Economy Financial News

A subtle twist in the tale: The strength of the US dollar as measured by the Dollar Index (DXY) peaked at 114 in September 2022, a 20-year high. It has been falling since then, hitting 97 on 28 February 2026, the start of the Iran war. DXY measures the dollar’s strength against a basket of currencies.

bullish investors and traders are carrying forward fewer long positions despite the market falling nearly 3% since the war began last Saturday through 24,450.45 last Friday.The value of the marketwide calls exceeded that of marketwide puts by ₹2.71 trillion on Friday, down from ₹4.34 trillion a week ago before the war began, said Rohit Srivastava, founder of analytics firm IndiaCharts."This decline clearly indicates that bulls are not buying the dip, in turn reflecting the lingering uncertainty among investors amid the escalation of the West Asia conflict," said Srivastava.He added that the figure of ₹2.71 trillion worth of excess calls over puts was close to the historic mean of ₹2.5-2.6 trillion, an "anomaly" after the recent market fall.

US President Donald J. Trump’s extraordinary gamble in attacking Iran and risking a wider conflagration in West Asia dials up the economic hazards facing the US economy from ‘very high”’ to ‘extreme.’ This new stress compounds a series of other pressures already facing the economy, which is now even more unlikely to emerge unscathed.The near danger is a setback in financial markets that gets out of hand. In many ways, some such reversal was already overdue, given the apparent overvaluation of US equities, the weight placed by tariffs on the economy’s back, a still-deteriorating fiscal outlook and stubborn inflation.

From stranded shipping vessels near Strait of Hormuz amid the West Asia conflict, to the change in sectoral share due to revision in GDP base year, manufacturing and services activity moving in different directions in February, collections in goods and services tax (GST) signalling a post-cut recovery, and the government’s renewed push to faster adoption of electric vehicles, here’s a compilation of this week’s news in numbers.The US-Israel-Iran conflict is threatening to put the global order in chaos, particularly for the flow of gas and oil. At its core is the Strait of Hormuz—a narrow chokepoint through which over a quarter of global oil trade passes—where Iran holds strategic control.According to Kpler's analysis of 223 container vessels between 28 February and 4 March, at least 37 were unable to exit the Gulf, meaning they cannot resume rotations until transit reopens.

Last week, India’s statistics ministry released its first estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) and other associated national accounts data with 2022-23 as the base year for a new GDP series. This is the second major economic indicator after the consumer price index (CPI) to have seen a base revision. Both these indicators had been using 2011-12 as base year, rendering them more than a decade old.

Past conflicts in the Middle East typically hit India at the gas station. This time, the risks transcend oil, threatening everything from smartphone exports to New Delhi’s fragile finances.Flames have reached the United Arab Emirates, India’s second-largest electronics export destination after the US. Beyond being an entrepôt for regional trade, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are wealth hubs for the Indian elite.

₹345.47 trillion ($3.93 trillion)—3.26% lower than the ₹357.14 trillion estimate published in January under the 2011-12 series.The downward revision stems from those earlier overestimations. In an interaction with Mint, the statistics ministry confirmed that proxy indicators used in the older series had led to overestimations, validating concerns raised by economists, policymakers and researchers for nearly a decade.But the shrinkage is only part of the story.

A new term that entered the lexicon after India’s budget for 2026-27 was the ‘orange economy.’ Synonymous with the creative economy, it is emerging as a formidable engine of growth that transcends traditional industrial boundaries. Once viewed as niche, the intersection of culture, technology and intellectual property now accounts for roughly 3.1% of global GDP and 6.2% of all employment.For a country like India, where recent budgetary initiatives recognize the strategic value of creative assets, the growth of this sector offers more than just economic expansion.

agriculture, with a significant intervention underway in Maharashtra. The state government has structured a large programme that brings in private sector participation on the generation side while farmers remain the primary beneficiaries.

Business News , Economy news , Breaking News Events andLatest News Updates on Live Mint. Download TheMint News App to get Daily Market Updates.

India’s economy is growing fast. The speedometer looks impressive. The engine, however, is increasingly running on debt.

The US and Israel are betting on regime change in Iran through air attacks that began on Saturday. So far, bombardment has left Iran’s top leader Ayatollah Khamenei dead and sparked a retaliatory flare-up in West Asia. This is a gamble, although US air-strike precision has improved since its 2003 war on Iraq to end Saddam Hussein’s rule, an invasion that left countless civilians dead and inflamed the region.

