'Are all roads in India privatised? Are governments not playing a role in airports or ports? If they (private players) want to set up lines for a specific requirement, I see no reason to object. It will expand the opportunity and passengers will also benefit.'
Even as several trains have more than 200 waitlisted passengers every day, running some trains with so many vacant seats is a criminal waste of scarce resource.
RJD president Lalu Prasad on Thursday said Railway Budget has cheated people as it has nothing to offer.
Wall Street brokerage Goldman Sachs has lowered its estimate for India's economic growth to 11.1 per cent in fiscal year to March 31, 2022, as a number of cities and states announced lockdowns of varying intensities to check spread of coronavirus infections. India is suffering the world's worst outbreak of COVID-19 cases, with deaths crossing 2.22 lakh and new cases above 3.5 lakh daily. This has led to demand for imposition of nationwide strict lockdowns to stem the spread of the virus - a move that the Modi government has so far avoided after the economic devastation last year from a similar strategy.
'No private project will take off at such high interest rates'
Modi's critics will say that he has put up cement and steel structures, but weakened the institutions of governance whereas Nehru strengthened them, observes T N Ninan.
India Inc on Friday said the hike in railway passenger and freight fares will help in resource mobilisation, hoping that the higher fares will lead to better quality and safety of services offered by the Indian Railways, while asking the government to allow FDI in Railways.
Political repercussions are not the only reason why the Trinamool Congress chief would leave the sensitive issue of fares untouched before the West Bengal assembly elections in April.
The railways have been able to project improvement in finances.
The department of economic affairs, in its Monthly Economic Review for September, said critical reforms undertaken by the government will put India to a strong and sustainable growth path in the long run.
With the increased death rate in the ongoing second wave of Covid-19, domestic cement companies are in no better condition than they were in the April-June quarter of FY21 when the country faced nationwide lockdown. "This wave has had high death rate which has impacted the business. "We are in no better situation than last (year) April. "Deaths of drivers, dealers, contractors and also employees have hit the industry really very hard since April (FY22)," M Ravinder Reddy, director of Bharathi Cements said.
What is more worrying, according to the report, is the fact that in over 20 per cent of the topic caseload districts where the second has ebbed, the third wave has set in firmly, which was only 5 per cent a month ago.
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.
Railway route privatisation is not as rosy it looks as there is no bar on competition on one hand and demand-risks outweigh the benefits on other, even though the private operator is free to fix the tariffs, warns a report.
'EV-charging is the next big opportunity after fuelling'
'Q1 is going to bear the brunt of the second wave, exposing full-year GDP forecasts to downward revisions, unless phase-3 of vaccination is executed quickly.'
The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (Dipam) has asked ministries, government departments, and public sector undertakings (PSUs) to send a list of assets that can be monetised under the proposed National Monetisation Pipeline. The list will be used for creation of an asset monetisation dashboard, which will keep a track of such assets. The government, meanwhile, has asked CRISIL to prepare a road map for monetising assets of PSUs and government departments.
'As valuations of large-caps appeared to be out of whack, investors started lapping up quality mid-caps and small-caps, which were available at relatively comfortable valuations.'
India should have done more to protect jobs during the pandemic, a senior official from a global consultancy firm said on Tuesday. Alok Kshirsagar, a senior partner with McKinsey & Company, said the United Kingdom ran a very effective programme to protect employment through the payroll protection initiative, while the US was also not so effective because they were not well-targeted."I think in India, frankly, we should have done more to protect employment in some way, shape or form," Kshirsagar said while speaking at an event organised by industry lobby grouping CII. It can be noted that unemployment had touched record highs during the pandemic across the organised and unorganised sectors.
Indian Railways is currently implementing a project that involves laying of a broad gauge line connecting Nangaldam to Talwara in Himachal Pradesh.
India's network has expanded at a compound annual rate of around 4% which has added more than 4.8 km of additional roads since 1951, but even so the network remains badly underdeveloped
The agency attributed the sharp revision to various high-frequency indicators showing a softness and partly blamed the same to reforms like GST, real estate regulation, and the bankruptcy code which are still a "drag" on the economy.
Recently, world headlines buzzed with Elon Musk's announcement that he was shelving his audacious bid for social media platform Twitter. Away from the media spotlight, questions are being asked about the maverick billionaire's plans in India, too. A few days ago, a Reuters report said Musk's flagship Tesla had put on hold its plan to launch electric cars in India.
The government clarified that the majority of industrial establishments had reported nil production, and cautioned that the numbers should not be compared with those of previous months. "It is not appropriate to compare the IIP of April 2020 with that of earlier months, and users may like to observe the changes in the IIP in the following months," said the ministry of statistics & programme implementation.
The Rakesh Mohan Committee in its report in 2001 said that Railways' financial situation was extremely difficult and suggested new strategy for revenue generation.
'We are today worse off today compared to where we were two years ago by as much as 43 per cent,' notes Mahesh Vyas.
The economic costs now beginning to show up in the hard numbers are far worse than initial expectations.
The WTO's quarterly outlook indicator, comprising seven trade parameters, stood at 96.3, the lowest since March 2010 and down from 98.6 in November. Exports from India would be hit if there is a slowdown in world trade.
Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party government for spurt in prices of essential commodities during its 45-day rule, Opposition Congress on Monday took potshots at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for riding to power on promise of controlling inflation yet doing nothing on it.
The Railway Budget for 2016-17 spared passengers and freight from any increase in tariffs.
Given the better growth in JLR sales and improving domestic sales, nearly 90 per cent of the analysts covering the stock have a 'Buy' rating.
Spending continues to be less as people who are getting direct benefits from the government are choosing to save in the current situation.
'The large scale and widespread shrinking of the labour force in November, the peaking of unemployment in October and the fall in lead indicators in October and November point towards a worsening of the slowdown of the Indian economy in the third quarter of 2019-20,' says Mahesh Vyas.
Niti Aayog's plan to create a 'New India' in less than four years should invite scepticism, argues T N Ninan.
Some would argue that it bullet trains are too expensive for the cash-starved Indian Railways, and its cost far outweighs the benefits.
Companies are looking to combine risk management with strategy.
When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tables her Budget on February 1, the numbers could be something to cheer.
In terms of stock selection, India continues to benefit from two phenomena - the big getting bigger and availability of quality stocks in relative abundance compared with its Asian peers.
In August, passenger car sales dropped 18 per cent to 118,142 units, the sharpest decline in nearly 10 months, due to weak consumer sentiment and a month's lockout at Maruti Suzuki. Sales of diesel-driven utility vehicles grew 70 per #162 this is likely to be affected by the price rise.
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