Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday sounded the poll bugle in Bihar, where assembly elections are due this year, calling for 'an NDA government, once again', which would protect the state from the 'evil intentions' of the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress combine.
Not all public sector banks are back in the black, but their collective net profit for the year is Rs 32,346 crore against a Rs 9,013 crore loss in the previous year, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
There is a need for real-time or near real-time credit reporting, instead of the current fortnightly system, to improve underwriting precision, enable timely reflection of borrower actions such as loan closures or repayments, and deliver a superior consumer experience, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), M Rajeshwar Rao said on Wednesday.
Losers included Bharti Airtel, SBI, Wipro, Vedanta, Maruti Suzuki, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and Reliance Industries, falling up to 2.18 per cent.
'What do the moves towards protectionism suggest?' 'That we do not have Aatmavishwas.' 'If you have self-confidence, confidence in your ability to compete with the best in the world, why do you need protectionism?'
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will launch the Unified Lending Interface (ULI) nationwide in due course, aiming to transform India's lending sector, similar to how the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) revolutionised the payments ecosystem, Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Monday.
India's financial sector is dominated by large government-owned and private-sector banks.
Public sector banks (PSBs) posted 16.1 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth in net profit at Rs 39,974 crore during the June 2024 quarter. While net interest income (NII) showed subdued growth of 7.1 per cent, provisions and contingencies declined by 10.5 per cent Y-o-Y. This aided the bottom line to show steady growth.
Sources say given the complexity involved in the process of creating a holding company, which will ultimately be the parent company of banking and other businesses, banks are going slow in acquiring stakes in insurance arms or mutual funds of other lenders.
Like everything else, the structure of banks may change, and banks may depend more on digital technologies and artificial intelligence for dealing with both their customers and employees.
After declining to a three-year low in FY24, the private sector investment is expected to fall further in the current financial year, India Ratings said in a research note.. The investments in the private sector are likely to plummet to below 11 per cent of the GDP in FY25, based on the trends from the latest national accounts data and company fillings, it noted.
India's equity markets are on a roller-coaster ride, after delivering spectacular returns for two consecutive years - in 2020 and 2021. The benchmark National Stock Exchange's (NSE's) Nifty50 is down 1.5 per cent in the first nine months of the current calendar year 2022 (CY22) as foreign portfolio investors sold Indian stocks due to rising bond yields in the US and across global markets, including India. The sell-off in the Indian equity markets has, however, not been broad-based and largely limited to sectors facing earnings headwinds from rising interest rates, lower commodity and energy prices, and likely economic recession in advanced economies.
Barring stray references such as the 'dual control' of banks and shifting the goalposts during demonetisation, he is not in a fault-finding mode with the government, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The share of foreign companies in private sector investments, directed towards building new factories and other facilities, has declined over the past six months. A mix of large domestic announcements and relatively lower growth in foreign capital expenditure (capex) plans have played a role, although foreign investments remain near record levels. The share of foreign companies in the overall private sector investments over the four quarters ended June 2023 has dipped to 14.9 per cent, as shown by a Business Standard analysis of data from the project tracker Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
'In India, managers and the leadership almost glorify overworking.'
Flush with liquidity, banks are eager to lend. And, therein lies the problem, warns Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'You will see him frequently asking customers -- especially retail -- about service experience, pain points, areas of improvement and suggestions.'
Loan defaults and restructuring to limit profits.
Report points out corporate vulnerability indicators remain elevated.
Budget could well determine if Achche Din will materialise
While a DFI will help banks derisk their loan portfolios, creation of a bad bank will clean up their balance sheets.
For the first time, the Data Security Council of India assembled a joint task force to source threat intelligence at the origin and ensure coordinated action across the cybersecurity spectrum.
Banking stocks, including top ones like State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda and Bank of India, among others, have fallen sharply in the last one month.
What is digital house arrest? It is a tactic cybercriminals use to confine victims to their homes and scam them, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Perhaps because the Modi government had some differences of opinion with two of the economist governors (one of whom was appointed by the Manmohan Singh government), there is a view that its political leadership prefers a civil servant to head the RBI, notes A K Bhattacharya.
The stocks are largely from sectors such as chemicals, finance and cement, which struggled earlier but the worse seems to be behind them.
If as critics point out, the environmental impact assessment study was commissioned only after the auction process got underway with not all the stakeholders getting to know of it, then the government has already compromised the trust it could have enjoyed with Kerala's public including its coastal communities, points out Shyam G Menon.
Housing finance major HDFC and state-run Punjab National Bank on Tuesday announced up to 25 basis points increase in their lending interest rates, making their new and old loans expensive for consumers. The revised rates would be effective from March 1. Mortgage lender HDFC has increased its retail prime lending rate by 25 basis points to a minimum of 9.20 per cent.
The target was for banks to sell Rs 2 trillion worth of non-performing assets to NARCL, the so-called 'bad bank, by 2021-2022. Only 10 per cent of this has been executed.
The US Trade Representative noted that India's average applied tariff rate stood at 17% per cent, the highest of any major world economy.
Despite unprecedented levels of uncertainty in Samvat 2077, investors have little to complain about on the returns front. The BSE Sensex delivered returns of 38 per cent in this period, while the Nifty registered a return of over 40 per cent. As is the case in bull markets, companies in the small- and mid-capitalisation basket outperformed the benchmarks, with returns almost twice those of frontliners.
Whilst substantive public allocations have been made in the infrastructure sector, this strategy is plateauing due to the fiscal deficit constraint, capacity limitation of statal implementing agencies, the declining ability of PSUs, and the precarious situation of the Railways' operating ratio. It is, thus, high time to get the policy compass to point at rejuvenating private sector investments in infrastructure, says Vinayak Chatterjee.
The 30-share Sensex ended higher by 46 points at 26,360 and the 50-share Nifty gained 16 points at 7,891.
Several factors seem to have corrected in India in the past six months, says the president of New Development Bank.
Fundraising momentum is expected to accelerate further in the New Year, potentially surpassing 2024's record figures
Banks are cheating customers with rates that are unfairly high, discriminatory, and opaque, denying legitimate savings to borrowers, while the RBI has been looking the other way, says Debashis Basu.
Over the short to medium term, valuations are more likely to move down than up.
An asset swap can simultaneously boost public investment, reduce the fiscal deficit and keep fiscal policy from being pro-cyclical.
Apart from 40 modules of Harvard, SBI has internally developed 500 e-modules for employees.
