of the October policy meeting released on Friday. The central bank has been mandated by the government to ensure the Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation is at 4 per cent, with a band of 2 per cent on either side. The retail inflation, which was above 6 per cent during May and June, has started moving down and stood at 4.35 per cent in September.
Global consumer confidence rose in the first quarter, with a marked increase in sentiment in the United States, Japan and northern Europe.
Fitch Ratings on Monday said uncertainty over the bidder consortiums and process complexity, including valuation, may lead to potential delays in privatisation of India's second-largest fuel retailer, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL). Affirming BPCL's rating at 'BBB-' with a negative outlook, Fitch said it continues to treat the potential divestment of the company by the Indian government as an event risk. "Bidders are conducting due diligence, but uncertainty over the bidder consortiums and process complexity, including valuation, may lead to potential delays.
As Nasdaq-listed company indicates poor spending in financial services space, Indian firms feel jittery
'Breaking down silos and ensuring a more integrated governance process is just as important to performance.' 'It has been a major priority in the last six years, especially in national security,' External Affairs Minister Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar points out when delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture-2020: India and the Post-Covid World.
China's economy grew 6.7 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier.
India's services sector activities eased to a three-month low in April, as the rise in business activity was constrained by the pandemic and sentiment towards growth prospects faded, a monthly survey said on Wednesday. The seasonally adjusted India Services Business Activity Index fell to 54 in April from 54.6 in March, the slowest increase in output in three months. In PMI parlance, a print above 50 means expansion while a score below 50 denotes contraction.
'Invest a part of your portfolio in a global currency that can't be printed, or meddled with -- gold,' suggests Chirag Mehta.
According to experts, work from home, volatility in stock markets worldwide, and redemption pressures compelled investors to defer new investment plans.
'Our competitiveness with China is very important.' 'If the exchange rate depreciates, it is good for us because it helps in our competitiveness.'
Fitch Ratings director Thomas Rookmaaker said India's debt-to-GDP ratio is likely to rise to 76 per cent from 70 per cent currently due to wider fiscal deficit and low economic growth.
India will catch up with China's growth at 7 per cent during 2016-17, the World Bank has forecast, saying India's economy has recovered in the wake of the economic reform measures taken by the new Indian government, falling oil prices and lower interest rates.
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in a report on Monday that a lower but positive economic growth in India in the post-Covid-19 pandemic period and India's large market will continue to attract market-seeking investments to the country. The World Investment Report 2020 by UNCTAD said that India was the 9th largest recipient of FDI in 2019, with 51 billion dollars of inflows during the year, an increase from the 42 billion dollars of FDI received in 2018, when India ranked 12 among the top 20 host economies in the world.
In the forward market, the premium for dollar moved up on fresh paying pressure corporates.
Prime Minister Modi, who is in Japan on a two-day visit to attend a summit of the Quad leaders at the invitation of his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida, penned an op-ed on the vibrant relations between India and Japan in the Yomiuri Shimbun.
This year is set to be the third consecutive year when India's share of IPOs has fallen relative to the rest of the world.
One has to wonder what is so wrong with the European Union.
'Rising Covid cases and localised lockdowns are being closely monitored.'
With the world's worst outbreak of COVID pandemic stalling a nascent economic recovery, the government has begun assessing the impact of the second wave of infections on different sectors and may look at providing support at an appropriate time to segments requiring fiscal help. Some of the economic indicators, including the Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections, still provide confidence and incoming data will throw some more light on the state of the economy, sources said. Services sectors like hospitality, tourism and aviation which had just started recovering were hit hard by the second wave of COVID, the sources said, adding these segments might need some support on an urgent basis from the government.
Even as the World Bank has revised India's growth figures by 0.4 percentage points as compared to its January forecast, India remains the fastest growing major economy in the world, the World Bank officials said.
Gold is currently trading at Rs 25,200 for 10 grams.
'Quality of management, corporate governance, allocation of capital, full disclosures should form the basis to decide investing in a particular stock.'
India's sovereign credit ratings do not reflect the economy's fundamentals, the Economic Survey said on Friday and nudged the global agencies to become more transparent and less subjective in their ratings. The Economic Survey 2020-21, tabled in Parliament, said that sovereign credit ratings methodology must be amended to reflect economies' ability and willingness to pay their debt obligations, and suggested that developing economies must come together to address this bias and subjectivity inherent in sovereign credit ratings methodology. "Never in the history of sovereign credit ratings has the fifth largest economy in the world been rated as the lowest rung of the investment-grade (BBB-/Baa3). While sovereign credit ratings do not reflect the Indian economy's fundamentals, noisy, opaque and biased credit ratings damage FPI flows," the survey said.