Business News , Economy news , Breaking News Events andLatest News Updates on Live Mint. Download TheMint News App to get Daily Market Updates.

Technological innovation in all quarters is critical for accelerated economic growth. However, India’s research and development (R&D) debate often focuses on public spending: how much the government allocates, which missions are launched and what headline targets are announced. The data, however, suggests that India’s innovation shortfall is fundamentally an industry story.

From gross domestic product (GDP) growth easing in the December quarter, to the government outlining a nearly ₹17 trillion asset monetization pipeline, IT stocks extending losses amid AI-driven concerns, India weighing contingency plans for crude oil imports, and a moderation in salary hikes, here’s a compilation of this week’s news in numbers.India's economy likely grew at 7.8% during the December quarter, slowing from 8.4% in the previous quarter, due to slower growth in agriculture and the non-manufacturing industrial sectors, and government spending cuts, data released on Friday showed. GDP growth is estimated at 7.6% for 2025-26, up from 7.1% in the previous year.

India’s economy is now officially smaller than previously thought. New GDP estimates released on Friday based on an updated methodology and base year have reduced the country’s nominal output by over ₹11 trillion ($133 billion), validating earlier concerns about the size of the economyThe downward revision may complicate the government’s fiscal arithmetic for FY26 and FY27, and may also delay India’s chances of becoming a $4-trillion economy, and the fourth largest economy leaving Japan behind.Over the past decade, questions were raised by researchers, economists and policymakers, including former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian, over the methodology used in the 2011-12 series and the size of India’s GDP.GDP data released on Friday by the statistics ministry based on the updated 2022-23 base year, showed India’s nominal GDP in 2025-26 at ₹345.47 trillion ($3.93 trillion), 3.26% smaller than the ₹357.14 trillion figure given in January based on the 2011-12 series.This downward trend (2.9-3.8%) is visible across all four years for which data based on the 2022-23 series has been released.“This has happened because 2011-12 data was likely overestimating figures as organized sector data was largely used to extrapolate figures for other sectors,” an official involved in the GDP calculation process explained, requesting anonymity.The revised GDP takes into account several steps to capture the economy better such as the integration of goods and services tax (GST), expanding the use of double deflation and using improved deflation techniques in case of single deflation, and using survey results to capture the informal economy instead of relying on proxies.P.C.

Business News , Economy news , Breaking News Events andLatest News Updates on Live Mint. Download TheMint News App to get Daily Market Updates.

The recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit in New Delhi has brought home the remarkable pace at which AI is changing the way we live and work. The jury is still out on whether an AI-led society would be utopian or dystopian. Meanwhile, we need to reset our thinking on many issues.

rooms, is projected to reach 350,400 rooms by 2030. The composition of that pipeline, though, is telling.Midscale hotels account for 37% of the existing branded hotel room supply but 39% of the upcoming pipeline, suggesting that a large proportion of future supply is tilting further toward the segment.The economy segment, by contrast, is shrinking from 6% of current inventory to just 3% of pipeline share.

NEW DELHI: Global investors have a positive outlook on India because of a stable, enabling environment and a pro-business approach in emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence data centres and processing of rare earths and critical minerals, the Asian Development Bank said.The multilateral bank’s private sector investment operations in India, a key part of its global investment portfolio, will continue to go up in sectors including renewable energy and financing of micro, small and medium enterprises, Isabel Chatterton, ADB’s director general of private sector operations department, said in an interview. Microfinance, agriculture, skilling and affordable housing too are areas that ADB finances.A fifth of ADB’s global investments is in India.

Slow capital expenditure by the government in Q3 amid elusive private capex, a high credit-deposit ratio, the rupee continuing to underperform among EM peers even as foreign portfolio investors have turned net buyers in equities, and manufacturing activity cooling, here are five signals from the economy this month.After maintaining a high level of capital expenditure in the first half of the current financial year, benefitting from a low base, the Centre fell short in the third quarter of the financial year.This, economists said, proved to be a drag on the Indian economy, which is expected to see a slower growth of 7.4% in Q3 compared to 8.2% in the previous quarter. The Centre’s capex declined 23.4% year-on-year in Q3 compared to a growth of 30.7% in the previous quarter.To be sure, the decline has come against the backdrop of high capex during the same quarter last year, following a delayed spending due to Lok Sabha elections.