Author: Finance Khabar
New Delhi: India’s unemployment rate has been improving post the COVID-19 induced nationwide lockdown. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s (CMIE) data, the national unemployment rate has eased to 8.9 percent for the week ended 3 July, which is a significant improvement from 23.5 percent in May. However, it is slightly higher than 8.6 percent seen for the week ended 28 June. “The data so far therefore seems to suggest that the worst is over and we are likely to settle at an unemployment rate which would be only slightly higher than the rates witnessed before the lockdown,”…
New Delhi: As per sources, amid Covid 19 blues, the country’s leading lender ICICI Bank will rewards its more than frontline workforce with an hike of up to 8%. The workforce strength being considered for a hike is almost 80% of the bank’s total staff and as told to PTI, the hike is being mulled as recognition of staff’s services during the Covid 19 outbreak. The hike of up to 8 per cent is for the fiscal year 2020-21 and applicable from July onwards, the sources said. However no response on e-mail has been received from the bank. The rank…
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, slashed its 2020 and 2021 projections on Tuesday as the coronavirus pandemic takes its toll on the 27 member states. The Brussels-based institution expects the 27-member region to contract by 8.3% this year, followed by a rebound of 5.8% in 2021. In May, the Commission estimated a 7.4% contraction for total GDP across the region this year, with a rebound of 6.1% in 2021. “The economic impact of the lockdown is more severe than we initially expected. We continue to navigate in stormy waters and face many risks, including another major wave of…
Mumbai: Benchmark indices ended the day higher led by good gains in banking and finance stocks. Global cues were weak, with European markets seeing cuts of nearly 2 per cent. However, that did not deter Indian markets from notching a fifth straight days of gains. The Nifty ended the day higher by 36 points, nearly at the 10,800 points mark in trade. Bajaj Finance, IndusInd Bank, Bajaj Finserv and ICICI Bank led gainers in trade today. L&T Finance Holdings too had a good day in trade ending higher, after its subsidiary L&T Infrastructure Finance, received the first tranche of $50…
New Delhi: As the Indian Railways gears up to run 151 trains across 100 routes via public-private-partnership (PPP), freedom has been provided to private firms to run these trains like airlines. Private firms will be able to set their own fares, offer additional services to passengers like onboard meals, preferred seats, baggage services, etc. Passengers may be charged extra for services like these, the earnings from which will be part of the gross revenue to be shared with the Railways department, according to a document from the national transporter. These private will use the existing Indian Railway Passenger Reservation System…
New Delhi: HDFC Bank has cut its MCLR (marginal cost of funds-based lending rate) across tenures, with effect from 7 July 2020. The reduction in MCLR comes in line with the repo rate cuts announced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to provide banks with liquidity to encourage them to lend to borrowers at cheaper rates and push economic growth. If your floating rate home loan is linked to MCLR, the new rates will become applicable on the reset date. HDFC Bank MCLR rates with effect from 7 July 2020: Tenure MCLR (in %)Overnight 7.101 month 7.153 month 7.206…
New Delhi: Driven by the RBI’s policy rate cut to historic lows amid Covid 19 blues and ample liquidity in the system, interest rates across loan products have now hit a new low. As per the latest RBI data, the weighted average lending rate (WALR) on outstanding bank loans in India has edged below 10% level for the first time and stood at 9.89% for April month. And for different set of banks lending rate is offered with a marginal difference. Say, for instance, for PSBs interest rate on existing loans stands at 9.33%, while in case of foreign banks…
New Delhi: The country’s coal imports declined by 29.7 percent to 46.8 million tonnes in the April-June quarter on a yearly basis. In the same quarter last year 69.5 million tonnes of coal were imported. According to mjunction, the reason for this decrease in coal imports is to direct the government to increase coal production to Coal India. The government has set a target to replace at least 10 million tonnes of coal from domestic production out of the total imported coal from Coal India during 2020-21. Mjunction is a joint venture between Tata Steel and SAIL. It is an…
Chandigarh: The month of Sawan has brought happiness to the youth of Haryana. In the meeting of the Haryana Cabinet on the first day of the month of Savan, Deputy CM Dushyant Chautala kept the draft of the ordinance to recruit 75 percent Haryanvi youths in private jobs while fulfilling his party’s promise. The draft of the ordinance was passed in the cabinet meeting of the state government held at the Haryana Secretariat on Monday. As soon as the ordinance is approved by the upcoming cabinet meeting, the provision of giving 75 percent reservation for the youth of Haryana in…
Mumbai: A recent survey of 250 start-ups has revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the businesses, with 70 percent saying that their business has been impacted, and some others shutting operations. The survey titled “Impact of COVID-19 on Indian Start-ups” conducted by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) jointly with the Indian Angel Network showed that only 22 percent of the start-ups have cash reserves to meet fixed cost expenses of their companies over the next 3-6 months. “70 percent of start-ups stated that their businesses have been impacted by COVID-19. 12…
