Deloitte Financial News

Budget 2024 is eagerly awaited by various sectors of the economy, the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector stands at the forefront for these expectations. MSMEs constitute the backbone of the Indian economy, contributing significantly to the GDP, to overall employment, and for exports. With the advent of the GST, MSMEs have had to navigate through new regulations and compliance requirements. In the past, the government introduced several initiatives, including introduction of quarterly returns and increase in turnover threshold to Rs 40 lakhs for supply of goods, aiming to boost MSMEs. Against the backdrop of some of the aforesaid relaxations, as per recent GST@7 survey conducted by Deloitte, 78% of MSMEs have endorsed GST. Tax compliance automation, e-invoicing and timely issuance of circulars/instructions on contentious tax issues, emerged as top performance areas for government in the survey. MSMEs demonstrate robust support (69%) for these initiatives compared with larger counterparts (which was around 60%)

professional services firms in India combined now have over 3,300 partners — equity plus non equity — with EY being the first firm to exceed 1,000 partner benchmark driven by continued strong growth in advisory businesses after the Covid-19 disruption. In the last three years, the advisory businesses — consulting, deals and risk — have grown much faster — 25% plus-than the traditional areas like audit and tax, which have grown between 15% and 22% for most firms, as the firms continue to pivot towards high-growth advisory services, including tech consulting and implementation. With EY being the last Big Four firm to close its financial year on June 30, the combined revenue of the Big Four firms — affiliates included — in the last financial year has crossed ₹39,000 crore, according to multiple senior partners ET spoke to across firms.

This is in sharp contrast to the last two years, when fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies such as ITC, Dabur, Marico, Britannia, Parle Products, Emami and Hindustan Unilever had been focused mainly on premiumisation with demand turning sluggish in villages as the rise in prices of daily essentials, vegetables and fuel had forced consumers to cut down on spending. In the last two years, more than 60% of launches by large FMCG companies have been in the premium segment. The companies are also investing in “consumer activation” efforts to increase engagement with rural buyers, the executives said. Apart from the expectations of an above-normal monsoon that could bolster farm incomes, companies are expecting policy measures in the July 23 budget to strengthen the revival of demand in rural India.

China's Ministry of Finance is conducting more rigorous checks of work done by the Big Four auditing firms for local companies, three people with knowledge of the matter said, amid concerns auditors are not doing enough to uncover corporate wrongdoing. The tighter scrutiny, which has not been previously reported, is mainly focused on Deloitte, EY, PwC, KPMG and their audits of some financial firms as well as highly leveraged companies, said the people. It began a couple of months ago and comes in the wake of a regulatory probe into «intermediaries» for property giant China Evergrande Group, which refers to auditors, rating agencies and other providers of financial services.

₹11,000 crore container PLI scheme to be spread over a nine-year period, beginning 2024-25. The plan was to manufacture 20 feet and 40 feet length containers of various configurations. The aim of this scheme was to raise domestic manufacturing of containers so that India could potentially compete with China over it and garner at least 10% of demand from global liners.

If you aspire to work for HSBC and have spent hours wooing and being wooed by the bank at recruitment events, been through its recruitment process, and attended some induction events, only to be unexpectedly rejected, you will not be happy. You will be even less happy if HSBC accidentally sends you an email saying it's a shame that you voluntarily withdrew your application.

Deloitte survey shows. “Automotive OEMs are projecting the highest salary increments across all sectors in 2024, which is 100-140 basis points (or, 1-1.4 percentage points) above India average of 9.0%-9.5%,” said Neelesh Gupta, partner at Deloitte India. Most organisations that follow the April to March fiscal cycle hand out salary increments during April to July. About 84% of the companies surveyed by Deloitte have already doled out this year’s increment.

Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have dropped. For the class of 2024, the annual pay is in the range of ₹15-16 lakh, according to separated studies by Deloitte and TeamLease. Compensation for graduates from top 10 engineering institutes, of which eight are IITs, as ranked by the National Institutional Ranking Framework has declined marginally for the class of 2024, according to Deloitte campus workforce trends 2024 study. «They can expect a median compensation of ₹16.3 lakh per annum in 2024 as per our study,» said Neelesh Gupta, partner, Deloitte India. Annual pay is down to a median ₹15-16 lakh compared with ₹18-20 lakh in 2023 at old IITs, as per a TeamLease Services study conducted in May shared with ET.

