Country Financial News

holy month of Ramadan, significant for Muslims, usually sees heightened tensions in the region. Clashes have historically erupted during this time, particularly in Jerusalem's Old City, a site sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

HDFC Bank has set the ball rolling for the much-anticipated initial public offering of its subsidiary HDB Financial Services. The country's largest lender by market capitalisation intends to schedule the launch of the share sale in its financial services arm in the last quarter of calendar 2024 or the first quarter of 2025, said sources familiar with the development. If the IPO happens in 2024, it could be one of the biggest public issues of the year and the first from the HDFC Group after the merger of HDFC Bank and HDFC.

government is equipping more than 100 colleges with electronic design automation (EDA) tools from Siemens EDA, Synopsys and Cadence, as part of efforts to prepare talent for the country’s developing semiconductor ecosystem. The country heads of these chip design software companies told ET that training with these tools ensures that students are industry-ready when they graduate.

For those wondering why private sector capex is not visible, here's an answer — it has reached a critical stage from where it is beginning to flow — said, CEO at Crisil, the biggest rating company that has the pulse of the Indian corporate world. Recent regulatory actions may slow the growth rate, but there is no trouble in sight, Mehta told Bhaskar Dutta and MC Govardhana Rangan in an interview. Edited excerpts: The latest GDP growth numbers surprised everyone. There are divergent views on it and we aren't seeing private capex yet. What are the corporates telling you? There are a few parts to this. One is the PLI (production-linked incentive scheme). It's very targeted — 15 sectors — and it's going to happen. Then there is conventional capex, the point that you are talking about. We are looking at capacity utilisation across multiple segments right now. What we are seeing is that in the top eight key segments, the capacity today is higher than the decadal average capacity utilisation that we have seen across those segments whether you take cement, steel, oil and gas, etc. Cement and steel plants are already expanding, refining is talking about green capex investment. Capex investment in these companies is at 13-14% versus 7-8% earlier. We are talking 13-14% growth in fixed assets. They have now started investing at a higher pace than earlier. The next question is about the sustainability of this growth. Can this be repeated?

Officials say an attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels set off explosions ahead of a Singapore-flagged vessel in the Gulf of Aden

India has signed a trade agreement with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland on Sunday that includes a commitment of $100 billion investment and creating 1 million direct jobs in India in the next 15 years

Unrelenting gang attacks in Haiti have paralyzed the country and left it with dwindling supplies of basic goods

Arizona officials say a Saudi-owned company they targeted over its use of virtually unfettered amounts of groundwater to grow forage crops is moving its farming operation out of a valley in the Southwestern state’s rural west

The Romanian government has won a yearslong legal dispute with a Canadian mining company seeking damages over failed plans to open a gold and silver mine in the Eastern European country

An oil and gas trade group in North Dakota has ended a workforce recruitment program that brought Ukrainians from their war-torn country to North Dakota's oil fields to fill jobs

Doctors around the country say insurers are making it harder to get coverage for home ventilators that patients with serious illnesses need as their lungs fail

pension funds in Canada and a leading global investor, has appointed former Deloitte chief executive N Venkatram as the country chair for CDPQ India. Venkatram, known as Venkat, will join the fund on April 1, 2024, and will also be a member of CDPQ's global management team, the company said. Venkat served as the CEO and managing partner of Deloitte South Asia from 2015 to 2023. He was also on the global executive of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, and Asia Pacific executive as well as a member of the South Asia board and the executive committee for 12 years.

consumer affairs ministry is unlikely to lift the ban on onion exports despite a fall in prices as the government does not want to take any decision that will make onions expensive before the general elections, an official privy to the development said. «There are instructions from the top to not touch onions before the elections,» the official told ET. This comes amid requests from traders to open up onion exports now that prices have moderated. Following India's ban on export of onions imposed on December 8, wholesale onion prices had crashed to ₹5-10/kg, leading to widespread protests of the farmers in the growing regions. The export ban also increased the global shortage of the kitchen staple at a time when the demand is at its peak, due to the upcoming Ramadan festival, industry insiders said.

