Postings to places at an altitude above 1,000 metres but less than 1,500 metres, between 1,500 and 3,000 metres, and above 3,000 metres entail different rates of allowances -- the higher the location, the bigger the allowance, reveals Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Debit card payments remained sluggish due to the surge in digital transactions after the pandemic, and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has emerged as the most popular mode of money transfer, particularly for small value transactions, according to RBI data. In July 2020, the total debit card spends stood at Rs 2.81 trillion, as compared to Rs 3.15 trillion in July 2023, reflecting a growth of 11.96 per cent. UPI spends have seen a whopping growth of 428 per cent, zooming from Rs 2.90 trillion to Rs 15.33 trillion during the same period, the data revealed.
'The digital economy will generate 60 to 65 million jobs by 2025, 20 million more than the 40 to 45 million existing jobs that are in danger of disappearing or getting automated,' points out T N Ninan.
More than 100 members of the Indian contingent, including 52 athletes from various sports, will take part in the Paris Paralympics opening ceremony, which will be held outside a stadium for the first time in the Games' history, here on Wednesday.
After four years of high double-digit growth in profits, corporate earnings of Indian companies hit a speed bump in the April-June quarter of 2024 (Q1FY25), leading to the risk of a downward revision in India Inc profit estimates for FY25 and volatility in the equity market. Earnings growth slowed despite companies in most non-financial sectors reporting higher operating margins from lower commodity prices and a decline in interest costs.
At the heart of Paytm's slide lies the abject failure of its Super App strategy, notes Indrajit Gupta.
We'll need to wait a couple of years to see how many restructured loans turn bad and whether some banks fall victim to their obsession for growth, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The RTI also sought the details of the fees paid by the SBI to senior advocate Harish Salve to defend its case against the disclosure of the electoral bonds' records, citing that the records are held in a fiduciary capacity and the information is personal in nature.
New offerings by banks are changing the way you transact.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) clocked over 6 billion transactions in July: the highest ever by India's flagship digital payments platform since its inception in 2016. UPI reported 6.28 billion transactions amounting to Rs 10.62 trillion, according to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the platform. Month-on-month, the volume of transactions was up 7.16 per cent and value increased 4.76 per cent.
Citing various macroeconomic parameters that are doing pretty well, India's G20 Sherpa and former CEO of Niti Aayog Amitabh Kant projected that the country is all set to overtake Japan as 4th largest economy in the world by 2025. The size of India's GDP is currently ranked 5th, after the US, China, Germany, and Japan. It overtook the UK in 2022.
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.
The demand for gold is expected to take a hit if the price of the yellow metal - which has been hovering around Rs 60,000, a level never seen before - remains elevated. Due to a sharp increase in price in a very short time and the flow of smuggled gold continuing, gold price in Mumbai is quoted at around Rs 59,000 per 10 gram. Typically, overall demand in the January-March and July-September quarters is moderate-to-dull, which is the case in the ongoing period.
If the earnings in the first quarter of the current financial year are an indication, most banks, particularly those majority-owned by the government, have fared well, reveals Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
At the World Bank Banga will be replacing David Malpass, a former Trump treasury official, reports axios.com. Malpass had already announced that he will resign by July, months ahead of his term expired. "Ajay is uniquely equipped to lead the World Bank at this critical moment in history," President Biden said in a statement. Banga, 63, currently serves as vice chairman at General Atlantic.
India's flagship payment platform, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), ended the 2022 calendar year on a high note as the volume of transactions touched a record 7.82 billion in December, amounting to Rs 12.82 trillion, again a record high. Data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella body for retail digital payments in the country, showed volume of transactions in December was up 7.12 per cent compared to November, while value of transactions was up 7.73 per cent during the same period.
Corporate earnings grew in double digits during the April-June 2022 (Q1FY23) quarter but the momentum waned. Overall corporate earnings in the quarter were down sharply from their highs in FY22. The combined net profit of 2,981 listed companies across sectors in the Business Standard sample was up 22.4 per cent YoY to Rs 2.24 trillion in the June quarter, driven by a big jump in the earnings of banks, non-banking lenders, oil & producers, and FMCG companies. Also, earnings in the corresponding quarter a year ago were affected because of the second wave of the Covid pandemic, even though the numbers were a lot better than Q1FY21 when there was a nationwide lockdown.
The IPO filing-to-approval lapsing ratio this year is the best in three years, underscoring the improvement in the IPO market's buoyancy.
India Inc has reported a muted start to the financial year 2024-25, with a decline in net earnings and a modest single-digit uptick in revenues. An analysis of 488 companies that have released their results for the June 2024 quarter reveals a 1.6 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) drop in combined net profit -- the weakest performance in the past seven quarters. In stark contrast, the combined net profit of these companies experienced a 13.6 per cent Y-o-Y increase in the previous quarter (Q4FY24) and a 65.2 per cent Y-o-Y rise in Q1FY24.
