'The Modi government needs some big private sector trophies to affirm its anti-corruption credentials before the polls.' 'So on whose neck will the sword fall next?' 'To that extent, the outing of the ICICI Bank-Videocon story is cathartic,' says Shekhar Gupta.
7 key areas that the Budget must address to re-energise the infrastructure sector, suggests Vinayak Chatterjee.
Fitch on Tuesday affirmed India's sovereign rating at 'BBB-' with a stable outlook, on robust growth and resilient external finances, but said weak public finances remain a challenge. India's rating has been unchanged at 'BBB-', which is the lowest investment grade, since August 2006. "Fitch Ratings has affirmed India's Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'BBB-' with a Stable Outlook," it said in a statement, adding strong growth potential is a key supporting factor for the sovereign rating.
Money is being released and the government knows it will have to front-run private investment.
Reversing the burden of evidence means that the principle of innocent until proven guilty does not apply. It is exactly the opposite: Guilty as charged, until you can convince the judges of the contrary, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Shankar Acharya gives ten predictions on key politico-economic developments in the world and ten for India.
YES Bank raises base rate; HDFC Bank, Axis hike deposit rates.
For his first Budget in July 2014, Jaitley inherited a fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent of GDP. From 4.1 per cent, the fiscal deficit came down to 3.4 per cent by 2018-19, with two slippages from the budgeted targets, in 2017-18 and 2018-19, the former due to introduction of the GST, says Arup Roychoudhury.
Asian shares ended higher after a string of positive US economic data.
Rajan retained the short-term lending rate at 6.5 and the cash reserve requirement of banks at 4 per cent.
While slow execution and delays in infrastructure projects have led to a payment crisis as recovery of dues is a big challenge, banks are breathing down their necks for loan repayment.
'Credit expansion is probably the quickest way to get the economy going again.' 'Easy credit is like a shot of nitro in a race car: In timely, small, quick, doses it can give a tremendous boost but carried to extreme it can destroy the engine,' points out S Muralidharan, former managing director, BNP Paribas.
The economists, who were surveyed, also felt it will take time for banks to make any further reduction in deposit rates
A day after the RBI raised the benchmark lending rate by 35 basis points, Kotak Mahindra Bank Managing Director Uday Kotak on Thursday said the central bank may go for one more rate hike to bring inflation below its upper tolerance level of 6 per cent. Yesterday, the RBI indicated that it wants inflation to be within the band first and then move towards the target of 4 per cent, Kotak said at the CII Global Economic Policy Summit 2022. "My sense is that there could be one more rate hike and that may be the time for thinking about a pivot, but we got to watch very closely the data, and maybe around 6.5 per cent as it looks today, subject to what happens to the world, subject to what happens to oil, subject to what happens to many other things," he said.
The BSE Mid-and Small-cap indices outperformed their larger peers rising 72 per cent and 52 per cent, respectively, during Samvat 2070.
In a recent lecture, RBI governor Raghuram Rajan dished out some frank advice -- don't get into 'jugaad', instead try for the long haul. Only that will sustain in the long-run.
RBI may also be open to injecting liquidity through open market purchases of bonds but is resisting relaxing capital buffers for banks.
Of the seven surveys presented under Modi govt, predictions of three were quite close to the actual GDP growth rate, one saw the base year change in between, but the last three were way off the mark.
The winter session of Parliament will commence on November 26.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to address the post-budget meeting of the RBI's central board on Monday and highlight key points of the Union Budget 2022-23, including the fiscal consolidation roadmap and high capex plan. It has been a custom that the finance minister addresses the RBI board, consisting of RBI Governor and existing four deputy governors, after the Budget. The meeting has been scheduled for February 14 where she would be addressing the board members and talk about announcements made in the Budget to perk up growth hit by three waves of COVID-19, sources said.
Expect a more modest out-turn of around 5 per cent (if not less) because of the longer-term scarring effects of the Covid shock, the sharply slowing growth in the pre-Covid years and some scepticism about the growth-efficacy of some of recent official policy initiatives, explains Shankar Acharya, former chief economic advisor to the government.
Indian economy is set for a 'goldilocks' period -- used to describe a timeframe of high growth and low inflation -- while it can become Asia's fastest growing economy in 2016, Japanese financial major Nomura said.
BSE Mid-cap index ended lower by over 2.5% and BSE Small-cap index tumbled over 3%.
Ahead of the general elections, a slew of states and also the Centre had doled out sops to the marginalised sections, including the farmers and the poor.
The negative aspect about the Budget is that the capital expenditure has been marginally cut to achieve the fiscal deficit target assumptions, and the onus of sustaining investment demand till private capex revives continues to vest with the public sector enterprises, notes Jyotivardhan Jaipuria.
Maruti is not an online outlier, of course; other heavyweights have rolled out similar services. But as an analyst pointed out, Maruti's all-India roll-out has significant impact given that it accounts for over half of all cars sold, reports, reports Pavan Lall.
After last Monday's massive fall in the Indian markets, a lot of quality stocks have fallen significantly.
A healthy track record and 17 years of experience in financial services would be the key strengths of Edelweiss Financial Services in setting up a bank, says chairman and chief executive officer Rashesh Shah, in an interview with Business Standard.
Over the past several months, the airline has struggled to pay vendors and staff salaries on time.
'The Indian economy and the Indian financial sector today remain resilient and much better placed.'
In Chanda's defence, one can always say, why would the Videocon Group take care of her husband as a quid pro quo to get a loan? After all, the group has taken money from the entire banking industry and ICICI Bank's share in the pie is not even 10 per cent. So, if it had a quid pro quo with Chanda to get the money, it must have had similar arrangements with other banks, too. If this is not the case, one must accept that it had got money from all banks, including ICICI, without any under-the-table conditions, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'A sustainable growth rate of 8 per cent is evidently some distance away,' says T N Ninan.
The third-quarter financials didn't excite market watchers. But equity investors can still make money if they invest in the right stocks.
Neither pharma nor IT would have become the stars of the economy without the active but largely invisible hand of the Indian State, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
The markets will remain choppy ahead of RBI policy.
Demonetisation will wipe out the likely benefits of a good monsoon this year, says Christopher Wood of CLSA.
Nifty, which has struggled around 8550-8560 levels managed to blast past this resistance and close above the psychological mark of 8600.
In a first, the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) officers reached out to several ministries in the last week of April as part of a confidence-boosting measure. The meeting brought the CAG officials and those from the ministries across the table to discuss the pain points in their relations. CAG of India Girish Chandra Murmu took this novel step because of growing tensions between those audited and the auditor.
Sensex firm on favourable GDP numbers for FY16.
