It's time for the famous B-school fests. But the zing is somewhat missing this time.
With the economic slowdown affecting exports and impacting capital flows, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said India wants a concerted and well-coordinated global response to address systemic failures and to stimulate the real economy.
The industrial production index, which contracted by 0.4 per cent in October for the first time in 15 years, will continue to show a slowing trend till the end of 2009 with some chance of recovery later, feel economists.
'Geopolitical risks and their impact on oil prices, if any, are another concern for global markets, particularly for India.'
Indian economy is expected to grow between 7 and 7.4 per cent in the three months up to September 2008, as against 9.3 per cent in the year-ago quarter, five top economists of the country told Business Standard. The government is slated to release the quarterly numbers on Friday.
The economic slowdown may have raised the spectre of job losses in most industries, but telecom is a notable exception. Far from cutting back, telecom companies expect to hire over 16,000 people, 15 to 20 per cent more than last year, to meet the unprecedented expansion in subscriber numbers, according to the Cellular Operators Association of India, the association for GSM service providers.
India's exports recorded a flat growth of 0.59 per cent to $31.99 billion in November, even as trade deficit widened to $23.89 billion during the month, according to the data released by the government on Thursday. Exports stood at $31.8 billion in November last year. Imports rose by 5.37 per cent to $55.88 billion in November as compared to $53.03 billion in the corresponding month a year ago, the data showed. During April-November 2022, exports rose by 11 per cent to $295.26 billion as against $265.77 billion in the same month last year.
The Indian office real estate market, which had recovered significantly in early 2022, began to slow down in the latter half due to macroeconomic problems in the developed world. Rental yields are likely to be stable at best in FY24.
The recent data dims hope of recovery in manufacturing.
The banking sector emerged as an outlier when the rest of India Inc witnessed a slowdown in earnings in FY23. The combined net profit of listed public and private sector banks was up 39.4 per cent year-on-year (YoY) last financial year and their share in India's gross value added (GVA) or gross domestic product (GDP) at factor cost rose to a record high of nearly 1 per cent up, from 0.8 per cent a year ago. Listed banks' combined net profit grew to Rs 2.36 trillion in FY23, from Rs 1.69 trillion a year ago. In comparison, India GVA at current prices was up 15.2 per cent YoY at Rs 247 trillion in FY23; it was around Rs 214 trillion a year ago.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by Indian companies have declined sharply by 80 per cent so far this year, in contrast with the same period last year, as bankers predict lower deal volumes due to falling profit margins of Indian companies and feeble stock markets. The decline in Adani Group shares has also hit buyer sentiment. According to data from Refinitiv, M&As in India stood at $3.3 billion from 253 deals, year-to-date (YTD) - a fall of 80 per cent year-on-year (YoY). Cross-border deals by Indian companies were also down 84 per cent to just $1.5 billion.
120 new malls came up in last two years, but 30-40 of their older peers downed shutters
As the global economic slowdown takes hold, India's gold demand has recorded an all-time high quarterly growth of 66 per cent in the third quarter of the current calendar year as investors continued to find the yellow metal a safe haven.
Travels to Gulf accounted for 40% of India's international air traffic in 2016.
Cisco Systems Executive V-P and Chief Globalisation Officer Wim Elfrink said this after inaugurating a global delivery centre set up jointly by Cisco and Pune-based Zensar Technologies. Elaborating Cisco's future expansion plans in India, he added, "More than 20 per cent of Cisco's overall employee strength is based in India. The broadband penetration and networking infrastructure are very poor in this country.
China has cast a long shadow on India's economy.
In its latest report for second quarter 2008, Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj said that though Indian office markets have continued to post growth over the past few years, the last few quarters have seen a polarisation in the office markets in terms of growth in demand across the country. It has categorised the office markets across six major cities -- Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata -- in three broad segments.
S&P Global Ratings on Monday kept its forecast for India's economic growth unchanged at 6 per cent in the fiscal year starting April 1, before rising to 6.9 per cent in the following year. In the quarterly economic update for Asia-Pacific, S&P saw inflation rate easing to 5 per cent in 2023-24 fiscal, from 6.8 per cent in the current financial year. It saw India's gross domestic product (GDP) likely growing by 7 per cent in the current financial year ending March 31 (2022-23), before slowing to 6 per cent in the next 2023-24 fiscal.
The turbulence witnessed by the stock market this year has adversely affected brokers but Motilal Oswal, Chairman and Managing Director, Motilal Oswal Financial Services says he is unruffled. "Revenues have been hit if you compare them on a quarterly basis. The earnings were exceptionally high during the last two quarters of 2007, as the benchmark indices rose more than 30 per cent during the period. Given the swift rise in share prices, this slowdown was expected."
