If 2019-20 (FY20) was an unusual year for highway construction in India, with the pace of work slowing down for the first time since the Narendra Modi government assumed power in 2014, largely due to the general elections in May and liquidity crunch, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21 (FY21) only made matters worse with lockdowns and labour unavailability. The pace of highway construction in 2021-22 (FY22) has not been able to bulldoze the pandemic barriers in a year marred by two Covid-19 waves - the second at the start of the fiscal year, the third towards the close. With localised lockdowns and restrictions on mobility, highway construction growth in the country has now fallen to a five-year low.
The idea is to keep the RBI's information technology (IT) infrastructure in top shape to run the payments and settlement system uninterrupted 24x7, and run the full gamut of RBI functions from the secured data centres, as nearly 14,000 RBI staffers, except the senior-most management, work from home.
The Reserve Bank on Tuesday directed digital lending entities to disclose upfront the names of of their empanelled agents authorised to contact borrowers in case of default of loan, and also intimate the details to customers before initiating the recovery process. In August last year, the RBI had tightened norms for digital lending to prevent charging of exorbitant interest rates by certain entities and also check unethical loan recovery practices. Under the new norms, all loan disbursals and repayments are required to be executed only between the bank accounts of borrower and the regulated entities (like banks and NBFCs) without any pass-through/ pool account of the Lending Service Providers (LSPs).
Fintech and venture capital firms such as Recur Club, Razorpay and Trifecta Capital have come to the aid of homegrown start-ups caught in the crossfire of the Silicon Valley Bank fiasco. Alternative funding platform Recur Club said it was allocating $15 million to all Indian founders affected by the crisis. It will not charge any platform fee for the same.
Ride-hailing platform Uber on Wednesday said it is recruiting close to 250 engineers for its teams in Bengaluru and Hyderabad as it continues to expand the scope of operations for its engineering and product work in the country. The current round of hiring will strengthen the company's rider and driver growth, delivery, eats, digital payments, risk and compliance, marketplace, customer obsession, infrastructure, adtech, data, safety and finance technology teams, a statement said. These roles are currently split between the company's Hyderabad and Bengaluru tech centres, it added.
With this, India joins 60 other countries that collect PNR details of international passengers.
Modi cautioning that cryptocurrency can spoil the youth.
Providing services like broadband connectivity, cable TV, enterprise solutions, and payment wallets is the need of the hour for telcos, and a second wave of consolidation is upon the industry, a rating agency said on Tuesday. India Ratings and Research said the sector, which was battered following the aggressive entry of Reliance Jio, will continue showing signs of recovery amid conducive regulatory environment and maintained a "stable" outlook for the industry in FY22. The second round of consolidation (Consolidation 2.0) is kicking-in in the industry, which will bring a transformation in the business models of telecom companies, leading to the evolution of incumbents from the providers of traditional voice-only services to complete digital solutions for households, it said.
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the nation's top oil firm, has bought as much as 3 million barrels of crude oil that Russia had offered at steep discount to prevailing international rates, sources said. The purchase, made through a trader, is the first since Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine that brought international pressure for isolating Putin administration. Sources aware of the matter said IOC bought Urals crude for May delivery at a discount of $20-25 a barrel to dated Brent.
What is more surprising is that a surge in Russian oil supplies has come after the G7 imposed stringent sanctions on Moscow.
'Even where we are now today, the growth rates are very good, but we need to get to 8-9 per cent growth in the years to come.'
While it took UPI three years to reach a billion transactions in a month, the next billion came in just a year. Digital payments, especially UPI, saw increased adoption in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The jury is still out on the decision to demonetise high value currency notes on November 8, 2016, with the government claiming it has helped greater formalisation of the economy while critics saying it has failed to curb black money and reduce dependence on cash. On November 8, six years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the demonetisation of old Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 banknotes and one of the key objectives of the unprecedented decision was to promote digital payments and curb black money, besides eliminating terror funding. As per a Reserve Bank data, currency with the public has jumped to a new high of Rs 30.88 lakh crore an October 21, indicating that cash usage is still substantial even six years after the demonetisation move.
Nasper-backed fintech firm PayU has started talks to acquire domestic payment gateway major BillDesk, and the deal size could be in the range of $3-4 billion, sources in the know said. "BillDesk has been open to being acquired for some time now, but in the past the valuations that the company was seeking proved to be a hurdle," said a source. "Three years ago too, PayU had approached BillDesk for an acquisition, but things didn't go ahead due to high valuations. "BillDesk had asked for $2-billion value then," said the source.
Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao has said the central bank could lose control over money supply and inflation management if cryptocurrency is allowed in the country. Speaking at a webinar organised by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business, Rao also said India's case for issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) may not be strong as there are capital controls. "Crypto is backed by algorithms and there is fear that the central bank might lose control over money supply and inflation management.
The state's revenue receipts might not afford various freebies announced by the parties, unless revenue deficit and hence fiscal deficit is widened.
CCPA said the primary issues raised in the notices included 'deficiency in service'. This includes lack of proper response from customer support, driver refusing to take payment by online mode and insisting for cash only.
The temptation to get into businesses that are hot is perhaps too great for any politician, no matter what his public slogans are. Nehru plunged into hot sectors of his time -- engineering and iron and steel. Modi has plunged into digital payments -- the hot sector of his time, notes Debashis Basu.
