Country Financial News

Mint.The country currently has about 300 seismometers at earthquake monitoring stations for detection, early warning capability and scientific understanding of seismic activity.Scientists and disaster management experts say this brief gap between the arrival of different seismic waves can be used to safeguard critical infrastructure such as metro rail systems, transmission lines, power plants and industrial facilities. While earthquakes cannot be predicted in advance, many countries operate Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems that provide a few seconds to about one minute of lead time before strong shake reaches a location.The development is significant given that 59% of India is vulnerable to earthquakes due to its unique geological and tectonic setting, particularly its location at the collision boundary of the Indian and Eurasian plates.Mint had earlier reported that India was developing a system to predict destructive S-waves during earthquakes.According to the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a New Delhi-based multilateral organization, India suffers losses of around $31.6 billion across nine infrastructure sectors—buildings, health, education, oil and gas, ports and airports, power, roads and railways, telecommunications, and water and wastewater—due to earthquakes, cyclones, floods, landslides and tsunamis every year.

carbon credit is roughly equivalent to the emissions caused from burning about 430 litres of petrol or a round-trip flight between Delhi and Singapore. It can sometimes take more than a year for a carbon credit to be issued.

As the U.S. and China move from a battle over economic principles to managing the status quo, who is winning? Write to me at [email protected].

Toyota’s factory in Woodstock, Ontario, will soon deploy Digit, a humanoid robot from Agility Robotics, on its production floor. These bipedal machines will unload auto parts from warehouse tuggers and onto the production line—work that until now was performed by humans. Toyota chose humanoid robots because its factories are designed for people.

cyberattacks. Instagram’s decision reflects a broader push and pull shaping the future of digital communication. Mint explains.End-to-end encryption ensures that only the sender and recipient of a message can read its contents.

NEW DELHI: Consumers will soon be able to check whether a shop is compliant with weights and measures or pricing norms by simply scanning a QR code at the outlet.The Centre is preparing to make quick-response code (QR)-based digital certification of retail shops in the country mandatory to help protect consumers and push towards formalization of the retail sector, according to two government officials aware of the development.The plan is part of a push to strengthen enforcement of legal metrology rules for weights and measures and ensure that businesses comply with standards through a foolproof verification mechanism. The tamper-proof QR codes must be prominently displayed by all retail shops.Customers should be able to scan the codes using a smartphone to check whether an establishment has been certified for its weighing and measuring instruments and complies with the rules.The plan comes in the backdrop of the government’s focus on targeting violations related to weights and measures, packaged commodity declarations and pricing practices in retail trade.

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) February 2026 amendments of its Credit Facilities Directions, together with the overhaul of its framework for external commercial borrowings (ECBs), has recast India’s acquisition finance regime and opened a regulated channel for bank-led acquisitions. RBI’s new directions allow banks in India to extend ‘acquisition finance’ to non-financial corporates in the country or their subsidiary or step-down special purpose vehicles (SPVs) so that they can acquire strategic ‘control’ through equity shares or compulsorily convertible debentures in a domestic or foreign target, where the transaction is a long-term strategic investment for value creation.

trade deficit of nearly $100 billion with China. Local production funded by FDI could substitute a part of these imports.Second, net FDI inflows have fallen significantly in recent years, making new sources of capital increasingly valuable.Third, the Israel–Iran war has once again exposed India’s energy vulnerabilities.

The nationwide shortage of cooking gas over the past week should abate soon, given that import supplies are on their way to Indian shores even as domestic refiners have been asked to bump up production.The crippling shortage of this item of mass consumption that has proven to be the Achilles heel of our energy security calculus partly owes its origin to well-intentioned policy efforts to shift households from kerosene to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a cleaner fuel. While only half of India’s population had access to LPG in 2010, its coverage is nearly complete today.

