Country Financial News

Four Indian state-run oil and gas companies are in talks to source cooking and natural gas from Angola's public-sector major Sonangol as the country faces a supply shortage following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran war, said two people aware of the developments.Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp. (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp.

the New York Times. This is to give Trump additional military options even as he weighs a new diplomatic initiative with the Islamic republic, according to the report.“About 2,300 Marines from the 31st Expeditionary Unit are scheduled to arrive in the Middle East later this week, and U.S.

Amarjit Singh Batra refers to himself as a “big-time bathroom singer”. The general manager for South Asia, Middle East and Africa and managing director at the music streaming service Spotify India never trained as a singer as a child but had a naturally gifted voice, which meant he was always asked to sing at weddings and family gatherings.

BPCL) signed a long-term contract to procure 12 million barrels of crude in 2026-27 from Petrobras in January this year, renewing a previous contract signed in 2025.While Brazil is largely self-sufficient in crude oil production, it has one “vulnerability”, according to Nóbrega. “One vulnerability is that we are self-sufficient in crude oil production, but we are not self-sufficient in refined oil,” he said, adding that diesel is required for a bulk of the freight transport in the country by road and rail.“India also could install refineries in Brazil because you are one of the largest countries in terms of oil refining,” he said, noting that one of India’s biggest exports to the largest country in South America is refined oils, including diesel.India has a refining capacity of 258 million tonnes per year and has helped countries such as Nigeria and Mongolia develop refineries.

India’s petroleum reserves have come under scrutiny since the outbreak of the West Asia war, with concerns intensifying as government data showed India’s current capacity in strategic reserves can only cover roughly five-six days of total consumption.Now, this is not as alarming as it seems, as India’s overall capacity is much higher. However, the current crisis has put a spotlight on India’s limited ability in the face of severe shocks to oil, gas and petroleum product supply.India currently has three strategic petroleum reserves (SPRs)—buried in underground caverns—in Visakhapatnam, Mangaluru, and Padur.

Mint India Investment Summit in Mumbai on Friday.“You will lose some… but there’s no need to say the world is coming to an end… this will come out better,” said Puri, who was conferred the lifetime achievement award at the summit.He pushed back against concerns of large-scale displacement from the adoption of AI, adding that the technology is already creating new roles across the value chain.“This is just the raw material… somebody has to convert what was a possibility into reality,” he said, adding that this will create emerging demand for prompt engineers, context engineers and specialized data scientists.Calling AI one of the biggest opportunities, Puri said its impact will be most visible in customer-facing sectors such as banking.“AI can and should be used in a full role for efficiency and for profit,” he said, adding it can used for applications in credit assessment, marketing, fraud detection and operations. At the same time, he cautioned against overestimating the pace of change.“It’s here to stay… but it’s not as if everything is going to be implemented overnight,” he said, adding there is too much negative hype on job losses.Puri maintained that India’s structural growth story remains intact, backed by strong fundamentals.

India has reset its closer-term climate goals on its way to net-zero emissions by 2070. It now plans to raise the share of non-fossil fuel energy to 60% by 2035, as against 50% by 2030 planned earlier. The country also plans to increase its carbon sink, or its capacity to absorb emissions, to 3.5-4 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2035, a target upped from 2.5-3 billion tonnes by 2030.

India’s government has signalled its intent to amend the Women’s Reservation Act of 2023, also known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, to fast-track its 33% quota of seats for women in Parliament and state assemblies. The sooner it’s done, the better. It would mark a major step in a long march towards the political and economic emancipation of women in the country.Women constitute almost half the population, but various estimates suggest women contribute less than 20% to GDP—based on models that crunch data on labour force participation, earning gaps, etc, and only capture what’s on the record.

Investors' rush to back electric commercial vehicle players has led to commitments worth $530 million in the last six months, backing new-age players at a time when the government's policy focus is shifting towards electrifying trucks and buses.Hero-backed Euler Motors became the latest to join the wave on Tuesday as it secured funding of $47 million from Lightrock, Hero MotoCorp and Blume Ventures, with additional debt funding of $27 million from BlackSoil, Trifecta, InnoVen and Alteria Capital.The latest funding round for the New Delhi-based electric light commercial vehicle maker brought the cumulative total of funding from investors for electric CV makers to $530 million since October, led by PMI Mobility, which secured a $310 million investment commitment from KKR.“The light commercial vehicle as a segment has continued to grow, because it makes fundamental sense,” Saurav Kumar, founder and chief executive at Euler Motors, told Mint. The superior long-term operational savings of electric commercial vehicles have made the sector's funding growth outpace all other transport categories, he added.Other fundraisers during this period include electric fleet operator Greencell Mobility’s $89 million, and electric bus and truck maker Eka Mobility’s $57 million fundraise.

The randomness of Donald Trump’s tariffs has underscored that a state of flux for businesses is the only constant. That this has been inflicted by one of the chief architects of the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s rules of global trade is ironic, as it has left us with this mockery of a rules-based order.Last April, the US President alleged that foreign trade and economic practices had created a national emergency and imposed tariffs across imports from all countries. Ten months later, the US Supreme Court ruled that they were unlawful.

The US government’s trade lawyers are working overtime. So what if the work in question requires more imagination than it does expertise?Over the past fortnight, investigations into 16 countries for supposed manufacturing “excess capacity” have been launched under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. The office of US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer also announced that similar probes would begin into forced labour practices in 60 countries.

