The Department of Telecommunications (DOT) on Wednesday received over Rs 17,873 crore from companies towards 5G spectrum dues. Nearly half the amount (Rs 8312.4 crore) was paid by Bharti Airtel, which made advance payments for four years to free up cash for future investments. Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea paid Rs 7,864 crore and Rs 1,680 crore, respectively.
As if wanting to be an antidote to the coronavirus pandemic, the Indian stock market adorned carnival robes in 2021 with a tsunami of liquidity unleashed by global central banks coupled with supportive domestic policies and the world's largest vaccination drive sparking off a world-beating rally on Dalal Street, despite bouts of uneasiness over fizzy valuations. While the wider economy shuttled between recovery and relapse, dictated by multiple mutations of the virus, equity market benchmarks appeared headed in just one direction -- skywards. The dizzying upward journey has added a whopping Rs 72 lakh crore during 2021 to investors' wealth, measured as the cumulative value of all listed shares in the country, taking it to nearly Rs 260 lakh crore.
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.
Pakistan has been scrambling in recent months to avoid being added to a list of countries deemed non-compliant with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations.
The year 2020 could see the worst global economic fallout since the Great Depression in the 1930s, with over 170 countries likely to experience negative per capita income growth due to the raging coronavirus pandemic, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday. Georgieva made the remarks during her address on 'Confronting the Crisis: Priorities for the Global Economy' in Washington, DC, ahead of next week's annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
After staging a strong recovery from COVID-induced slowdown in 2021, India's exports are likely to extend the growth story to the New Year also on increased demand in the global markets, boost in domestic manufacturing due to production-linked incentive schemes and implementation of some interim trade pacts. Expectations of positive growth in the country's exports are also backed up by the outlook of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which predicts a 4.7 per cent expansion in the global merchandise trade volume in 2022. Exporters believe that the outbound shipments would cross $400 billion mark in this fiscal going by the current momentum and may reach $475 billion in 2022-23.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Friday backed the proposed data privacy and cryptocurrency bills, saying India is putting in place the most forward-looking policies and regulations. Ambani, who has been a votary of Indians owning and controlling their own data and the nation drafting strict rules around how digital information is stored and shared, said nations have the right to build and protect strategic digital infrastructure. Stating that data is the 'new oil', he said every citizen's right to privacy has to be safeguarded. "India is putting in place the most forward-looking policies and regulations," he said at the Infinity Forum, hosted by International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA).
'The day-to-day control of banks is in the hands of political bosses and bureaucrats who are not answerable.' 'The political system uses the banks as a helicopter to throw money to the sector they want to patronise in order to win the next election.'
A Bank Investment Company to act as a holding company for state-owned banks would go a long way in minimising government interference and improving governance.
India lost around 38.5 thousand hectares of tropical forest in the last decade. Nearly 14 per cent of the country's tree cover! It is one thing for Modi to announce that India will reach a net-zero level of emissions in 2070. But if it is serious, it needs to start today, points out Ramesh Menon.
'The book captures Rana Kapoor's hunger for real estate leading to bungalows in Delhi, Mumbai, London and other cities; the multiple companies -- over 100 -- to fund his family's various ventures; the attempt to game the system by showing lower non-performing assets,' notes Joydeep Ghosh.
In the early part of 1800, a 30-acre plot next to Fort Gloster on the banks of river Hooghly in Howrah district of Bengal was the nerve centre of industrial activity; it housed India's first steam-powered cotton mill, Bowreah Mills, which was set up by a British merchant and went on to become a hub of factories - a rum distillery, foundry, cotton yarn factory, an oil mill and a paper mill, et al. Spearheaded by Dwarkanath Tagore, the industrialist grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore, the commercial complex was possibly the first of its kind in the country. Close to 200 years later, after much ebb and flow of history, the hub is set for a resurgence of sorts.
Given the impact Covid-19 pandemic had over the world economy, analysts expect global central banks, especially the US Fed, to keep the liquidity tap open, which, in turn, is likely to keep the equity markets, especially those in the emerging markets, buoyant.
India's public debt ratio, which remarkably remained stable at around 70 per cent of the GDP since 1991, is projected to jump by 17 percentage points to nearly 90 per cent because of increase in public spending due to COVID-19, the IMF said.
A depreciating rupee, which briefly hit 80 to the dollar on Tuesday, may boost India's exports but price-inelastic imports of crude oil and gold would mean limited relief on the trade deficit, which clocked a record $26.2 billion in June. Due to global risk aversion on the back of geo-political tensions and aggressive policy tightening by the Fed, the dollar has appreciated against most currencies, including the rupee. And, with other currencies depreciating, India's comparative advantage in this respect may be limited.
Russian fertiliser group Uralkali said that by turning down its higher bid for the company, the administrators had denied the extra funds that would have accrued to the shareholder of Force India - Mallya's Orange India Holdings Sarl - which is subject to a freezing order issued by the UK's High Court in favour of his 13 creditor Indian banks, led by the State Bank of India.
