The need to maintain people's confidence in digital banking resulted in the action against HDFC Bank for service outages, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Friday and exhorted lenders to invest more on the technology front.
Chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageswaran on Tuesday said Indian economy will grow at over 7 per cent, down from above 8 per cent of growth rate projected in January. He, however, said that the economic momentum and the animal spirits are "unmistakable". "India's own growth rates have come off the projections made in January down to about 7-plus per cent for the current financial year," Nageswaran said speaking at Global Fintech Fest event in Mumbai.
Shivani Shinde reports. The youngest member of the Tata group, the much-awaited Tata Neu, has finally been launched for people across the country. The 'super app' offers a number of services ranging from financial services to tech, travel and even groceries. The app takes off with a customer base of 120 million, with 2,500 offline stores. According to the Tata group, the app will be a one-stop destination for all consumer needs. The super app also offers a bouquet of financial offers like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), bill payments, loans and insurance. Tata Neu will also provide other services like fashion, gadgets, groceries, travel and health.
Expect heightened volatility and stress to hit the markets. Caution may be the need of the hour, alerts Akash Prakash.
The mobile banking app of the largest private sector lender HDFC Bank, which has been under the regulatory lens for network outages, was down for an hour on Tuesday due to unspecified issues. The city headquartered bank said the issues were faced for an hour late in the morning on Tuesday and the same was resolved in an hour. It urged customers to use the net banking alternative to transact in the interim.
Formula One launch F1 TV in India, target 'strong mobile market'
Indian economy is poised to do better on the back of reforms undertaken by the government and is expected to clock a 6.5-7 per cent growth in the remaining part of the decade, Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) V Anantha Nageswaran said on Tuesday. Addressing reporters here after the tabling of the Economic Survey in Parliament by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Nageswaran said that by and large, inflation is likely to be "well behaved" in FY2023-24 barring headwinds. "My optimism is that in the coming decade, rest of the decade, the potential GDP growth, without taking into account export potential, because global economy is still rife with uncertainty, the growth rate would be around 6.5 to 7 per cent, rather than between 6 per cent and 6.5 per cent," he said.
Remember, pension from EPS will be taxable at slab rate, reducing the post-tax income for people who remain in the higher tax brackets after retirement.
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.
Prosus-backed fintech firm PayU is set to acquire India's earliest payment gateway BillDesk in an all-cash transaction of $4.7 billion. This will be the largest acquisition in India's digital payments space. The deal will also give exit to investors General Atlantic, TA Associates, Temasek, Clearstone Ventures, and Visa. The proposed acquisition will help PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus which operates in more than 20 markets, become one of the leading online payment providers globally by total payment volume (TPV).
GST officers can now launch prosecution against offenders in cases where the amount of evasion or misuse of input tax credit is more than Rs 5 crore, the finance ministry has said. However, this monetary threshold will not be applicable in the case of habitual evaders or in cases where arrests have been made at the time of investigation. "One of the important considerations for deciding whether prosecution should be launched is the availability of adequate evidence," the GST investigation wing under the finance ministry said, while issuing instructions for launching prosecution.
Planting a mole in a rival company to get sensitive data or hiring a detective firm to get access to company secrets is pass
Those who consider the rupee as a proxy for virility have started thumping their chests and dreaming of dethroning the dollar from its coveted position, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
After the finance minister directed public sector banks to join the account aggregator (AA) ecosystem, 5-6 major ones, including State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda are expected to go live by July-end. Sahmati, an industry alliance for the AA ecosystem, has been working with PSU banks to get them onboarded for quite some time now. So far, Union Bank of India and Punjab National Bank (PNB) have gone live on the AA ecosystem. While Union Bank has been live for a while, PNB went live earlier this month.
'In the long run, I don't foresee major ramifications [about Trudeau's allegations].' 'There's just enough hypocrisy among Western nations for India to douse the outrage.'
Shaktikanta Das is a master of the finest balancing act who listens to all but takes his own decisions, discovers Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said banks need to focus more on being customer-friendly so that the process of availing credit becomes more hassle-free for borrowers. However, the minister made it clear that banks do not have to be lenient on credit underwriting standards by taking any adverse risks on a proposal. At a meeting between industry representatives and the finance minister, a startup founder in the baking business suggested for credit to be available hassle-free, to which largest lender SBI's chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara said a startup's worries are more on the equity side and assured full support in lending if sufficient equity is on the table.
Enthused by higher than expected GDP numbers in the fourth quarter of 2022-23, Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) V Anantha Nageswaran on Wednesday said India's economic growth may exceed the initial estimate of 6.5 per cent in the current fiscal and the country can look for another year of solid economic performance.
IMAGES from the IPL 2023 match played between Royal Challengers Bangalore vs Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Tuesday
Use a "virtual credit card" for every online transaction when you can't pay cash on delivery.