Fresh plans of privatisation or divestment in central public sector enterprises and public sector banks might take a back seat this financial year because these may require a large consensus among coalition partners.
Wholesale price-based inflation spiked to a record high of 15.08 per cent in April on rising prices across segments from food to commodities. The WPI-based inflation was 14.55 per cent in March and 10.74 per cent in April last year. "The high rate of inflation in April 2022 was primarily due to rise in prices of mineral oils, basic metals, crude petroleum & natural gas, food articles, non-food articles, food products and chemicals & chemical products etc. as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year," the commerce and industry ministry said in a statement.
The earnings of India Inc hit a record high in the 2022-23 (FY23) January-March quarter (fourth quarter, or Q4), compared with their poor showing in the previous two quarters of the financial year. The rise in earnings, however, is exclusively led by banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) companies. A better-than-expected showing by banks and non-bank lenders in Q4FY23 more than compensated for the earnings contraction in the non-BFSI space.
A key indicator of corporate efficiency may now be better than at any time since the turn of the millennium. The net working capital cycle - a crucial measure that tracks the time a company takes to convert current assets like inventory into sales and then collect the money from customers - has seen remarkable improvement. According to data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the average company needed nearly 90 days to complete this cycle in 1999-2000.
So far this year, bankers have earned Rs 1,226 crore for handling 45 IPOs, which together mobilised Rs 48,363 crore.
The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) caution on inflation, highlighted during the recent monetary policy meeting, may put investors' faith in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) stocks to test, analysts said. They, however, believe FMCG stocks may ride through this near-term investor anxiety as related companies are, typically, well-equipped to handle inflation due to their pricing power and steady demand for essential goods.
The tax authorities may tell banks and crypto exchanges to report transactions of virtual digital assets (VDAs) as the government begins taxing gains from cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens from April 1. So far, the tax department has relied on voluntary disclosures on transactions of VDAs. Once implemented, the sale and purchase of digital assets will reflect in the Annual Information Statement (AIS). The AIS contains details of at least 46 of the financial transactions done by a taxpayer in a financial year.
Amid slowdown blues, the government has unveiled a raft of measures over the past few months aimed at improving liquidity in the system, moderating interest rates as well as credit growth apart from addressing stress in the NBFC sector.
Wholesale price-based inflation rose to a record high of 15.88 per cent in May on rising prices of food items and crude oil. The Wholesale Price Index-based inflation was 15.08 per cent in April and 13.11 per cent in May last year. "The high rate of inflation in May, 2022 is primarily due to rise in prices of mineral oils, crude petroleum & natural gas, food articles, basic metals, non-food articles, chemicals & chemical products and food products etc. as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year," the commerce and industry ministry said in a statement.
The State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were purchased by donors between April 1, 2019 and February 15 this year, out of which 22,030 were redeemed by political parties.
'For smaller merchants, there should be a process that is digital and a minimum KYC journey should be allowed.'
DigiLocker, a government initiative for storing documents and verifying credentials online, is gradually replacing the need for paper.
Experts hail 2014 as the worst year for banks.
Structural reforms, pro-people programmes and employment opportunities helped the economy get new vigour, the finance minister said. After contracting by 5.8 per cent in 2020-21, the economy recorded a growth of 9.1 per cent in 2021-22.
...benefiting 350,000 persons. Also, Trai detected and blocked seven million mobile phone connections involved in cyber fraud and suspicious activities.
An initiative of Nandan Nilekani's EkStep Foundation, people+ai on Tuesday unveiled its vision for the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India, dubbed 'Adbhut India' (Amazing India). It aims to harness AI as a powerful tool to enhance the lives of all Indians. The event marked the rollout of several initiatives by people+ai that are focused on discovering, demonstrating, and disseminating population-scale AI use cases for India.
'These are interesting days for watchers of English cricket and central banking,' points out Amol Agrawal.
'He asserted in his usual jovial style that he was not an MBA like his audience at IIM-Ahmedabad but perhaps had an even better business degree: MBB'. 'He went on to explain to his perplexed, blue chip B-School audience that MBB stood for "Marwadi by birth"!' Shivanand Kanavi salutes Shashi Ruia, co-founder of the Essar group who passed into the ages on November 25, 2024 in Mumbai.
'Mumbai main branch (SBI headquarter) has all the data ready-made. It doesn't take even an hour to out the data from the system.'
The revenue growth of early birds or companies that have declared their Q4FY24 (March quarter) numbers is the highest in the last four quarters. The 178 companies (excluding their listed subsidiaries) that declared their results have reported a sales growth rate of 13.2 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), taking aggregate revenue to Rs 9.1 trillion. Including other income, growth is at 16 per cent, the highest in the last four quarters.
Apart from SBI, UPI 2.0 partner banks are HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, RBL Bank, YES Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndusInd Bank, Federal Bank and HSBC.