Mumbai: Citigroup Inc has sharply revised its forecast for the Indian economy lower as the country’s reported COVID-19 infection cases near 7-lakh-mark. On Monday, India surpassed Russia to become the third-worst affected country in the world, after recording another new high in the number of daily reported cases. The country’s GDP (Gross domestic product) is expected to contract by 6 percent in the financial year 2020-21 as per Citi’s new estimates, much steeper than its previous estimate for a 3.5 percent decline, a Bloomberg report said. The revision is largely due to a cut to April-June period forecast where the…
Mumbai: Benchmark indices saw a solid rally in trade today, with the Nifty and the Sensex ending the day sharply higher, thanks to robust global cues. In the process they also hit 4-months high A sudden bull sentiments drove markets across the globe, with the Shanghai Composite ending the day with almost six per cent gains. All of the major Asian markets ended the day higher, while most of Europe was trading higher by at least 1.5 per cent. The Nifty ended the day higher by 156 points at 10,763 points. Metal and auto stocks clearly led the rally, with…
The conglomerate is spending $4 billion to buy the natural gas transmission and storage assets of Dominion Energy. Including the assumption of debt, the deal totals almost $10 billion. It’s the first major purchase from Berkshire since the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent market collapse in March. At his annual shareholder meeting in May, Buffett revealed that Berkshire had built up a record $137 billion cash hoard as the financial market tanked, and that he hadn’t seen many favorable deals, despite the stock market’s deep swoon. “We have not done anything because we don’t see anything that attractive to do,” Buffett…
New Delhi: EY (Ernst & Young) report says that telephone bills and internet charges are going to be expensive in the coming 12-18 months. According to the EY, the rates of all services, including phone calls and the Internet, can be increased twice due to the current structure of the telecom sector not being profitable. EY has predicted this. EY leader Prashant Singhal said that the immediate increase in rates does not seem appropriate as of now. This can be done in two rounds in the next 12 to 18 months and the first increase can be done in the…
Kolkata: Production suffered an average loss of 56 per cent per day due to a three-day strike by public sector company Coal India in protest against the government opening up the coal sector to private companies. An official gave this information. Labor leaders of Coal India had earlier claimed that there was a significant reduction in coal production during the strike. The trade unions were on strike from Thursday to Saturday to protest the government’s move to open up the coal sector for commercial mining. The average production by Coal India in these three days was 5,73,000 tonnes per day,…
New Delhi: Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) plans to increase its aviation fuel depot by 50 percent. The bulk of this business is currently held by public sector companies and RIL wants to get more market share in it. RIL, which operates the world’s largest refinery at one location (Jamnagar-Gujarat), plans to increase its presence in the aircraft refueling business at airports. The report said that air traffic in India also increased by nine percent in February. India was the largest unaffected market in March even after the Covid-19 epidemic. However, the Indian aviation sector was also affected by…
New Delhi: More than 14 lakh e-way bills were withdrawn daily in June. E-way bill is necessary for transporting goods above Rs 50,000. The Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) on Sunday said that 14.26 lakh e-way bills were withdrawn daily in June, which is about 77 percent of the level before the lockdown implemented due to Covid-19. GSTN said in a statement that companies and transporters took out 4.27 crore e-way bills in June for goods worth Rs 12.40 lakh crore. This is more than four crore bills drawn in March valued at Rs 11.43 lakh crore. The statement…
New Delhi: Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) have withdrawn Rs 3,741 crore from the Indian market in just three trading sessions in July. Analysts believe this is due to profit recovery and rupee appreciation in the last few days. According to depository data, FPIs made a net withdrawal of Rs 3,959 crore from the shares during July 1 to 3, while they made a net investment of Rs 218 crore in bonds during this period. Thus a total net withdrawal of Rs 3,741 crore was made during the period under review. Earlier, FPI had invested Rs 24,053 crore in the domestic…
New Delhi: The market cap of Sensex top-10 companies increased by Rs 1,37,508.61 crore last week. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Reliance Industries were the biggest beneficiaries. Last week, the 30-share BSE Sensex gained 850.15 points or 2.41 percent. TCS’s market capitalization rose by Rs 31,294.89 crore to Rs 8,25,149.40 crore in the week under review. Similarly, the market valuation of Reliance Industries increased by Rs 28,464.11 crore to Rs 11,33,168.55 crore. HDFC’s market capitalization rose by Rs 20,519.86 crore to Rs 3,27,120.52 crore and ITC by Rs 15,057.98 crore to Rs 2,54,879.41 crore. The market valuation of Bharti Airtel…
New Delhi: The government on Saturday launched a program to encourage entrepreneurs to develop a variety of world-class apps in the country. This will encourage a strong ecological system and encourage entrepreneurs and startups in the Indian technology sector to develop and promote apps. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEIT) has announced that it will run the program in two phases in partnership with NITI Aayog. The ministry said in a statement, “To support the Indian app and to create a robust ecosystem for it, MEIT has launched the Digital India Aatmnirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge for Indian…