Surge in UPI transactions is because of an increased consumer interest in making bill payments and recharging mobile phones online, and purchase of non-essential goods on e-commerce platforms.
The duty hike on cigarettes by 16 per cent announced in the Union Budget 2023-24 would have a nominal impact of around 7-12 paise per stick across cigarette categories, according to experts. This upward revision in National Calamity Contingent Duty (NCCD) would have negligible impact on smokers and the companies could easily absorb the shock as it may not also have any resultant impact on margins, they said. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharama in the Union Budget for 2023-24 on Wednesday proposed to revise and increase the duty on cigarettes to about 16 per cent.
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.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday raised the personal income tax rebate limit, doled out sops on small savings and announced one of the biggest hikes in capital spending in the past decade as she did a tight rope walk in the Budget between staying fiscally prudent and meeting public expectations in the year before general elections.
If you pledge market-linked instruments and their value plummets, you will have to provide additional collateral, points out Sanjay Kumar Singh.
HDFC Bank on Tuesday said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has appointed an external IT firm for carrying out a special audit of its IT infrastructure in the aftermath of repeated service outages at the country's largest private sector lender over the past two years. "RBI has appointed an external professional IT firm for carrying out a special audit of the entire IT infrastructure of the bank under Section 30 (1-B) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949..., at the cost of the Bank under Section 30 (1-C) of the Act.
'We want to achieve overall profitability, and then we would go for an IPO.'
It won't be easy for the banking sector to better its performance every quarter, predicts Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents her fourth Budget in Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday said the rupee is holding up relatively well when compared to the currencies of emerging market peers and advanced economies. Days after the domestic currency breached the 80-level against the dollar, Das said Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has zero tolerance for volatile and bumpy movement in the rupee and added that the central bank actions have helped in smoother movement. He said RBI has been supplying US dollars to the market to ensure adequate supply of liquidity and also clarified that the central bank does not target a particular level for the currency.
In her first address to the joint sitting of Parliament as the Budget session began, she said 'Amrit Kaal', described by the government as the 25-year period culminating in the centenary of India's independence, is the time to build an India which is 'aatmanirbhar' (self reliant) and also fulfils its humanitarian obligations.
The development of private data sources is a hugely positive development. It should serve as a challenge to the government to improve its own record on producing timely and reliable statistics, points out T N Ninan.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said many countries have evinced interest for bilateral trade in the rupee after the RBI announced a mechanism recently. Speaking at Mindmine Summit 2022, she said this along with other steps taken by the government is towards full capital account convertibility. "It isn't the rouble-rupee which was in the old format. "Now this (bilateral rupee trade) formulation, which I am glad the RBI has come up at a time which was so critical," she said when asked if India is ready for capital account convertibility.
'Cinema or the sentiment of a people, disgusted by contemporary politics and wanting to feel whole by collectively recalling a moment of great difficulty that was also a cause for togetherness?', asks Shyam G Menon.
'Given the emerging trends, it may be time for India to embrace digital banking,' notes Pradipta Bagchi.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has seen pre-tax profit recover to pre-pandemic levels on the back of continued growth in consumer businesses, Moody's Investors Service said on Monday. The oil-to-retail-to-telecom behemoth on Friday reported a 0.7 per cent Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax and depreciation and amortisation) growth for the quarter ended December 31, 2020, compared with the corresponding quarter in the previous year. "A strong performance in digital services and retail segments underpinned the improvement in consolidated earnings, a credit positive," Moody's said commenting on the earnings. Continued growth in earnings combined with the company's strong balance sheet with zero net debt on a reported basis will keep Reliance's credit metrics strong for its Baa2 rating over the next 12-18 months, it said.
Kerala is one state where the Congress may do well in the general election and it where Rahul Gandhi has demonstrated why he is serious about rebuilding his party, says T V R Shenoy.
After facing multiple outages that irked the regulator, the country's largest private sector lender, HDFC Bank, is revamping its technology infrastructure by making large scale investments, wherein it is bringing new talent, getting into cloud-native stacks, a shift from the traditional monolithic IT infrastructures, and working with strategic partners for better products and services. The bank management is clear that it will do whatever it takes in line with its growth path to ramp up its technology infrastructure.
Housing finance major HDFC on Monday reported a 16 per cent growth in standalone net profit to Rs 3,700 crore for the January-March quarter, helped by record loan sales on the back of benign interest rates and the resultant fall in cost of funds along with the near-total repayments that culled provisions and credit costs. For the full year, the company, which is working on a reverse merger with its banking subsidiary, has booked a net profit of Rs 13,742 crore, up from Rs 12,027 crore in FY21, vice-chairman and chief executive Keki Mistry said on Monday in an earnings call with analysts. On a consolidated basis, net profit for the quarter surged 21.6 per cent to Rs 6,892 crore on-year and for the full year it jumped 21 per cent to Rs 22,595 crore, Mistry said and guided towards better days.