Foreign investors appear to be finding comfort in India’s power sector amid heightened geopolitical tensions and energy market disruptions, drawn by rising demand for electricity and growing data centre capacity.They bought power stocks worth $497 million in February, according to data from the National Securities Depository Ltd. That marked the strongest inflow by foreign investors since they pumped in $517 million in April 2024.Several power stocks delivered solid gains in February, when the benchmark Nifty 50 index slipped 0.6%.

was killed along with his 44 top leaders. The US and Israel thought that like in Iraq, people would revolt in Iran. But the reverse happened.People took to the streets to mourn Khamenei’s death.

fertilizer industry is coordinating with the Centre and states on increasing supply from more countries, the Fertiliser Association of India (FAI) said. “Production planning, imports and logistics are being actively coordinated to maintain adequate availability during the upcoming cropping season.

Write to Dan Frosch at [email protected], Benoît Morenne at [email protected] and Arian Campo-Flores at [email protected] all the Industry News, Banking News and Updates on Live Mint.

The US fiscal outlook continues to worsen. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the country will run annual budget deficits of about 6% of GDP per year over the next 10 years. This would push the total federal debt burden (relative to the size of the economy) to new highs, far exceeding the peak before World War II.Several factors are at play.

India’s recalibration of its approach to Chinese investments marks an important moment in the evolution of India-China economic ties. The revised framework under Press Note 3 (PN3) signals a pragmatic attempt to balance India’s strategic and security considerations with the economic opportunities that carefully structured investment from China could bring.

LNG. The ongoing war has brought maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to a halt, a busy channel used to transport oil and gas to many countries, including India. The impasse has highlighted India’s dependence on gas imports, particularly from Qatar, and how that impact isspread across a range of sectors.Over the years, natural gas has progressively come to play a greater role in India’s energy mix, supplementing crude oil (in the transport sector) and coal (in the power sector).

The 32 member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) are expected to release a collective 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves in a bid to cool market prices. This has been billed as its largest ever oil release. It’s more than double the 182 million barrels released by the IEA in 2022 after the Ukraine war broke out, four times the world’s daily usage and about a third of its members’ total stash.

New Delhi: Looking to build globally recognizable brands around India's traditional textiles, the government has proposed a new regulatory framework that would make it mandatory for all products sold as handloom to carry an official ‘Handloom Mark’ label, which will carry strict compliance norms.The move aims to curb misuse of the handloom tag and to strengthen consumer confidence in the authenticity of India's handwoven goods, as per a draft regulation notified by the textiles ministry to the World Trade Organization (WTO).The regulations follow the launch of the Kasturi Cotton Bharat—India’s first premium brand and logo for its home-grown cotton brand—and reflects a broader effort to sharpen the global positioning of for genuine handloom products and boost weavers' income. The aim is to promote premium Indian cotton on the lines of well-known international brands such as Egypt’s Giza cotton and US's Pima cotton.According to the WTO paper, the proposed regulations aim to promote handloom products in the domestic as well as international markets.

Mint.The company trimmed or sold stakes in Indian portfolio companies including PB Fintech and Dream11 in recent years, amid India’s stringent foreign direct investment (FDI) rules.The Union cabinet on Tuesday relaxed restrictions under the Press Note-3 (PN-3), which mandated pre-approval for investments from countries that share a land border with India. According to an official statement, such investments will now be allowed through the automatic route up to 10% in a local firm, on the condition that the foreign investor must not exercise management control or hold a board seat.

Digital commerce in India has become a theatre of quiet deception. Sellers cheat by design, and in the rush of a 10-minute grocery delivery, hundreds of millions of consumers rarely notice they are being fleeced.In 1919, John Maynard Keynes marvelled at the Londoner who could order by phone “various products of the whole earth” from his bed while sipping his morning tea. A century later, India has democratized this convenience through cheap smartphones and a national system of instant mobile payments, overtaking the US to emerge as the second-largest e-retail market after China by number of shoppers.Yet, this innovation is being hijacked by ‘dark patterns’—design elements that trick users into overpaying or paying for things they never wanted.

It is welcome that India is liberalizing inward investment from countries that share a land border with India. Investments up to 10% of a company’s paid-up capital that involve no board-seat control will be allowed under the automatic route. Investment proposals that need government approval would also be fast-tracked for nods within 60 days in specified sectors, including the manufacture of capital goods, capital goods for electronics, electronic components, polysilicon and the conversion of polysilicon into ingots and their slicing into wafers.