The guidelines note that while there is not enough evidence yet to measure the impact of school closures on the disease transmission rates, the adverse effects of school closures on children's safety and learning are well documented. Gains made in increasing access to children's education in recent decades risk being lost and, in the worse cases, reversed completely.
Essar group on Friday announced the signing of a USD 2.4 billion (Rs 19,000 crore) deal to sell certain ports and power infrastructure to ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel in one of the largest post-pandemic merger and acquisition deals in India. In a statement, the Ruia-run firm said the deal also envisages a 50-50 joint venture between Essar and ArcelorMittal for building a 4 million tonnes a year LNG import terminal at Hazira in Gujarat. Without giving details, it only identified certain ports and power infrastructure that are primarily captive to operations of the Hazira steel plant, which was acquired by ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel (AM/NS) in 2018-19, as part of the deal.
Gold demand in India -- one of most avid purchasers -- is interwoven with culture, tradition, the desire for beauty and the desire for financial protection.
In India post the success of masala and green bonds on the LSE, Nikhil Rathi tells Rajesh Bhayani that there are many international investors interested in buying into the India story
'If you want to live a happy life, you have to help the downtrodden. You have to understand that you have been given a position which is a confluence of your own capability and the grace of God. You must use that position to exemplify to others what has to be followed.'
Some experts argue that India's new growth figures are due to the revised calculation of GDP, which was launched in January
Despite strong AUM growth, MFs lag behind other popular investment avenues. MFs received only 6 per cent of total household savings in 2021-2022.
UN economists announced a likely USD 50 billion drop in the worldwide manufacturing exports in February alone as the extent of the damage to the global economy caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) moved further into focus. Citing the China Manufacturing Purchasing Manager's Index (PMI), Pamela Coke-Hamilton, who heads UNCTAD's Division on International Trade and Commodities, said that it had fallen to 37.5 -- a drop of about 20 points -- the lowest reading since 2004. "This also correlates directly to exports and also implies a two per cent drop in overall exports," she said, with a resulting "ripple effect" worldwide "to the tune of a USD 50 billion fall in exports."
Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan appealed to people to boycott products from China and also directed officials of his ministry not to procure any Chinese products for day-to-day office use while his ministerial colleague Ramdas Athawale said all restaurants and hotels that sell Chinese food in India should be closed down.
Emerging markets such as India have always run higher inflation rates than developed economies such as the US and countries of Western Europe. But for the first time in the past 30 years, the US reported a higher consumer price inflation (CPI) rate than India in five consecutive months. The US reported a CPI rate of 7.5 per cent in January 2022 against 6.01 per cent in India and analysts expect the trend to continue for at least a few months more
If there is a morality tale here, it is that debt and death spare no king.
A whitepaper released by the Chinese government gave a lengthy explanation to refute the allegations of cover up and delay by Beijing on reporting the COVID-19 outbreak last year in Wuhan. United States President Donald Trump and leaders of several countries have accused China of not being transparent in reporting the deadly disease, leading to huge human casualties and economic crisis across the world.
HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri on Wednesday said the lender's business is returning to pre-COVID-19 levels and full normalcy is expected to be restored soon.
The once-delayed Games are due to start on July 23
There has been a 45 per cent growth in 'active internet users' in rural India since 2019, according a study by Nielsen, a global company for audience measurement, data and analytics. The Bharat 2.0 Internet report said that female active internet users grew by 61 per cent since 2019. The report said that India has 646 million active Internet users aged 2 years and above as of December 2021. Rural India has 352 million internet users--almost 20 per cent higher than urban.
Since April, India has seen multiple strains of the coronanavirus sweep the nation, upending life and businesses alike. Out-of-home retail and discretionary categories such as durables, auto, fashion, lifestyle, hospitality, food services, travel, and tourism have been the worst-hit as Covid cases remain high, leaving state governments with no option but to curtail mobility and economic activity.
Ola's factory will create 10,000 jobs and serve as the company's global manufacturing hub for India and international markets.
There's a certain amount of drama to the profession. Sample these taglines: 'We can see the unseen'; 'I can plant my detective in your guest bedroom.' One agency has even ensured that all its phone numbers end in '007'.
China will also set up 50 joint laboratories with countries participating in the Belt and Road initiative to enhance cooperation on innovation.
Only a few thousand chargers dot the Indian landscape, some in working condition, others not, with some held hostage to the power supply vagaries of local utilities, reports S Dinakar.
The total value of India's top 100 brands has increased by 2 per cent, from $162.1 billion in 2020 to $164.9 billion in 2021, according to the latest Brand Finance India 100 2021 report. This uplift in brand value over the course of the first year of the pandemic is an impressive feat given the global economic crisis following the implementation of national lockdowns in March 2020, when business activity was brought to a halt, affecting both production and consumption. Among the brands that came on the top of the list include Tata Group, Reliance Industries, and Mahindra Group.
'Better hygiene practices could lower a person's immunity and make the person susceptible to auto-immune diseases.'
The annual talk-fest of rich and powerful from across the world in snow-laden Alpine resort town of Davos will be attended by nearly 40 heads of government among more than 2,500 global leaders from over 100 countries.
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