The government on Friday cut the windfall profit tax on locally produced crude oil in line with a fall in international rates, and reduced the levy on export of diesel and jet fuel (ATF). At the fifth fortnightly review, the government reduced tax on domestically-produced crude oil to Rs 10,500 per tonne from Rs 13,300 per tonne. The levy on the export of diesel was reduced to Rs 10 per litre from Rs 13.5. Also, the tax on Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) exports was cut to Rs 5 a litre from Rs 9 with effect from September 17, according to a finance ministry notification issued late Friday night.
The re-opening of the Chinese economy, as it moves away from its zero-Covid policy, could help stabilise commodity prices, according to some of the country's top metal companies. They view this as a positive for demand, at a time when markets such as the US and Europe have been largely weighed down by slowdown concern now. "Most of us in the metals business are hoping the Chinese economy picks up because half of any metal demand, including demand for aluminium, comes from China.
They are both electronic manufacturing services (EMS) companies, also known as contract manufacturers. One is Taiwan's Foxconn group, the undisputed global number one in this business with revenues of $223 billion. The other is Dixon Technologies, the biggest domestic player with revenues of over Rs 10,500 crore.
The recent migration of marquee investments from Maharashtra to Gujarat seems to have rekindled the Marathi manoos sentiment.
Notwithstanding expectations of a pick-up in construction activity during a seasonally strong January-March quarter (fourth quarter) of 2022-23 (FY23), analysts are cautiously optimistic about the building material sector - encompassing paints, pipes, wood panels, tiles, metals, and cement - as volatile input costs, coupled with fears of a global slowdown, are making demand projections uncertain. Against this backdrop, analysts suggest investors stay selective and pick stocks of companies with stronger brand recall, expanding distribution network, diversified product profile, healthier balance sheet, and sustainable cash flow. "The government's various proposals under Budget 2023-24 (FY24) may lead to the building material segment growing between 8 per cent and 12 per cent for the next five years.
The company aims to make Lanjigarh refinery the first zero-based refinery in the world.
Privatisation of BPCL, which was dubbed India's biggest ever, has been stalled with just one bidder left in the fray after two others walked out over issues such as lack of clarity in fuel pricing, a top source said. The government had planned to sell its entire 52.98 per cent stake in Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and invited Expression of Interest from bidders in March 2020. At least three bids came in by November 2020 but only one remains now after the others withdrew from the race.
Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday dared the Bharatiya Janata Party to defeat it in the ensuing Mumbai civic polls, saying his party's bond with the city was unbreakable, and also hit out at Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde over his rebellion and for laying claims to his late father's legacy.
The BJP's massive victory will make it hard for the party to derive a criterion for selecting ministers, as the claimants will be many and the berths, few.
S&P Global Ratings on Thursday said about half of the Indian companies that it rates are getting a boost in their core profitability from rupee depreciation. "Much of our rated India corporate portfolio has sizable US-dollar linked revenue and, therefore, is not exposed to rupee depreciation. "This encompasses entities in the IT, metals, and chemicals sectors. About half of the firms we rate are getting an EBITDA boost from currency weakening," the US-based rating agency said in a report.
He arrived at the CBI headquarters early in the morning to face the investigation team. The questioning is likely to continue throughout the day with a lunch break, they said.
The government on Thursday withdrew its offer to sell its entire 52.98 per cent stake in Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, saying that majority of bidders have expressed their inability to participate in the current privatisation process due to prevailing conditions in the global energy market.
Better living conditions must be an integral part of all political campaigns. But this will only happen if the public pressures the political class to understand the irreversibility of climate change and make the environment a crucial part of their manifestos.
The letter shared with the media on Saturday comes amid Maharashtra losing several big-ticket projects to neighbouring Gujarat.
The government should scrap the windfall profit tax on domestically produced crude oil as the levy is adversely impacting the capex-intensive exploration of oil and gas, the industry said in its recommendation for the forthcoming annual Budget. India first imposed windfall profit taxes on July 1, joining a growing number of nations that tax super normal profits of energy companies. At that time, a Rs 23,250 per tonne ($40 per barrel) windfall profit tax on domestic crude production was levied.
If reports that Apple Inc plans to triple its iPhone production in India come true, it is likely to help the country become a supply hub for the American company. There are some 190 Apple suppliers globally, but only 12 have manufacturing facilities in India now. Apple's strategy is to focus on India and a clutch of other countries as it diversifies its supply chain out of China.
India's latest bid round for 21 oil and gas blocks attracted just three bidders, two of whom were state-owned explorers Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL), according to upstream regulator DGH. As many as 21 blocks or areas were offered for exploration and production of oil and gas in the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) Bid Round-VI, for which bidding closed on October 6. Besides ONGC and OIL, Sun Petrochemicals was the only other company to have bid, according to 'Summary of Bids Received Against Offered Blocks' posted by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).
Mumbai-based Indian Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ISMC) and Singapore-headquartered IGSS Ventures have one strategy in common: They have told the government in their application for semiconductor fabrication plants that they will export the bulk of the chips they make in India in the initial five or 10 years. The third applicant, Vedanta-Foxconn, which is also building a fab plant, has said it will concentrate on the needs of consumer electronics and mobile device markets, and earmark 80 per cent of output for domestic consumption, but has not specified its customers. Finding a viable domestic market could well be the biggest challenge for India's renewed tryst with semiconductors. Fab plants do not sell directly to end users but to intermediary chip design companies - such as Qualcomm or MediaTek.
When the world was upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, metals got its shine back. In the last two years, infrastructure spending by major economies spurred demand, energy transition and intermittent supply disruptions fuelled a scorching rally in metals after a downturn during the first Covid wave. Now, Russia's war on Ukraine is ensuring that elevated prices stay the course.
