COST Financial News

India is one of the fastest growing electric vehicle markets in the world, and more than 90% of India’s 2.3 million EVs are the cheaper and more popular two- or three-wheelers — that’s motorbikes, scooters and rickshaws

Residential customers of Georgia’s largest electrical utility could see their bills rise by $9 a month to pay for a new nuclear power plant

Electric vehicle tax credits aren’t just for new EVs anymore

HPCL/IOL: Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri stated on 30 August that the government would bear the cost of the promised ₹200 price decrease on household cooking gas cylinders, relieving the oil marketing companies of the impending loss of ₹7,500 crore. As a gift for the women in advance of Raksha Bandhan, the Union Cabinet on Tuesday lowered by 200 rupees the price of a 14.2 kilogramme LPG cooking gas cylinder. The decision was made as criticism of the Centre for its handling of rising inflation has grown.

Chandrayaan-3's historic moon landing — a success story of India's fightback after failures, that too on a mere ₹615 crore budget — is set to provide plenty of food for thought for budding managers at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). The mission, a case study in frugal innovation, has much that management students can learn from — strategy, collaboration, innovation, cost control and optimisation of resources, how leaders can process failure and move on — said professors and directors of the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Kozhikode, Sirmaur and Sambalpur. At IIM Sirmaur, the faculty members are working on developing a case study on the topic, said director Prafulla Agnihotri. «Chandrayaan-3 is an ideal example of great teamwork, charismatic leadership and how an organisation achieves its goal with minimum resources. It will be an excellent case study in the areas of corporate strategy and strategic leadership,» he said.

Australia Post has delivered a $200 million loss, its first major structural loss in more than 30 years, with the losses forecast to continue unless the federal government drastically cuts services.

Australia’s largest white goods and home retailer Harvey Norman has posted a double-digit slide in profits and dividends over fiscal 2023, meeting its lower June guidance, and says its on track to deliver it Malaysian expansion plan.

HDFC Bank has opened up space for other mortgage lenders to raise funds from the debt market at a cheaper rate as more money is now available for other companies, market participants said. The biggest beneficiary of HDFC's exit, which used to corner more than half of the market funds, is likely to be LIC Housing Finance — the largest AAA pure-play home financier currently. «After HDFC's merger with HDFC Bank, the total number of issuances has drastically come down. Yields have definitely come down following the merger because of the absence of HDFC, which was the benchmark for AAA-rated home financiers.

interest rates on existing mortgages and deposits, the latest state-directed measures to shore up growth in the world's second-largest economy. The big state-owned lenders are working on reducing rates on the majority of the nation's 38.6 trillion yuan ($5.3 trillion) of outstanding mortgages, according to people familiar with the matter. The reductions will only affect loans on first homes, two of the people said. Lenders such as Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.

Country Garden Holdings posted a record first-half loss of almost $7 billion and warned it may default on its debt, underscoring how China's deepening real estate slump has battered one of its former property giants. Country Garden said that if its financial performance continues to deteriorate, the group might not be able to fulfill its debt obligations, «which may result in default,» according to a filing Wednesday. The developer also cited «material uncertainties» that may cast «significant doubt on the group's ability to continue as a going concern.» The warnings highlight how China’s deepening real estate crisis has battered one of its property giants.

Snowy Hydro has confirmed the blowout in the cost of its Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro storage project to $12 billion, while its Kurri Kurri gas power plant cost has surged to $950 million.

Silver Lake is evaluating a potential debt deal to pay itself a dividend out of Ticketek owner TEG, its entertainment portfolio company that has been the subject of an estimated $2 billion sale campaign for at least three months.

A faster-than-expected expansion in large batteries has propelled France’s Neoen to Australia’s biggest clean energy player, revealing a target to triple its renewable capacity by 2030.

NEW DELHI : OpenAI, the US-based artificial-intelligence (AI) research firm, has fired its latest salvo towards seeking to monetize its widely popular chatbot, ChatGPT, by launching ChatGPT Enterprise. Through the latter, OpenAI seeks to address one key concern that enterprises and analysts have raised over time—that of ChatGPT using business data to train their large language models (LLMs).

Vodafone Idea is exploring both OpenRAN (ORAN) and virtualised RAN (vRAN) technologies to reduce the cost of deployment for its upcoming 5G network. The cash-strapped telco has already begun proof-of-concept (PoC) projects with Korea's Samsung for vRAN and US-based Mavenir Systems for OpenRAN-based 5G network. People familiar with the matter said Samsung is doing PoCs in 20 sites with Vodafone Idea in Tamil Nadu, while Mavenir is doing a similar project in the Punjab circle. «Vi is doing 5G trials in various circles with vendors such as Mavenir and Samsung using vRAN and ORAN deployment.

Low-price, easy-to-use Chromebooks were once a boon to cost-conscious schools. Educators say the simple laptops are no longer a good deal. Models have shot up in price in the past four years.

NEW DELHI : The finance ministry is considering introducing a production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the chemicals sector, but there aren’t any proposals yet for such a scheme for the petrochemical industry, two senior officials told Mint. A PLI scheme for the chemicals sector is currently being considered by the finance ministry, but it hasn’t been approved yet, said the first person mentioned above, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. Since funds for PLI schemes are limited, the government can make funds available only to sectors that really need such schemes, the person said. Allocating funds to specific sectors for the scheme is decided by the Niti Aayog, the person added.

Germany and quickened in Spain, offering European Central Bank officials a partial picture of the region's price pressures as they judge whether to raise interest rates again. The numbers published Wednesday point to the possibility of a robust outcome when the eurozone report is released the following day data policymakers have highlighted as crucial to their September 14 decision. Consumer prices in Germany, the region's biggest economy, rose 6.4% in August from a year earlier, exceeding the median estimate of 6.3% in a Bloomberg survey of economists. While inflation in Spain was far lower, at 2.4%, that result marked a second month of acceleration, and an underlying measure stayed far higher. Any evidence of stubbornly strong consumer-price growth may yet convince the ECB to raise borrowing costs. Officials are weighing if underlying pressures are too strong to risk a pause, or whether a weakening economy can brake inflation without further tightening. That appraisal augurs what appears for now to be a cliffhanger decision in two weeks' time. Hawks such as Austria's Robert Holzmann have already signaled they may push for a hike, while his Finnish colleague Tuomas Valimaki insisted on Tuesday that the outcome is “totally open.”

Apple Inc. is testing the use of 3D printers to produce the steel chassis used by some of its upcoming smartwatches, according to people with knowledge of the matter, heralding a major change to how the company manufactures products. The technique would obviate the need to cut large slabs of metal into the product’s shape.

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