Reserve Bank and the finance ministry on Wednesday asked top management of banks and representative of trade bodies to push exports and import transactions in rupee. It was stressed during a meeting that banks should connect with their foreign counterparts for opening special rupee vastro accounts to facilitate cross-border trade in Indian currency rather than popular mode dollar, sources said. Trade associations and their foreign trading partners should explore opportunities to make use of the framework, sources added.
"In principle, the ask in return is that India should not support the G7 (Group of Seven) proposal. "A decision on this issue will be taken later following talks with all the partners," an official with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said.These "substantial discounts" will be steeper than those offered by Iraq in the past two months, officials said.
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.
Deepening the funding crisis that startups have been witnessing for some time, the October inflows plunged 75 per cent on-year to $3.3 billion across 75 deals, including six large deals worth $2.2 billion, according to an industry report. Exits touched half of the inflows at $1.6 billion across 15 deals in the reporting months, a significant improvement over the previous month which saw just $653 million worth of exits across 24 deals, but 69 per cent lower on-year basis, according to the numbers collated by EY for the Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, the umbrella body the PEs and VCs. However, the report said, on a month-on-month basis, the inflows continued to grow, clipping at 60 per cent over the September numbers.
'We're seeing major Bollywood celebrities, fashion icons, and even movie studios all wanting to build Metaverse experiences'
Sensex ended strong, Tata Steel, HUL climb higher.
Wrapping up his four-day state visit to the US, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asserted that a new and proud journey of India-US ties has begun and the world is watching the two great democracies strengthening their bond.
'The inflection point that really happened in the sector was during the pandemic when buyers' perception changed towards consumption and that gave a trigger to pent-up demand with the increased affordability.'
The WTO toolkit provides various instruments to deal with such situations - anti-dumping duties, countervailing duties and safeguard measures.
Elon Musk's decision to drop the idea of acquiring Twitter over purported under-reporting of fake accounts due to the use of bots has opened a can of worms on what is a growing and crucial problem - advertisers who put in money based on these falsified numbers (which is the mainstay revenue of these platforms) are making losses; they are paying for bots in the guise of viewers. mFilterIt - a global digital and advertising (ad) fraud detection and protection company in India - says search engines like Google have the lowest average ad fraud rate of 10-12 per cent, based on the inference arrived at while working with clients that use these platforms. This means 10-12 per cent of the ad viewership is generated by machines.
Black Friday sales in India received a good response as brands dropped their prices making customers queue up outside stores where discounts were steeper. Discounts were offered both online and offline. Most of the international brands in India offered discounts under the Black Friday Sale banner. The Black Friday Sale started in the US on the Friday after Thanksgiving Thursday. The day typically marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season ahead of the festival.
Money transfers and merchandise purchases are expected to account for about 71 per cent and 21 per cent respectively, of total transaction value in 2013.
The Union government will soon make amendments to the foreign trade policy (FTP) to enable exporters to claim export benefits for settling trade in rupees. These benefits are, so far, available for export payments received in foreign currencies. After the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unveiled a mechanism to settle international trade transactions in the local currency on Monday, exporters have been demanding that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry come up with a clarification on the matter.
The war in Ukraine has made its presence felt at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos. As political and business leaders' debate, they remain fearful of Europe's economic future. There is a sense of gloom among many business leaders as energy shortage and economic recession rear their heads. Global investors are keenly assessing the presence of Indian delegation at Davos.
Walmart-owned Flipkart will undertake a buyback employee stock options worth about Rs 600 crore, according to sources Earlier in the day, Flipkart announced raising $3.6 billion (about Rs 26,805.6 crore) in funding from a clutch of investors that valued the e-commerce major at $37.6 billion (about Rs 2.79 lakh crore). In an e-mail to employees, Flipkart group chief executive officer Kalyan Krishnamurthy lauded the critical role played by the staff in reaching this milestone.
Amazon on Tuesday said it will begin manufacturing Amazon devices, including Fire TV sticks, in Chennai later this year in partnership with Foxconn's subsidiary, Cloud Network Technology.
Auctioneers have said its Evening Sales, however will not be included in the partnership.
Global confidence in India has been restored, says Modi.
Amazon India has decided to shut down 'Amazon Distribution', according to sources. This follows its recent decision to shut its food delivery and edtech offerings. The moves are part of the annual operating planning review process amid global macroeconomic uncertainty. The e-commerce giant is looking to focus on its core businesses, sources said.
The government is working towards further review and simplification of the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy to facilitate the proposed initial public offering (IPO) of the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) secretary Anurag Jain said on Thursday. The final decision will be taken by the Cabinet. The industry department is working together with the finance ministry's department of financial services (DFS) and department of investment and public asset management (DIPAM) towards a successful listing of the life insurer on the domestic bourses, which is expected to be the largest in India.