Life insurance companies reported a 17 per cent year-on-year (YoY) drop in new business premium (NBP) in February as state-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India's premiums contracted 32 per cent during this period on account of a drop in its group single premium segment. According to data released by the Life Insurance Council, the industry earned an NBP of Rs 22,847.65 crore in February - a drop of 17 per cent from the same period a year ago.
Mihir Tanna, Associate Director, S K Patodia & Associates, answers your tax queries.
The last few years have been uncharacteristically good for the Indian sugar sector for a variety of reasons. While on the one hand, the weather supported good crop production; on the other hand, the programme to blend ethanol with petrol took off in a big way. The long-pending problem of burgeoning sugarcane arrears almost came down to nil and exports boomed to record highs.
...or just a Covid-era practice, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
'The finance minister said, the MSME is the backbone of the economy. My question is, what have you done for the sector?'
This, Byju, was the time to apply the business lens, treat your company as a business, run your company as a business. Instead, you splurged, observes Suveen Sinha.
Quick commerce startups hope to race towards better days. Can they crack the execution code?
Aadhaar is falling behind on technology, missing out on confidentiality and has gaps in its data archiving policy and preserving confidentiality in delivery of the cards to people, says a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). The performance report, 'Functioning Of Unique Identification Authority Of India', tabled in Parliament on the last day of the budget session notes, assigning a unique identity to all resident Indians was supposed to be the key feature of Aadhaar. But "There were instances of issue of Aadhaar with the same biometric data to different residents indicating flaws in the de-duplication process and issue of Aadhaar on faulty biometrics and documents". It says close to half a million such records had to be cancelled by the Unique Identification Authority of India up to 2016.
Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud's first 100 days in office saw the Supreme Court take a giant leap towards reforms, especially making courts more technology-friendly, and ensuring relatively fast judicial appointments including those of eight judges to the apex court.
These top two apps account for more than 78 per cent of the UPI market in terms of volume of transaction, and 86 per cent of the market by value of transactions in December.
Private equity major Carlyle group on Friday sold shares worth over Rs 4,800 crore in SBI Cards and Payment Services and its nominee stepped down from the company's board. CA Rover Holdings (CARH), a subsidiary of Carlyle group, offloaded more than 4.7 crore shares of SBI Cards and Payment Services Ltd (SBI Card) worth about Rs 4,811 crore through open market transactions on BSE and NSE. With the latest sale of shares, the group's shareholding in the company fell below 10 per cent, following which its nominee director on SBI Card's board -- Sunil Kaul -- stepped down.
BSE benchmark Sensex plummeted 778 points to close below the 55,500-level on Wednesday following a broad-based selloff in global markets as the Russia-Ukraine crisis escalated. The 30-share BSE index ended 778.38 points or 1.38 per cent lower at 55,468.90. Similarly, the NSE Nifty plunged 187.95 points or 1.12 per cent to 16,605.95.
RuPay is working on how to increase offers to customers. It is also focused on technology innovation in the card payment system.
The rupee weakened by 14 paise to close at a new lifetime low of 79.59 against the US dollar on Tuesday as a strong greenback overseas and persistent foreign fund outflows continued to weigh on investor sentiment. This comes a day after the RBI announced measures for international trade settlement in rupees. At the interbank forex market, the local unit opened weak at 79.55 against the greenback and witnessed an intra-day high of 79.53 and a low of 79.66.
Here's the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to a joint session of the United States Congress, delivered on Thursday.
The CBI has arrested seven persons including two directors of a Noida-based private institution in connection with alleged manipulation of JEE Mains examination 2021, officials said Friday.
In big bang reforms, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a relief package for the telecom sector that includes a four-year moratorium on payment of statutory dues by telecom companies as well as allowing 100 per cent foreign investment through the automatic route. Briefing reporters on the decisions taken by the Cabinet, Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said nine structural reforms for the telecom sector were approved. The definition of AGR, which had been a major reason for the stress in the sector, has been rationalised by excluding non-telecom revenue of telecom companies.
Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp has secured regulatory approval for launching its digital payment platform -- WhatApp Pay -- in a phased manner, close to two years after the US-based company's pilot run.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday proposed to make interoperability mandatory for digital payments firms. It also allowed users to withdraw cash from e-wallets and fintech companies to process RTGS and NEFT transactions. The RBI expressed dissatisfaction over prepaid payment instruments' (PPIs') failure to migrate towards full-KYC (know your customer) PPIs, and therefore interoperability, even two years after guidelines were issued.
Two issues dog the sale of the national carrier. One is the $2 billion bank guarantee the winning bidder will need to furnish. The other is the nearly 5000 lawsuits filed against Air India, many of them overseas. Anjuli Bhargava reports.
CCI decided to pursue investigation on two issues - these relate to "exclusivity regarding the mode of payment for the purchase of apps and in-app purchases" and "pre-installation and prominence of Google Pay on Android smartphones".
In an indication of easing financial stress among borrowers, the number of unsuccessful auto-debit requests through the National Automated Clearing House (NACH) platform declined in July, reversing a three-month trend that started with the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the NACH data, of the 86.4-million transactions initiated in July, 33.23 per cent, or 28.7 million transactions, failed, while 57.7 million were successful. Compared to June, this is a significant improvement in bounce rates.