Private sector investment in clean energy, especially in countries like India, is pivotal for the course of energy transition, said Riccardo Puliti, regional vice president, Asia and the Pacific, at International Finance Corporation. India continues to be the key destination for IFC, including in energy transition, and the World Bank Group member is looking to push up its investment in the country in the ongoing fiscal, which runs from July through June. In FY23 (July-June), IFC committed $3 billion across 30 projects, more than doubling its lending year-on-year. «This year we will do substantively more than that [FY23]. India is a country willing to move the needle on the energy mix,» he said. Financing that brings in private sector investment is vital to scaling India's climate solutions, he said. «The rule of the game is really to mobilise the private sector,» he added. India is IFC's largest investment destination with 10.4% of its global portfolio. It will help expand and diversify capital sources for critical power infrastructure, as done through its investment in IndiGrid, he said. IFC is also looking at sustainability-linked finance, enabling issuers to build a strong pipeline of green projects, Puliti said. IFC's focus is to leverage private capital to up support for sustainable infrastructure, industrial decarbonization, and green finance.

solar power project in Madhya Pradesh's Chhatarpur district was laid on Sunday. Union Minister for Power and New and Renewable Energy, RK Singh, and Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Virendra Kumar, together laid the foundation stone for Barethi Solar Power Project of NTPC Renewable Energy Limited. Joining the event through video conferencing, Singh said that the government's work in the power sector under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been historic, with capacity almost doubling in the last 10 years. The Power minister said that the government has provided electricity connections to every village in the country.

India on Sunday signed a trade and economic partnership agreement with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) — a grouping of Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland — that includes a binding $100-billion investment commitment. As part of the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA), EFTA has committed to promote investments to increase the stock of foreign direct investments (FDI) in India by $100 billion in the next 15 years, and to facilitate the generation of one million direct employment in India through such investments, the government said in a statement. «The global leadership of EFTA countries in innovation and R&D across diverse spheres...will open up new doors of collaboration,» PM Narendra Modi said about the trade agreement.

Ramadan starts, ANI reported on Sunday citing an Express Tribune report The report said the people of the neighbouring country are already facing a two to three-fold increase in the prices of essential kitchen items like vegetables, sugar, edible oil, ghee, meat, eggs, and pulses. This substantial increase in prices of essential commodities has added to the economic sufferings of low- to middle-income consumers. Experts see a further hike in commodity prices during the holy month of Ramadan, with a general surge of 31.5% in recent months.

₹60,000 crore to expand the seven existing airports in its portfolio over the next 5-10 years, Karan Adani, MD of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, said. About half of the investment would be pumped into terminal and runway capacity over five years, and the rest would be invested in city-side development of the airports over a period of 10 years, Adani said on the sidelines of an event. These investments will be in addition to the ₹18,000 crore that the group plans to invest in Navi Mumbai airport.

government could tweak the policy for setting up medical colleges in order to increase the intake of students and address the problem of shortage of doctors in the country, a senior official told ET. The changes being considered include relaxing the norms for setting up medical colleges, enhanced fiscal and infrastructure support, and speedy approvals. Government support will help them become viable at lower fee levels, making medical education more affordable.

mega trade deal between New Delhi and the four-nation European bloc EFTA will not only open up broad market access for Swiss businesses in India but is set to improve the legal framework and predictability for them, the Swiss government said on Sunday. The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) States — Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland — signed a Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) with India that came after around 16 years of negotiations. Under the mega trade pact, the four European countries are looking at making an investment of USD 100 billion in India over the next 15 years. The trade deal will provide a window to Indian exporters to access large European and global markets besides allowing companies from the four EFTA countries to expand businesses and investment in India.

free trade pact with a four-member European bloc, Norway on Sunday said it will eliminate customs duties for almost 98 per cent of the imports from India under the framework of the pact. The ambitious trade pact, signed between India and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) comprising Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, aims to expand trade across a range of areas including pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, new technologies and machinery. After the EEA (European Economic Area) agreement, this could become one of the most important trade agreements Norway has ever entered, said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere. At a media briefing, Norway's Minister of Trade and Industry Jan Christian Vestre described the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) as a major result-oriented milestone that would not only boost two-way trade but also promote a rules-based trading system.