'We have relatively strong growth and a healthy corporate earnings cycle as positives, but a worrisome current account deficit and high inflation as challenges.'
Back home, the Nifty IT index - a gauge of the performance of the IT stocks on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) that has closely mirrored the performance of NASDAQ over the past few years - has lost nearly 2 per cent in CY23.
Vegetable rates may ease from September, led by tomato prices, which have started showing signs of correction on the back of increased supply, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday. "Looking ahead, the spike in vegetable prices in July is starting to see a correction, led by tomato prices. "New arrivals of tomatoes in mandis are already softening the prices, coupled with proactive supply management in the case of onions.
According to Crisil Research, the average room rates in cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore are likely to fall 5-10 per cent in the next few months. Industry experts said the occupancy rates could fall from 75-80 per cent now to 65-70 per cent soon.
Despite a slowdown, HUL introduced products such as Tresemme and Magnum into the Indian market
While some carmakers are lowering their sales targets, Maruti Suzuki DZire, M&M XUV500 and Renault Duster are selling strong.
Modi's party also wants to regulate property markets and tie investor money to specific projects to stop developers diverting cash elsewhere.
Mutual funds (MFs) have lined up information technology (IT) funds, indicating that technology stocks are back on fund managers' radar after a hiatus. Over the past 18 months, stock prices for companies in the software space have either corrected or remained subdued. Fund houses have launched five IT-based sectoral funds in the past three months, with three of them taking the passive route.
India will unveil its much-awaited new Foreign Trade Policy 2023-28 on Friday, with a view to boost exports amid slowing global trade. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will announce the foreign trade policy, according to the ministry. The current foreign trade policy (2015-20) is in force till March 31, 2022.
The United States-China Summit meeting concluded at a sprawling mansion in Woodside, California with Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreeing to work towards ensuring that the differences between the two countries remain manageable and the relations do not derail.
'AI is not a new thing for us. We started our AI journey in 2015.'
The economic growth could slow down to 7.8 per cent in 2008 from over 9 per cent currently due to policy bottlenecks resulting in deceleration in investment growth in the country, says a World Bank report.
Brushing aside fears of a slowdown in the IT industry, the government on Thursday said the Indian IT-ITes/BPO (including hardware) sector's revenue is expected to grow at over 33 per cent in 2007-08.
Even amidst fears of global slowdown, Indian businesses will continue to hire robustly for the next three months beginning November 2007, a McKinsey survey of global executives on the economic and hiring outlook has stated. The survey, based on responses from over 2,500 executives from around the world, revealed that more than 40 percent of the respondents expect to add workers in the short term.
Even as cement companies continue to announce ambitious expansion plans, analysts turn cautious over the sector as incremental supply is expected to coincide with a weak demand growth period, and other headwinds of higher fuel costs, weak monsoons and general elections. In August, JSW Cement said it will take its current 19 million tonnes (MT) capacity to 60 MT in the next five years. The country's top producers have massive expansion plans underway - UltraTech Cement targeting 200 MT, Adani Cement aiming for 140 MT and Dalmia Cement planning for 110-130 MT.
Analysis of data published by 1,074 manufacturing companies with turnover of at least Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million)(shows they were sitting on unsold finished stock worth Rs 18,950 crore (Rs 189.5 billion) at the end of 2007-08, up almost 70 per cent from Rs 11,164 crore (Rs 111.64 billion) a year ago.
The biggest area of concern has to be the deteriorating labour market situation in the US.
Auto mobile retail sales in India witnessed a 10 per cent annual growth in July driven by robust sales across passenger vehicles, two-wheelers and commercial vehicles, industry body FADA said on Monday. Total retail sales across segments rose to 17,70,181 units last month, as compared to 16,09,217 units in July 2022. Passenger vehicle sales saw an increase of 4 per cent to 284,064 units last month, as compared to 273,055 units in the year-ago period, the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) said in a statement.
Boom, bust or a bit of both: as the jury bides time before ruling on the US 'recession', the economy's vital signs at a perplexing time of high-interest rates, still-punishing inflation, and surprisingly strong economic gains are a study of a growing debate over whether the world's largest economy is barrelling into a new downturn. With the US Federal Reserve's (Fed's) inflation fighters attempting the risky pursuit of 'pillow-soft landings' and its economy sending out mixed signals, if there is indeed a recession, it could spell trouble for domestic equities and corporate earnings growth.
Having delivered the numbers, Nitin Paranjpe talks about his plans to make Hindustan Unilever future-proof.
The US slowdown, service tax on leased and rented premises and imposition of minimum alternate tax are expected to take a toll on the revenue and earnings growth rates of all frontline IT companies in 2007-08.
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