Country Financial News

Indian lenders and Russia's Gazprombank have held exploratory talks over setting up correspondent banking services to facilitate cross-border payments and support international trade, according to a senior bank executive.Gazprombank representatives met some Indian bankers last month to discuss the proposal, the executive told ET. Correspondent banking involves contractual relationships between banks to provide reciprocal payment services. The establishment of such a facility with Indian lenders would help traders skirt some of the payment-related problems that have arisen after the US and its allies imposed sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. «These are early-stage discussions, and both countries are looking at exploring measures to further strengthen banking ties,» the executive said.

wheat stock with the central government is likely to fall below the buffer norm as on April 1 for the first time in over a decade, the private wheat industry and trade, who have their eyes on Uttar Pradesh, currently the source of cheapest wheat in the country may have to wait before they refill their silos, till the government meets its procurement targets. «In a recent meeting, the government has signalled that the industry should 'not hoard' wheat during the arrival season and allow the government to procure wheat. However, practically, millers will have to buy wheat during the harvest season to run their plants. Trade sources said that the Multi-National Companies (MNCs) and big corporations have a tendency to stock wheat for the entire year.

Last year saw tremendous enthusiasm around the concept of digital public infrastructure (DPI) during the G20 and after. What I didn’t realize at the time was that lurking just beneath the surface were strong undercurrents of disapproval. The arguments against DPI range from the semantic (that the term DPI flatters to deceive) to the techo-solutionist (not everything can be solved by throwing technology at it).

₹6,811 per barrel on the multi commodity exchange (MCX). Brent rose 1.5 per cent on Monday and WTI gained 1.6 per cent after Russia ordered companies to cut output in the second quarter to meet a nine million barrels per day target to comply with the supply cut decisions taken by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). -Russia, among the top three global oil producers and one of the largest exporters of oil products, is also contending with a series of recent attacks on its oil refineries by Ukraine and has mounted its own attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Also Read: Oil market oversupplied with record-high US output, Brent seen at $87-$92 for 2024: ShareKhan's Mohammed Imran Tighter Markets: Physical markets tightened following a seasonal pattern in February. However, the more significant driver for the uptick in prices was the decision by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) to extend production cuts from March 2024 to June 2024.

There’s a comforting but erroneous explanation for why solar panels, home batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly likely to be made in China. With an economy awash in easy money, its renewable manufacturers are undercutting rivals across the world; ergo, China’s comparative advantage isn’t scale, cost efficiency or innovative prowess, but cheap government subsidies. In the EV industry “everybody has an endless supply of loans and support from the local government," the Financial Times quoted Jörg Wuttke, former president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, as saying in a recent article.

Canada will tighten its scrutiny of foreign investments in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and space technology as the government expands its power to stall and block deals for national security reasons.

In 2022, I wrote a column asking why Canada couldn’t be as smart and successful as Australia. Two years later, by almost any metric, Australia continues to outperform us economically, while maintaining its social democracy and generous welfare programs.

Canada must tackle weak productivity to inoculate the economy against factors that will drive future inflation, such as the pullback from globalization, said Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada.

UNSC resolution on Monday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, made possible by US abstention, sends out a clear message: Israel is overdoing retribution. Escalation of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza will not lead to peace or security in the region. Through the resolution and its framing process, the world sent out a clear message that violence does not lead to peace and security, but to endless cycles of violence and humanitarian disaster.

Federal prosecutors have charged KuCoin and founders Chnu Gan and Ke Tang with conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act by willfully failing to maintain an adequate AML programme.Founded in 2017, KuCoin is one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges, with more than 30 million customers and daily trading volumes in the billions of dollars.Despite soliciting business from US customers and being aware of their AML obligations in the country, Gan, Tang and KuCoin "willfully chose to flout" its requirements, says a newly unsealed indictment.The company did not require customers to provide any identifying information until July 2023 when it finally rolled out a KYC programme after being told about a federal criminal investigation into its activities, say authorities. Even then, the KYC programme only applied to new customers.KuCoin also never filed any required suspicious activity reports, never registered with the CFTC as a futures commission merchant, and, through at least the end of 2023, never registered with FinCEN as a money transmitting business.In fact, says the indictment, Gan, Tang and KuCoin "affirmatively attempted to conceal the existence of KuCoin’s US customers" in order to make it appear as if the exchange was exempt from US AML and KYC requirements.

Inflation is continuing to bite Canada’s restaurant industry, as sales have dipped across the country and consumers are facing higher menu prices.

The Bank of Canada is warning that waning productivity growth in the country is an “emergency” that can force higher interest rates and limit rising wages for Canadians.

Ukraine has sunk or disabled a third of all Russian warships in the Black Sea in just over two years of war, the navy spokesman said Tuesday, a heavy blow to Moscow's military capability. Ukraine's Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk told The Associated Press that the latest strike on Saturday night hit the Russian amphibious landing ship Kostiantyn Olshansky that was resting in dock in Sevastopol in Russia-occupied Crimea. The ship was part of the Ukrainian navy before Russia captured it while annexing the Black Sea peninsula in 2014. Pletenchuk has previously announced that two other landing ships of the same type, Azov and Yamal, also were damaged in Saturday's strike along with the Ivan Khurs intelligence ship.

The Baltimore Fire Department called the collapse a developing mass casualty event.

mandi prices in view of extension of onion export ban, the government on Tuesday assured farmers that it will start procurement of 5 lakh tonnes of rabi onion in next 2-3 days to protect their interest. Last week, the commerce ministry extended the ban on onion export till further orders. The ban on onion shipment was valid till March 31. «We want to assure farmers that their concern will be taken care of. ...We will begin procurement of 5 lakh tonne of rabi (winter) crop in the next 2-3 days for maintaining a buffer stock,» Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told reporters. The onion export ban is affecting traders and not farmers as average mandi (wholesale) prices are ruling currently at around Rs 13-15/kg in Maharasthra, which is almost double from the previous year level, he said.

A union representing many of Germany's train drivers says it and the country's main railway operator have reached a deal in a long dispute over working hours and pay that was marked by a string of strikes

Authorities in Pakistan say that a suicide bomber has rammed his explosive-laden car into a vehicle in the northwest of the country

Japan’s Cabinet has approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it’s developing with Britain and Italy to other countries

Vietnamese automaker VinFast plans to sell its electric vehicles in Thailand

Japan’s Cabinet OK’d a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets to other countries on Tuesday, its latest step away from the pacifist principles the country adopted at the end of World War II