Of the three major Budget announcements related to the banking sector, privatisation of PSBs is the most audacious, says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Mutual funds have launched a clutch of new fund offers in the silver ETF (exchange traded fund) category this year and collected Rs 1,400 crore in assets after the introduction of the newly-created investment asset class by market regulator Sebi in 2021. Further, fund houses including Kotak Asset Management Company have filed draft documents with the markets regulator to float silver ETF as well as silver ETF fund of funds for investors, information with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) showed. These NFOs (new fund offers) are providing an opportunity to the investors to digitally invest and own silver which is easily tradable during market hours.
The minister announced an overall allocation of Rs 1.38 lakh crore for 2018-19 from Rs 1.22 lakh crore in current fiscal on health, education and social security.
Despite unprecedented levels of uncertainty in Samvat 2077, investors have little to complain about on the returns front. The BSE Sensex delivered returns of 38 per cent in this period, while the Nifty registered a return of over 40 per cent. As is the case in bull markets, companies in the small- and mid-capitalisation basket outperformed the benchmarks, with returns almost twice those of frontliners.
Joe Biden's B3W proposal aims to bring democracies together. India should come up with its own plans to contribute to the initiative, states Rahul Mishra.
A group of retired army officers have come together to provide a home for girls who never had a home before.
Gross bad loans of banks may rise from 6.9 per cent in September 2021 to 8.1-9.5 per cent by September 2022 if the Omicron variant strikes the economy hard, as per the financial stability report of the Reserve Bank released on Wednesday. The report also said that the rising stress level in the retail loan portfolio of banks -- the mainstay of bank credit for many years now -- was led by home loans, which grew in double-digits so far this fiscal. While asset quality improved, with gross non-performing assets (GNPA) and net NPA (NNPA) ratios declining to 6.9 and 2.3 per cent, respectively, in September 2021, the slippage ratio inched up during the same period as private sector banks showed a higher rate of deterioration in asset quality, as per the report.
Omkeshwar Singh, head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
Billionaire Gautam Adani's son Karan will helm the cement firms his group has acquired to become India's second largest cement player and extend his burgeoning empire that spans from ports and energy to airports and telecom.
In a country that is often focused on the ways in which it falls short, the start of a year is a good time to remind oneself of such positives, observes T N Ninan.
Seeking to develop and rejuvenate 75 water bodies in every district of the country, the prime minister will launch a new initiative named 'Amrit Sarovar', it said.
Housing Development Finance Corp (HDFC) chairman Deepak Parekh on Tuesday said that while the country's macroeconomic fundamentals remain strong and the recovery is in progress, the unpredictability of coronavirus will remain a key challenge. Owing to the second wave, the Indian economy is likely to mirror a similar trend seen in FY21, where the first half of the financial year is weaker and the second half is significantly stronger, he said. "I remain confident that India's macroeconomic fundamentals are strong. Recovery is underway," Parekh said while addressing the 44th annual general meeting of HDFC Ltd. He said, the country's forex reserves and foreign direct investment inflows have scaled record highs, the capital markets are also buoyant and agriculture growth is expected to remain strong with food grain production estimated at over 305 million tonnes.
Flush with liquidity, banks are eager to lend. And, therein lies the problem, warns Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
On his maiden visit to Beijing, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during which the two leaders agreed to strengthen the all-weather friendship and the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
'China doesn't want to settle the boundary dispute because that gives them a reason to pick a fight with India.'
Richest Indian Gautam Adani's ports-to-power-to-cement conglomerate is "deeply overleveraged" with the group predominantly using debt to invest aggressively across existing as well as new businesses, CreditSights, a Fitch Group unit, said on Tuesday. In a report titled 'Adani Group: Deeply Overleveraged', CreditSights said, "In the worst-case scenario, overly ambitious debt-funded growth plans could eventually spiral into a massive debt trap, and possibly culminate into a distressed situation or default of one or more group companies." Starting out as a commodities trader in the late 1980s, the Adani group has diversified from mines, ports and power plants into airports, data centers and defence.
'General Anil Chauhan ticks all the right boxes as the new chief of defence staff.'
In New Delhi, Singh will continue US administration's ongoing consultations with India, and advance a range of issues in the US-India economic relationship and strategic partnership.
'Sectors related to foreign trade, exchange, import and travel are experiencing a slowdown, which is now reflecting in their talent demand too.'
