Country Financial News

JSW Steel's third phase of capacity expansion at its plant in Dolvi will be among the lowest for brownfield expansions for the company, a top official told ET. JSW Steel will spend a little over ₹19,000 crore on this capacity addition, which will help it cater to the demand for value-added special steel products, Jayant Acharya, chief executive officer of JSW Steel, said. «It will be very cost effective since some of the infrastructure facilities are already there (and) some of the equipment are already there as part of phase two,» he said.

Telecom companies are bidding less enthusiastically in the upcoming spectrum auctions, or that's at least what earnest money deposits would suggest. This is partly on account of the low conversion to 5G networks by subscribers of Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Vodafone Idea, the troubled third operator that has been slower off the blocks in the 5G race, needs to catch up.

Inditex, the owner of fashion brand Zara, saw its slowest ever sales growth in India, excluding the pandemic year, in FY24 as the world's largest fashion group faced rising competition from global rivals in the clothing market that is increasingly getting cluttered. Inditex Trent, its joint venture with Tata that runs 23 of Zara stores in India, saw revenue rise 8% to Rs 2,775 crore last fiscal, significantly down from 40% growth a year ago, according to Trent's annual report. Net profit was down too at Rs 244 crore, an 8% drop. Zara has been a runaway success since its arrival in the country more than a decade ago but after initially doubling sales every two years, the brand's rate of expansion had come down in the past few years. «The market is very competitive, and the challenges are real. Nevertheless, the opportunity pool and the size of the market means that there is space for multiple successful players. Trent remains well placed to navigate this next phase of growth by leveraging our platform and growth engines,» P Venkatesalu, chief executive officer at Trent, said in the report.

Ethanol distilleries in the country are faced with high and rising stock of the biofuel amid a demand-supply imbalance that, they allege, is because state-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) are not buying sufficient quantities. Two executives at OMCs, however, said they are buying as much ethanol as is required to meet the target of blending 15% ethanol in petrol. «The stock at ethanol producers is rising as OMCs are unable to lift enough quantity,» said an ethanol industry executive who didn't want to be identified. «This could be due to limited storage capacity at OMCs' depots,» the person added. State-run oil marketing companies Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, and Bharat Petroleum purchase ethanol from diverse producers to blend it with petrol at their depots before supplying the fuel to pumps. These companies did not respond to ET's request for comment until press time Sunday.

European Union about its proposed regulation that seeks to benchmark exporting countries as low or high risk basis deforestation levels. The EU's deforestation-free product regulation has implications for India's coffee, cocoa, soya, wood products, rubber and its products, and leather goods exports. The regulation requires firms to ensure that the product exported to the EU has been grown on land which has not been deforested after December 31, 2020. It prescribes fines up to 4% of a firm's annual turnover in the EU, confiscation of product and revenues gained from a transaction. The new rules will apply to large firms from December 2024 and small firms from June 2025.

government panel has held that companies knowingly violated Faster Adoption & Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) subsidy scheme guidelines that were 'very clear', officials said. The report, submitted by the panel earlier this month, counters findings of an earlier probe by a joint secretary in the Ministry of Heavy Industries (MHI) that said some key terms in the FAME were not clearly defined. The December 2023 report by the joint secretary was not accepted by the Centre, which ordered a fresh probe in February.

reform plan for the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) ahead of the new government taking charge next month. It is learnt that the cabinet secretary has been holding rounds of discussions with stakeholder ministries and departments over the last few weeks to address various problems currently ailing the CGHS — from flagging partnership with major private hospitals amid pending dues to taxing referral system and shortage of doctors and healthcare staff to the simmering concern on linkage of CGHS cards with the digitalised Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) cards. A committee of secretaries is learnt to be looking into the issues.

Piramal board for 25 years. He provided us with clear and transparent thinking, making interventions where needed and gently guiding us to make brave decisions. I was always amazed by his sharp memory.

business strategies that involve imports of crucial raw materials and machinery from China. Last week, S Jaishankar obliquely questioned the patriotism of firms that source material from China that could be bought or manufactured locally. 'If peace and tranquillity in border areas are disturbed, would you do business with someone who has just barged into your drawing room and is trying to make a mess of your house fencing? It's common sense that if a country has gone back on written agreements and is doing something on our borders, how can we then say that the business world will continue as normal and other things won't,' the foreign minister said at the CII annual business summit in New Delhi last Friday. The timing of this statement is significant for two reasons. One, it comes just 17 days before EC is due to announce the results of the ongoing parliamentary elections that will lead to the formation of the next government. Two, China has just emerged as India's biggest trading partner surpassing the US, according to figures released by Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI).

elections starting from 1951, turnout went past 60% only on seven occasions, of which the 65% mark was crossed only in 2014 and 2019. For all the attention to 'declining' turnout, the first four phases of the ongoing polls have registered a score of 66.95%. In absolute numbers, 451 mn people have voted so far. Postal ballots will add up on counting day. If this rate is maintained in the remaining three phases after today, 2024 could become only the third general election to get past 65%. Globally speaking, this turnout level measures in the top half of countries having democratic elections. Phase 1 turnout has been 66.14%, which moved to 66.71% in phase 2 and 65.68% in phase 3. In the fourth phase, it nudged past the 2019 count with 69.2%, also indicating an incremental rise phase after phase. Everyone who has interest in the game appears to have pushed the envelope a bit after the initial phases.