Alberta has taken its share of knocks lately.

cybersecurity professionals, especially at the leadership level, are more in demand than before. Organisations have started to consider cyber as a key enterprise-wide risk that can not only pose financial losses but also tarnish reputations, destroy customer trust, and even threaten public safety, says Anand Venkatraman, Partner, Deloitte India. The stakes are higher in today’s interconnected digital landscape, and this calls for robust cyber defences and risk management strategies. There is a clear surge in demand for cyber insurance so that organisations can offset or transfer some financial damage from this risk. The areas of demand

s Women@Work 2024: A Global Outlook report, only 10% of women in India believe their organisation is taking concrete steps to fulfil its commitment towards gender diversity. Lack of flexibility and inadequate benefits are resulting in a loss of gender-balance and talent for employers. So, it is upon all of us to shift the perspective through continued enhancements of initiatives and policies and integrating inclusion into day-to-day operations.

Fashion and jewellery retailers are hopeful that festivals and the wedding season in the second half of the year will create more demandas discretionary spending has been subdued, reported TOI. A good monsoon, which gives cash to the people employed in the agricultural sector, is also expected to boost consumption. There was a rise in consumption towards the end of March quarter but full recovery in demand still remains. The mass segment has been impacted the most as there has been a slowdown in spending from the lower income households. The premium segment continues to do well.

A new forecast from Deloitte Canada calls for the pace of interest rate cuts to pick up in 2025, but not enough for many Canadian homeowners to avoid feeling the pinch of upcoming mortgage renewals.

AI will replace people with people, contrary to the common narrative, Deloitte's AI Executive Rohit Tandon said, emphasising that the future belongs to AI-human collaboration, not replacement, as he envisions a revolutionary era where technology empowers, rather than replaces, the workforce. In an interview with PTI, Tandon, Managing Director, AI and Insights Practice Leader, Deloitte LLP, said AI will not snatch jobs, but will simply do away with some of the easier jobs, and create new roles. «AI will, with people, replace people… It's not just AI replacing people. You still need humans in the loop,» he said. Tandon said the same kind of fear of job roles getting wiped out existed when IT, technology, and computers came into the scenario.

Mint that when users see ads online for products they recently searched for, it is personalisation. But today, companies need to do personalisation at scale or engage with users while still being creative. “Companies realised that just uploading 20 or 100 posts a day was not actually leading to any engagement.

tax reforms in the first full budget of the newly elected government. These include the conditional waiver of interest or penalty on tax notices issued between 2017 and 2020, barring cases of wilful default. The budget is likely to be announced in July. The GST Council may also discuss crunching timeline for issuing notices, a monetary limit for pursuing disputes at the GST Appellate Tribunal, and a sunset date for anti-profiteering cases to reduce tax litigation and improve ease of doing business.

Reuters reported that the upcoming first full-fledged Budget 2024 of Modi 3.0 is expected to relieve taxpayers, as the government considers reducing income tax rates for specific groups of individuals. The report also indicates that the government is considering lowering income tax rates for individuals earning annual incomes of ₹10 lakh.Moneycontrol reported, quoting government officials, that the Centre plans to raise the income threshold before any tax is levied from ₹3 lakh to ₹5 lakh in the upcoming budget.

BTech graduates in India have narrowed sharply over the years, according to the findings of a Deloitte survey. This could potentially lessen the lure of opting for costly management courses after completing BTech. The pay gap between MBA and BTech graduate salaries has nearly halved to 57% in 2024 from 102% in 2021, according to Deloitte's Campus Workforce Trends 2024 study shared exclusively with ET. «This is without accounting for the investment of time and money,» said Neelesh Gupta, partner at Deloitte.

Artificial intelligence is pushing chief information officers closer to the corner office than ever before. More CIOs are reporting directly to their chief executives, rather than chief financial officers, a reflection of the role’s increased importance in helping set corporate AI strategies to keep up with the competition. CIOs have traditionally managed information-technology systems like data centers, cloud computing and business software, but must also now modernize IT and data systems to take advantage of generative AI—or even set the AI game plan.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based Eton Advisors has boosted its capacity to serve well-heeled clients as it welcomes a new family office, along with a seasoned veteran of the space.

A new report from the Finra Investor Education Foundation reveals that despite AI’s increasingly central role in investments and daily life, few consumers would rely on it for personal finance advice.