'The Budget will have to be substantially re-cast as soon as a new government takes charge after the elections.' 'Both revenue and expenditure numbers will have to be trimmed -- and then may better reflect the deceleration of economic activity caused by slowing consumption trends,' points out T N Ninan.
The Reserve Bank's rate-setting panel, Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), began its three-day deliberations on Wednesday amid expectations of a status quo on benchmark rate mainly on account of uncertainty over the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the fears of firming inflation may also refrain the MPC from tinkering with the interest rate in its bi-monthly monetary policy outcome to be announced on Friday. The RBI had kept key interest rates unchanged at the last MPC meeting held in April.
Soon after RBI announcing a much- awaited rate cut, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian on Wednesday said that the global rating agencies should look at upgrading their stance on India's credit outlook. "Now we have a 50 basis points rate cut (in two tranches within two months) and I think that is good for the economy and all rate cuts benefits... If the outlook is looking good, the rating agencies should draw their lessons from that om improving the outlook," Subramanian told reporters. After presentation of Union Budget 2015-16 last week, global and domestic agencies had ruled out any immediate upgrade in India's sovereign ratings and had red-flagged the country's delayed fiscal consolidation roadmap and had also warned against any slippages from the "ambitious" disinvestment plan proposed in Budget. Subramanian said that the rate cut is consistent with the government's views in the last week's Economic Survey and thereafter in the Union Budget for the outlook on inflation and for the outlook on overall economy. "It (rate cut) shows that RBI and government are on the same page in terms of how we view the economy. It also means that Budget can be seen as conducive to non-inflationary growth," he added. On monetary policy framework agreement, Subramanian said that both Finance Ministry and RBI have shared concern about inflation. Recently, the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank agreed to 'inflation rate targeting' under which the apex bank will aim to lower retail inflation to below 6 per cent by January 2016.
The countries with positive employment outlook included India, Mexico and Turkey, as also the Gulf Cooperation Council region.
Fitch Ratings had in December affirmed India's 'BBB-' rating with a stable outlook.
According to the 2013 International outlook by Columbia Management and Threadneedle Asset Management, its global partner, pace of growth in emerging markets have witnessed a slowdown over the last year, but still about 70 per cent of the world's incremental growth comes from these markets.
In the first eight months of 2019, 70 per cent stocks in the BSE 500 universe were down. These stocks account for 94 per cent of India's total market capitalisation.
An overwhelming majority of Indians (84 per cent) feel it is safe to return to their workplaces, according to a Deloitte survey that suggests consumers in India are showing a positive spending intent and brighter outlook towards the future. The latest monthly analysis (wave 220) of Deloitte's Global State of the Consumer Tracker, signals a cautious consumption revival in the country, aided by the decreasing number of Covid-19 cases and an improved vaccination drive. The Global State of the Consumer Tracker is an online survey based on responses from 1,000 people each in 18 countries including India.
The US dollar strengthened against the world currencies after the Turkish lira dived almost 8 per cent, sparking a sell-off in global markets.
Consumer stocks remain the biggest laggard on the bourses. The Nify50 weighting of FMCG stocks declined to a decade low of 9.9 per cent at the end of March this year, down 150 basis points from 11.4 per cent a year ago. At their peak in March 2013, major FMCG stocks, such as Hindustan Unilever, ITC, and Asian Paints, together accounted for 15 per cent of the Nifty50. But now together with automobile stocks, the consumer goods sector accounts for only 14.7 per cent of the index, down 200 basis points in the past 12 months and 37 per cent from the record high weighting of 23.4 per cent at the end of March 2014.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Friday downplayed the lowering of India's credit outlook by global rating agency Fitch, saying it is not a cause of worry as economic fundamentals are strong.
Analysts expect global markets to remain in consolidation mode with a negative bias over the next six months.
China's government has been fine-tuning economic policy settings since the autumn of last year as the outlook for the global economy darkened, export growth sank and capital inflows - a core component of money supply stalled, according to a Reuters report.
The fuel reforms are a very important signal of the government's commitment to tough economic reforms.
Indian economy is likely to rebound with an 8.9 per cent growth in the fiscal year beginning April 2021 after economic activity showed significant improvement in the last quarter, IHS Markit said on Friday. The National Statistical Organisation (NSO) on Thursday predicted that the economy will contract 7.7 per cent in the current financial year ending in March, the worst performance in four decades.
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