Hamas raged across the north on Sunday as Israel's leaders aired divisions over who should govern Gaza after the war, now in its eighth month. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces criticism from the two other members of his War Cabinet, with his main political rival, Benny Gantz, threatening to leave the government if a plan is not created by June 8 that includes an international administration for postwar Gaza. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan was expected to meet with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders on Sunday to discuss an ambitious US plan for Saudi Arabia to recognise Israel and help the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza in exchange for a path to eventual statehood. Netanyahu opposes Palestinian statehood and has rejected those proposals, saying Israel will maintain open-ended security control over Gaza and partner with local Palestinians unaffiliated with Hamas or the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

(Bloomberg) — Over the past few years, Vietnam’s anti-graft drive has taken down a slew of top Communist Party leaders, including presidents, deputy prime ministers and Politburo members. But that hasn’t stopped foreign investors from pouring in cash. 

Jules and Jim, Wings of Desire, Metropolis, Notorious—bought between the ages of 21 and 26 at hole-in-the-wall shops in Mumbai and Chennai but most often in the dank underground of Delhi’s Palika Bazaar. There was an unvarying routine: you would ask for foreign films, be offered porn, explain that you meant the other kind of foreign film, bargain half-heartedly, and stumble into the sunlight clutching Renoirs and Kitanos that may or may not play when you got home. It had all the unreliability and exhilaration of a drug deal.

₹24,541 crore in January-March, against ₹23,905 crore in the same period of FY23. The company’s consolidated Ebitda, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization, dropped 15% sequentially to ₹6,124 crore. Its operating margin stood at 13.2% during the quarter.

Daily Mail. Lord Earl Louis Mountbatten, a World War II hero and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, was India’s Last Viceroy. Hayes claimed that he, not Thomas McMahon, who was convicted of the crime in November 1979, was behind the killing of Lord Mountbatten.

traffic between Egypt and India, Egyptair is looking to operate daily flights connecting Delhi and Cairo, according to a senior executive. Currently, the Egyptian carrier, which started operations in India more than four decades ago, has nine weekly flights to Cairo. Out of them, five flights are from Mumbai and the remaining four are from the national capital. «We hope to operate daily flights from Delhi to Cairo,» the airline's Country Manager Amr Aly told PTI on Sunday. He said that air traffic between the two countries has improved and there is also transit traffic to other places.

This phase includes key constituencies like Mumbai North, Mumbai North-West, Mumbai North-East, Mumbai North-Central, Mumbai South-Central, Mumbai South, Kalyan, and Thane. Notable candidates in this phase include:

Ladakh Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress on Sunday alleged that over the last 10 years, the union territory has been at the receiving end of the Modi government's «malicious and step-motherly treatment». Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said Ladakhis have been protesting in freezing temperatures over the lack of control over their land and water. «The protests have been ongoing for months, including all 8 tribes and over 30,000 people, coming together for hunger strikes and huge marches,» he said. The Modi government's only response has been continued silence and apathy, Ramesh claimed.

economic growth. The People's Bank of China has announced that it would establish a 300-billion-yuan (about USD 42.25 billion) relending facility for the government-subsidized housing project. Local state-owned enterprises are encouraged to use the funds to buy reasonably-priced commercial homes that have completed construction, Tao Ling, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, told the media last week. Tao added that these homes will then be used to provide affordable housing.

Elon Musk and Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin launched SpaceX's satellite internet service for the nation's health sector on Sunday, aiming to improve access in remote parts of the sprawling archipelago. Musk, the billionaire head of SpaceX and Tesla, arrived on the Indonesian resort island of Bali by private jet before attending the launch ceremony at a community health centre in the provincial capital, Denpasar.

high-profile candidates, from ministers to actors, would test their luck in the hustings on Monday as seven Lok Sabha constituencies in the southern part of West Bengal go for polls in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections. A total of 1,25,23,702 voters — 63,51,320 men, 61,72,034 women and 348 third-genders — are eligible to exercise their franchise in 13,481 polling stations across the seven constituencies. The EC has identified over 57 per cent of the polling booths as sensitive and decided to deploy over 60,000 central forces besides 29,172 state police personnel for this phase, according to an official. Reopening of closed industries, poor health of jute mills and demand for jobs are the main demands of the electorate in Howrah, Hooghly, Serampore and Barrackpore Lok Sabha constituencies, situated on both sides of the banks of River Hooghly.