Companies like Amazon Prime Video are also temporarily lowering bit rates -- a measure of how much data is being transferred -- to ease pressure on telecom network infrastructure.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
Capital markets regulator Sebi on Monday came out with a framework for operationalising the gold exchange, wherein the yellow metal will be traded in the form of electronic gold receipts (EGRs). The stock exchange desirous of trading in EGRs may apply to Sebi for approval of trading in the new segment, the regulator said in a circular. The bourses can launch contracts with different denomination for trading or conversion of EGR into gold. Under the new framework, the entire transaction has been divided into three tranches-- creation of EGR; trading of EGR on stock exchange and conversion of EGR into physical gold.
Readers reminisce their bitter sweet experiences of ordering meals in the Indian Railways.
The World Bank report said Brand Northeast would build on elements such as healthy living, environmental sustainability, social responsibility, service orientation, among others.
Speaking during a video interaction with Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana beneficiaries from Madhya Pradesh, he also said that there was 'vikriti' (distortion) in the system of the previous government.
The most immediate challenge for growth is the disruption of the global economy brought about by the Ukraine war and related sanctions, the Covid shutdowns in China and the rising tide of inflation, points out Nitin Desai.
Insurance companies are seeking a separate deduction limit of Rs 1 lakh for insurance premium payment under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act in the upcoming Union Budget to bring in more people under the ambit of insurance. The insurers also want reduction in the goods and services tax (GST) rate of 18 per cent currently applied on health insurance products to 5 per cent to make such products more affordable to common people. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget for 2022-23 on February 1.
Please send your queries to getahead@rediff.co.in with the subject line 'Cars' and experts from CarJasoos.com will answer your queries related to buying new or used cars.
India's top vaccinologist Gagandeep Kang stressed the need to develop better vaccines that can deal with new variants, and strengthening of the regulatory mechanisms.
Delhi BJP chief Tiwari said each poor family will be provided good quality, subsidised 'atta' (wheat flour) at a rate of Rs 2 per kilogram. The BJP will bring an ambitious 'Samridh Delhi Infrastructure Scheme', with a provision of Rs 10,000 crore, to ensure "focussed and priority" development of roads, flyovers, foot over-bridges and other key infrastructure projects, the manifesto stated. The manifesto promises to set up a 'Colonies Development Board' for undertaking development of various civic amenities.
At a time when the country's medical infrastructure has become incapable of handling the pressure of Covid's deadly second wave, a parallel wave of conmen, black marketers and counterfeiters can be witnessed across the country. Geetanjali Krishna reports.
June was a memorable month for the 101-year-old Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB). Last month, the Thoothukudi-based bank witnessed two new landmarks in a history in which the last three decades could easily qualify for a Kollywood blockbuster.
Revenue decline has left the operators with little money to service their mostly 3G and partly 4G infrastructure leading to poor data and voice quality.
The committee has been tasked to come up with policy measures to boost agriculture exports, raise growth in food processing, attract investments in modern market infrastructure, value chains and logistics.
The experts said that climate change is not only raising temperatures and making India's heatwaves hotter, but also changing weather patterns that further drive dangerous weather extremes.
Crisil Ratings on Wednesday said a broad-based recovery is on for India Inc currently, and upgraded its credit quality outlook to 'positive' from the earlier 'cautiously optimistic'. The rating agency said the credit ratio, which illustrates the number of upgrades to downgrades, rose to over 2.5 times in the first four months of the fiscal, as compared to 1.33 times in the second half of FY21, it said in a statement. The rating agency said it has also done a study of 43 sectors, excluding the financial sector, accounting for 75 per cent of the overall Rs 36 lakh crore in outstanding debt, which shows that the current recovery is broad-based.
So which sectors are likely to do well in 2022? Should you focus on domestic economy-related sectors or export-oriented ones?
The additional outgo to combat the impact of COVID-19 will significantly erode the fiscal consolidation achieved by the state governments in the past three years, an RBI report said on Tuesday. In its study of the state budgets of 2020-21, the RBI report which has dwelled on the theme 'COVID-19 and its Spatial Dimensions in India', said that Gross Fiscal Deficit (GFD) of the states would spiral during the current fiscal.
Superseding the boards of two non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) in the Srei group will neither create liquidity challenges for sound entities, nor build systemic crises because the markets have factored in the problems with the Kolkata-based firms. Such regulatory steps will help in making the NBFC space more robust, bankers and market experts said. The action should have begun earlier because the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had done a special audit last financial year and asked the group to make provisions for assets considered stressed, analysts said.
Ailing telecom operator Vodafone Idea has flagged the industry's "unsustainable financial duress" in its latest annual report and hoped that the government would provide the necessary support to address "all structural issues" faced by the sector. In the chairman's letter to shareholders, Himanshu Kapania cited persistent challenges in the operating environment, amid "unsustainable pricing" and "hyper-competition" during FY21. Kapania expressed hope that government will support efforts to generate reasonable returns on massive investments.