Mint has reviewed the correspondence.Such cookstoves are used in African countries such as Nigeria and Ethiopia and elsewhere in Brazil.The push by ISMA and GEMA comes in the backdrop of India’s ethanol makers also lobbying the government for higher ethanol blends in vehicle fuels and to find more use-cases for the country’s surplus ethanol production, as reported by Mint earlier. They have been seeking incentives for flex-fuel vehicles which run on very high ethanol blending, and higher procurement of ethanol by oil marketing companies.

₹13,000 crore leap into the future of healthcare—shifting from mass-produced generics to cutting-edge “living medicines” grown from cells, alongside advanced chemicals.With blockbuster drug patents set to expire globally, Mint explains how the country plans to tap a $300 billion biologics opportunity.To handle the work of growing medicines from living cells, India plans to build three new national research institutes and upgrade seven existing ones, including major centres in Mohali, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, and Kolkata.These centres will focus on training a specialized workforce to manage the high level of scientific skill required. Since making medicines from living organisms is much more difficult than a standard pill, this expertise is essential for everything from laboratory research to high-tech factory management and safety checks.India plans to set up 1,000 testing sites nationwide to rigorously evaluate safety and effectiveness.This is essential because biologics are fundamentally different from traditional drugs.

IT-led growth and global outsourcing.How far have AI’s capabilities advanced to significantly affect employability across professions?A recent study by Anthropic, based on real-world usage of its Claude model, maps the share of tasks within occupations that large-language models (LLMs) can currently perform. Exposure is highest in digital and information-processing roles.

New Delhi: India imports around 50% of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) requirements from West Asia, and most of it is sourced from Qatar. With the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Ras Laffan industrial City, a large chunk of India's imports are halted. This supply crunch may impact several downstream industries in India including fertilizers and steel.

fertilizer. For plants, nitrogen is a vital nutrient for growth—without it they cannot convert sunlight into energy. If all crops knew how to synthesize nitrogen from the air (which is available freely), there would be no need for urea.

FPIs have remained underweight in India for a second straight year, with their ownership in National Stock Exchange-listed companies falling to a 15.5-year low of 16.7% in the December 2025 quarter, from 17.4% a year ago, NSE data showed."De-escalation aside, certain data points pertaining to the conflict seem to have become more severe, resulting in FPIs moving out of risky emerging market (EM) assets to the safety of the dollar," said Swarup Mohanty, chief executive of asset management company Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India).Mohanty said the latest attrition has come on top of the tech and AI impact on India, which had been “playing on the FPIs' mind”. Jyoti Jaipuria, founder of portfolio management services firm Valentis Advisors, attributed the plunge in FPI equity assets to a reduction in earnings visibility due to the country's "particular susceptibility" to oil price shocks, and to slowing flows to EMs specifically and to equities in general, consequent to the conflict.Since the start of the war and the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Brent crude futures have surged 56% to $112.19 a barrel as of Friday, dragging the rupee down 3% to 93.71 against the US dollar on concerns over the impact of high crude prices on India’s current account deficit (CAD).A $10-per-barrel increase in oil prices raises India's CAD as a proportion of its gross domestic product by 0.4%, according to Jaipuria.The surge in crude and the rupee’s fall dragged the benchmark Nifty down 8.2% to 23,114.5 on Friday.

The simultaneous patent expiry of Ozempic’s active ingredient in China and India on Friday was a watershed moment. Until now, these weight-loss drugs have been available largely to people with means. The launch of affordable generic versions will be a levelling force in healthcare, with global consequences.That’s because the world’s two most-populous countries aren’t just consumers.

garment manufacturing—especially in the domestic market—has relied on company-defined specifications rather than nationally harmonized benchmarks.India’s shirt market, valued at over ₹39,000 crore and dominated by men’s wear (94%), is expanding steadily, with women’s segments growing at an 11% CAGR (compound annual growth rate), while the trouser market is also witnessing strong growth, driven by rising incomes and urbanization, and is projected to reach ₹78,480 crore by 2027.This assumes significance as India is a major exporter of shirts, with outbound shipments of men’s and boys’ shirts rising from $1.06 billion in FY24 to $1.08 billion in FY25, while exports of women’s shirts increased from $1.04 billion to $1.10 billion during the same period. Despite this, the new standards are unlikely to alter export volumes, as manufacturers will continue to follow the sizing and specification norms of importing countries, while ensuring compliance with BIS requirements for the domestic market.Similarly, exports of men’s trousers rose from $1 billion in FY24 to $1.12 billion in FY25, while women’s trousers saw a sharper increase from $2.84 billion to $3.10 billion during the same period, underscoring India’s strong presence in the global apparel trade.“A uniform standard will benefit exporters, as different buyers currently impose varying testing standards, increasing compliance costs.

French alcohol major Pernod Ricard recently appointed Debasree Dasgupta as chief marketing officer of its India arm. She moved back to the country from Sweden, where she was Pernod Ricard’s global vice-president and chief marketing officer for Absolut, the firm's vodka brand.This month, Pernod Ricard launched a brand new campaign for its premium whisky brand Blender’s Pride, featuring international runway models Avanti Nagrath, Kirandeep Chahal and Mahieka Sharma, aiming to cement the brand’s 20-year association with ‘success’ and fashion.How does this help Blender’s Pride maintain pole position in the competitive premium whiskey business? Edited excerpts:I landed very recently, in February this year, but I am extremely excited to come back to such a booming market.

Mint.The development is significant for India’s pharmaceutical market, valued at $50 billion and largely dominated by allopathic medicines. By comparison, the homeopathy segment is worth around $847 million.A proposal from the Ayush ministry was discussed last month by the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) of the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to promote homeopathy medicines across the country.