How the business world celebrated Christmas!
Indian companies are planning to increase investments in the new year to expand capacity, acquire companies, and go on a hiring spree, a survey of top executives showed. They, however, cited rising costs, weak consumer demand, and increasing interest rates as major concerns for 2023 which may impact their plans.
Indian companies will have to repay overseas debt worth $7.5 billion in the June quarter.
The government will settle almost all the retrospective tax cases this month, closing a chapter that plagued India's reputation as an investment-friendly destination, a top official said on Friday. A 2012 amendment that gave taxmen powers to go back 50 years and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India, was used to raise Rs 1.1 lakh crore demand against multi-nationals such as telecom group Vodafone, pharmaceuticals company Sanofi and brewer SABMiller, now owned by AB InBev, and Cairn Energy Plc. Such demands brought uncertainty in the minds of investors.
There is little doubt that the Dongria Kondhs are facing their biggest challenge. Being small in number, they need special attention and care in order to fight this deadly virus.
The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal to allow 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in public sector refiners, expanding the scope for FDI in the privatisation of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL). The approval by the Cabinet will enable the sale of the government's 52.98 per cent stake in BPCL to a foreign buyer, and, at the same time, will open the door for FDI in other public sector companies in the oil sector put up for privatisation.
India's top oil and gas producer ONGC on Friday reported a tripling of net profit in the June quarter as it earned record prices before the government slapped a tax on windfall profits arising from a global rally in energy rates. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) standalone net profit at Rs 15,205.85 crore, or Rs 12.09 per share, in April-June, compared to Rs 4,334.75 crore, or Rs 3.45 a share, in the same period a year back, according to a stock exchange filing by the company. Sequentially, the profit was higher than the Rs 8,859.54 crore net profit of January-March.
Faced with one setback after another in expanding the scope of mining in the country, almost all the major miners of the world have wound down their operations in India.
Eleven bidders, including Adani Enterprises, have shown interest in the first-ever coal import tender issued by national miner Coal India (CIL). Recently, state-owned NTPC awarded 6.25 million tonnes (mt) of imported coal tender worth Rs 8,300 crore to Adani Enterprises. CIL, in a public statement on Tuesday, said: "The prominent Indian agencies among them (11 coal importers) were Adani Enterprises, Mohit Minerals, and Chettinad Logistics. "A couple of coal exporting agencies from abroad, including one from Indonesia, have also shown interest," it said.
The windfall tax on oil produced within India and fuel exported overseas will make up for more than three-fourths of the revenue that the government lost when it cut excise duty on petrol and diesel to cool soaring inflation, industry sources said. India on July 1 joined a select league of nations globally that have taxed windfall gains accruing to oil companies from soaring energy prices. The government slapped a Rs 6 per litre tax on the export of petrol and jet fuel (ATF) and Rs 13 a litre on the export of diesel effective July 1. Additionally, a Rs 23,250 per tonne tax was levied on crude oil produced domestically.
The government has received three preliminary bids for buying of controlling stake in India's second-largest fuel retailer Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Wednesday. Mining-to-oil conglomerate Vedanta had on November 18 confirmed putting in an expression of interest (EoI) for buying the government's 52.98 per cent stake in BPCL. The other two bidders are said to be global funds, one of them being Apollo Global Management.
All nine Adani stocks saw a rise in their share price in H1FY23, ranging from 6.1% in case of Adani Ports to 102% in case of Adani Power.
Bhupendra Patel can never really break free of intervention from New Delhi. But if he can win over the Gujaratis and improve the BJP's tally substantially, he will have proved that he should be taken seriously.
Top gainers in the Sensex pack included Vedanta, M&M, ONGC, Hero MotoCorp and Maruti, rising up to 3.79 per cent.
Swami Swaroopanand, who was the Shankracharya of Dwarka, Sharda, and Jyotish Peeth, was not keeping well for over a year, his aide said.
A special court had ordered him to join the CBI investigation within 16 hours of his arrival from the United Kingdom and Europe, where he had gone with the permission of the Supreme Court and the special court itself.
India's GDP expanded 13.5 per cent in the April-June quarter, the quickest pace in a year, to retain the world's fastest growing economy tag but rising interest costs and the looming threat of a recession in major world economies could slow the momentum in the coming quarters.
The government may be waiting for the outcome of an arbitration initiated against its levy of Rs 10,247 crore retrospective tax on UK's Cairn Energy Plc before deciding on appealing against losing a tax case against Vodafone Group, sources said. An international arbitral tribunal is expected to give a decree within next few days on Cairn Energy Plc's challenge to the Indian government seeking Rs 10,247 crore in retrospective taxes. If the arbitration award in the Cairn cases goes against India, the government has to pay the British firm over Rs 7,600 crore to reverse the dividend and tax refund it had ceased and shares it sold to recover part of the tax demand.
The government will undertake a detailed evaluation of applications it has received in response to the mega semiconductor scheme and expects to complete the entire process and sign agreements with companies in next 8-10 months, according to Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw. Vaishnaw said he is happy with the response that came in within a short period of time, when the ministry invited applications under the Rs 76,000 crore semiconductor programme. The government is confident of seeing one of the big global players in semiconductor industry coming in the next round, Vaishnaw told PTI in an interview. He asserted that many other players too are "seriously evaluating" India's semiconductor programme, and that the ministry is in discussions with several companies.
Leonard Barsoton of Kenya and Ethiopia-based Bahraini athlete Desi Jisa set new course records in the men's and women's elite international section en route to winning titles at the Tata Steel Kolkata 25K marathon.
If the waxy crude oil from Cairn's Mangala field in Rajasthan's Barmer area could get the company such high valuations, the prospects of other companies producing higher-grade crude oil or natural gas certainly brighten.
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