The Indian economy is estimated to grow marginally slower in the current fiscal year that ends in March than forecasts had showed earlier, as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic hurt expansion.
A host of measures are afoot in the financial sector in response to the Russian crisis. These are aimed at ensuring continuation of trade with Russia and insulating the forex market from volatility.
The Russia-Ukraine crisis has got the government particularly worried about Indian exports, FM Nirmala Sitharaman said here on Monday.
New Sebi chief Madhabi Puri Buch was an executive director at ICICI Bank and before that she headed the lender's broking arm, ICICI Securities. Before joining Sebi, she also had a short stint at a private equity firm in Singapore.
India's top refiner Indian Oil Corp (IOC) will no longer accept cargoes of Russian crude oil and Kazakh CPC Blend cargoes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis due to insurance risk, according to a tender notice and a source familiar with the matter.
India is worried about the impact caused by the standoff between Ukraine and Russia, particularly on its exports, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday. Interacting with industry captains at an event here, Sitharaman said the Centre was seized of the matter and discussions were on between ministries for a "complete assessment" on the issue.
With just a month left for the current financial year to end, taxpayers are again rushing to invest in popular tax-saving options.
India's export target for this financial year is $650 billion, a number it will likely achieve, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal had said on January 17.
NHAI secretary Giridhar Aramane said that the finance ministry has allocated much more to NHAI in the budget 2022-23 than what was expected. In 2021-22, he said, NHAI has a target of around 10,000-11,000 km.
"The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has issued a notification on February 25,2022 to amend Rule 93 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1989, whereby rigid vehicles and trailers can have a maximum of three decks to transport two wheelers, with the load body not projecting over the driver's cabin," it said.
Once the details are entered in the electronic registry MCA21, then a Service Request Number (SRN) is generated for the particular complaint and going forward, the same will be used in all communications related to that case.
India spent $94.3 billion in the first 10 months (April-January) of the ongoing financial year that started April 1, 2021, according to data from the oil ministry's Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell (PPAC). It spent $11.6 billion in January alone when oil prices had started to surge. This compared with $7.7 billion spending in the same month last year.
Reasons for time overruns as reported by various project implementing agencies include delay in land acquisition, delay in obtaining forest and environment clearances, and lack of infrastructure support and linkages.
Certain changes and alignments under various provisions of the FDI policy have also been made to provide greater clarity through an updated, consistent and easily comprehensible framework for overseas investment in LIC. This was crucial as the existing policy doesn't have any specific provision for overseas investment in LIC, which is a statutory corporation established under the LIC Act, 1956.
The Union Cabinet is likely to consider on Saturday a proposal seeking changes in the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy to facilitate disinvestment of the country's largest insurer LIC, sources said.
India and Russia bilateral payments are made in Indian rupee. For both imports and exports, payments are made or received in rupee for shipments. So, sanctions by the West may not have an impact on the payments, barring exchange rate fluctuation, sources said on Friday.
If the central bank is embarking on the path of rate tightening and liquidity normalization, it should ‘say it openly’ instead of holding the reverse repo rate, says Varma.
A few international flights to and from India also could get marginally longer with some countries barring Russian planes from their airspace and then asking their airlines to avoid parts of Russian airspace.
“I predict we will grow 7-8% in the next decade provided the Covid is behind us. However, if we want to reap the full benefits of reforms we need to open up and increase our scale of operations,” Panagariya said. He was referring to the four big reforms in the forms of Bankruptcy Code, labour reforms, GST and Corporate Tax.
In a separate notification, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade also said that Remdesivir Injection and API, Amphotericin-B Injections, Enoxaparin (Formulation and API) and Intra-Venous Immunoglobulin (IVIG) are now freely exportable. Their exports were restricted earlier.
Government officials on Thursday went into a huddle to access the impact of Russian aggression in Ukraine on the Indian economy and began preparing contingency plans to combat a possible spike in inflation due to a rise in oil prices and the country's external trade being impacted.
Equity inflow through FDI during April to December period of 2021-22 is USD 43.1 billion which is 16 per cent lesser than the USD 51.4 billion received in FY 2020-21, latest official data shows, even as the government continued to put in place an enabling and investor-friendly FDI policy and remove policy bottlenecks that have been hindering the investment inflows into the country.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 464.85 points, or 1.38%, to 33,131.76, the S&P 500 lost 79.26 points, or 1.84%, to 4,225.5 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 344.03 points, or 2.57%, to 13,037.49.
estimate of 6%. India's gross domestic product had grown 20.1% and 8.4% in the first and second quarters, respectively, and 0.5% a year earlier.
The escalation in the fight between BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover and the investors in the fintech startup took an ugly turn on Wednesday with the sacking of Madhuri Jain Grover, Ashneer’s wife and head of controls at the company, over allegations of misappropriation of funds.
Banks are of the view that if they do sign an ICA without a plan in hand, it would tie them to a single option - implement a debt restructuring plan. However, if they don't sign the ICA, there will be multiple recovery options before them.
Coaching Institutes are liable to pay 18% goods and services tax (GST) on their composite supply, or bundled services and supplies to students, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has said.
Bengaluru and US-based open-source engine Hasura has raised $100 million in a funding round led by Greenoaks that values the company at $1 billion. Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Vertex Ventures have also participated in the round.
Data from the rural development ministry website shows states such as Jharkhand, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have utilised 128%, 110%, 100% and 109% of the funds, respectively, for the year till February 21.
RBI's $5 billion two-year sell/buy swap would help the central bank marginally reduce the size of its balance sheet, improve its dividend-paying capacity, and help manage liquidity and currency positions better, said analysts. RBI had paid Rs 99,122 crore dividend to the government for July 2020-March 2021 period.
The Centre is planning to sell its entire 53% stake in BPCL. The Cabinet had cleared the strategic sale in November 2019. Expressions of interest (EoIs) were invited in March 2020.
India’s wholesale price index, which tracks goods at factory gates, rose almost 13% from a year earlier in January. The gauge has recorded double-digit increases for 10 straight months, even as the benchmark consumer price index, which also includes services, has only recently breached the top of the central bank’s tolerance range of 2% to 6% annual gains.
FM said the government was analysing if there had been "enough application of mind in dealing with this" on the part of the market regulator, and if after applying its mind, Sebi took adequate corrective steps. This is the first public statement from the government on the issue.
Regular international flights which were suspended in March 2020 are likely to resume in a month. It is learnt that the aviation ministry has taken this up with health ministry and is tentatively looking at March 15 or next month-end when the summer schedule kicks in. This will be a big relief for travellers as relaxed quarantine and testing norms globally post easing of Omicron has pushed the demand for travel. However, due to limited air bubble flights, fares have skyrocketed for this summer.
"Inflation is not much beyond the band that we should be considering. Yes, it keeps going up and down but it's coming down when we're taking measures and we have to rein it in there when it comes down. So, the picture there and the picture here have different colours and hues," the finance minister said.