Two top United States lawmakers have introduced a legislation in the House of Representatives to designate India as a special global partner of America
Banks have raised concerns over the new international trade settlement in rupee, fearing that facilitation of such a mechanism could result in them facing the ire of economic sanctions by the West, people aware of the matter said. Large banks with overseas operations have sought clarity and assurance from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that they will not be targeted with sanctions for facilitating rupee trade with a sanction-hit country such as Russia. The present payment mechanism is a shift from earlier such arrangements, like the one with sanction-hit Iran, which involved banks facilitating settlement of international trade that did not have business in the sanctioned nation.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, summed it up well as he explained the reason for the company sacking 13 per cent of its employees. He said no one predicted that the boom for digital services during the Covid pandemic would die out. "Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended.
'The finance ministry and the RBI will never admit to the difficulties in the economy because if they do so, it will adversely impact the financial markets, etc.' 'They like to present a rosy picture that everything is fine and under control.'
A decision to tap the 30 countries for exporting wheat was taken at a meeting of the commerce ministry on Thursday.
Echoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's views that improving the health of financial markets alone cannot fuel growth, G20 business leaders on Friday said vigorous efforts should be made to go beyond fiscal and monetary policy to kickstart world economy and create jobs.
India is currently home to 52 unicorn startups and one of the fastest-growing startup ecosystems.
The first step to keeping your job safe, experts tell Rediff.com's Divya Nair, is understanding why layoffs happen.
Coming Wednesday, Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman will present the 2023 Union Budget - the last full Budget ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. While India exited 2022 as a relatively bright spot in the global economy, the FM will endeavour to present a Budget that insulates India's economy against global headwinds and recession in advanced economies, while sticking to the path of fiscal consolidation. In this, she is being helped by her core team of trusted advisors.
India has decided to authorise the country's biggest lender SBI to promote rupee trade with Russia and soon Moscow will name its bank to operationalise the mechanism, exporters' body FIEO said on Wednesday. The RBI in July issued a detailed circular asking banks to put in place additional arrangements for export and import transactions in Indian rupees in view of increasing interest of the global trading community in the domestic currency. Currently, a large part of bilateral trade between India and Russia is getting settled in rupee due to sanctions imposed by the US and Europe following Moscow's attack on Ukraine.
Greenwashing is making misleading or false environment-friendly claims about a product. Consumers in India currently do not have any way of telling whether a claim is authentic or greenwashing. And one never hears of action against any company for making false claims of being environment-friendly.
'If they are taking marquee locations and, say, are paying 50 per cent higher rent, those locations will see a spurt in rates as well.'
The latest round of funding values the company at $10.7 billion, almost doubling it from the $5.5 billion valuation during the $1.25 billion fund raise in July 2021 when investors including SoftBank, Prosus and Accel pumped in capital in what was the company's biggest funding since its inception. The other new investors in the latest round of funding include Baron Capital Group, Sumeru Venture, IIFL AMC Late Stage Tech Fund, Kotak, Axis Growth Avenues AIF- I, Sixteenth Street Capital, Ghisallo, Smile Group and Segantii Capital, Swiggy said in a statement.
India imported goods worth $4.23 billion in June from sanctions-hit Russia, up 6.8 times as compared to last year, as demand for shipments of crude oil grew at the fastest pace during the month. Crude oil worth $3.02 billion was imported in June, which translates into a share of 71 per cent of the total imports from Russia, commerce and industry ministry data showed. Similarly, during the April-June quarter, India's imports from Russia were valued at $9.27 billion, up 369 per cent on year.
World Bank's Doing Business Indicators ranks India (out of 189) at 132 for trading across borders.
Speaking at a joint press appearance with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Washington, DC, Blinken said that the US tried everything possible to avert the Ukraine conflict through diplomacy.
Recently, there has been a mushrooming of international apparel retailers.
Adani Enterprises' proposed Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) fundraising via fresh issue of equity shares through a public offer would be the fourth biggest by Indian companies, excluding banks and non-banking financial companies.
The United Arab Emirates on Tuesday announced to change its existing five-day workweek to a four-and-a-half day starting January 1, becoming the world's first country to make the employee-friendly transition as part of its efforts to improve productivity and work-life balance. According to the new schedule, Monday to Thursday the work timings would be from 7.30 am to 3.30 pm, followed by a half day on Friday from 7.30 am to 12.00 pm, said the UAE Government Media Office. Saturdays and Sundays are full-day holidays under the new rule.
Seven years after Modi took office, merchandise exports were lower in 2020-2021 than when he had taken over from Manmohan Singh, points out Aakar Patel.
