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index and a fall in crude oil prices which softens India's inflation and trade deficit. The rupee closed at 83.87 against the US dollar, versus its previous close of 83.94/$1 on Friday, LSEG data showed. The currency strengthened to 83.84 during the day, the strongest since 6th August, but dollar demand from public sector banks capped its gains, traders said.

rural economy is emerging as a key driver of the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector's revival, hinting at a robust turnaround in aggregate demand after a sluggish start to the 2024-25 financial year. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its monthly bulletin noted that with rising incomes and improving infrastructure, rural consumption is increasingly fuelling volume growth in FMCG products, underscoring the sector's strengthening fundamentals. The sector registered an approximate 6.6 per cent volume growth in the first quarter of FY25.

Former Council of Economic Advisers chair Kevin Hassett reacts to Vice President Kamala Harris' economic plan and price controls proposal on 'The Evening Edit.' 

An array of issues ranging from a potential increase in provisions for credit losses (PCL) and the impact of the Bank of Canada’s rate cuts on loans to money laundering troubles are likely to dominate discussions this week and next as Canada’s top banks release their earnings.

It is helpful when investing to have a near-term view balanced by a longer-term one looking for trends that could turn into opportunities or realized risks.

Read this | Green revolution 2.0: Why India needs an integrated energy policy Meanwhile, India holds its position as the world’s fourth-largest renewable power capacity, trailing only China and Brazil among emerging economies, excluding hydropower plants. Also read: The rooftop eclipse on India’s solar ambitions India also aims to power half of its energy capacity with renewables by 2030, a goal supported by encouraging progress.

Nifty opened higher on Monday, driven by gains in banking and energy stocks. This positive momentum followed an upswing in Asian markets, which rose after U.S. data eased fears of a recession in the world's largest economy. The BSE Sensex was trading 191 points, or 0.24%, higher at 80,627, while the Nifty50 was up 65 points, or 0.27%, at 24,605 around 9:20 am.

fuel has provoked no end of excitement. From the deserts of Australia and Namibia to the wind-blasted straits of Patagonia, companies and governments worldwide plan to build almost 1,600 plants to make it. The gas can be produced cleanly by using wind- or solar-powered electricity in a process that splits the molecule from water. There’s only one problem: The vast majority of those projects don’t have a single customer stepping up to buy the fuel. Among the handful with some kind of fuel purchase agreement, most have vague, nonbinding arrangements that can be quietly discarded if the potential buyers back out. As a result, many of the projects now touted with great fanfare by countries vying to become “the Saudi Arabia of hydrogen” will likely never get built. Just 12% of hydrogen plants considered low-carbon because they avoid natural gas or mitigate emissions have customers with agreements to use the fuel, according to BloombergNEF. The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.

Mint looks at the reasons for this fall, its impact on the economy and what the domestic industry should do. The benchmark per tonne price of hot rolled coil steel—used in automotive, railways, agriculture and mining industries—in Mumbai has fallen to ₹50,900 this month, the lowest since September 2020 when prices were at ₹49,200 per tonne. The current price is nearly 33% less than the peak of ₹76,000 per tonne of April 2022.

Steel Authority of India (SAIL), a steel behemoth, and Infosys, the iconic IT services company? They are as different as chalk and cheese, but, interestingly, both are getting more flexible about their workplace policies and, in the process, paving the way to explore new work models for organisations. In May, SAIL announced the Work from Other than Workplace (WoW) policy. Under this policy, employees could choose to work from a place other than their normal office/base location.

economy, there are cheerleaders, there are doomsayers and there are those who hold up the mirror. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor, belongs to the last category as he passionately propagates his theories based on data. Roubini, the Turkish-born economist may have earned the moniker of Dr Doom for predicting the US subprime housing implosion that triggered the global financial crisis, but he's more often misunderstood by the markets whenever it is on steroids, as it is now. The economist, who will be wearing the hat of a fund manager with an exchange-traded fund soon, is set to reveal his view of the world at ET's World Leaders' Forum this month in New Delhi.

Let the good times roll: IT services eye a better future That segment has since recovered, and some banking sub-segments have recovered enough to increase their tech spending. Infosys chief financial officer Jayesh Sanghrajka told analysts last month that the company saw a recovery in areas such as mortgages, capital markets and card payments. Infosys reported its first sequential growth in this segment in six quarters.

India will need around 1 lakh company secretaries by 2030 amid rising economic growth and increasing focus on good governance, according to the company secretaries' apex body ICSI. Currently, there are more than 73,000 company secretaries and out of the total, around 12,000 are practising company secretaries. Company secretaries play a key role in the corporate governance framework in ensuring compliance of companies with various statutory requirements. Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) President B Narasimhan said there has been a paradigm shift in the way the country's economy is perceived today and company secretaries have essentially become a significant linchpin in making India one of the most preferred investment destinations of the world.

India's holding of US government securities touched a high of USD 241.9 billion in June as the country continued to increase its exposure for the third straight month. Japan was the top holder with securities worth over USD 1.11 trillion followed by China at the second spot with a holding valued at USD 780.2 billion in June, according to the latest data released by the US Treasury Department. At the third place was the United Kingdom with an exposure of USD 741.5 billion ahead of Luxembourg at the fourth position with a holding to the tune of USD 384.2 billion. Among the countries and jurisdictions, India was at the 12th place owning American government securities worth USD 241.9 billion in June, higher than USD 237.8 billion value recorded in May.

Bharat Petroleum Corporation plans to invest Rs 1.7 lakh crore over the next five years to grow its core oil refining and fuel marketing business as well as in 'future big bets' of petrochemicals and green energy, its chairman G Krishnakumar has said. Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), currently, owns about 14 per cent of India's oil refining capacity and about a quarter of the fuel retailing network. It plans to grow these businesses while foraying into newer areas. The firm is now implementing the first phase of a multi-decade aspirational journey in the form of 'Project Aspire' — its five-year strategic framework that is based on two fundamental pillars — 'Nurturing the Core' and 'Investing in Future Big Bets', he said in the company's latest annual report. «Our mid-term strategy is on a continuum. While we remain committed to growing our core businesses, which include refining and marketing petroleum products and upstream, we are equally focused on our big bets comprising petrochemicals, gas, green energy, non-fuel retail, and digital.

Presidential poll race intensifying with every passing minute, issues that really effect the lives of Americans are now slowly taking center-stage, and they are mostly around the economy and affordability in the country. Although some believe that these problems would be forever persistent and would not cease to exist but some have their eyes and hopes pinned on Kamala Harris, who could have a solution to overcome the biggest economic problem there currently is: Housing affordability crisis.

Tech services major ServiceNow has realised $10 million in annualised tangible gains due to cost savings and increased productivity across the organisation as a result of Gen AI usage, a top executive said. The company’s artificial intelligence-enhanced product Now Assist — which offers virtual agent customer support, customer service management, HR service delivery, ITOps management, field service management, strategic portfolio management, AI search, etc — has become the company’s fastest growing product with 11 deals exceeding $1 million in annual contract value in Q2 (April-June), Pat Casey, CTO and EVP of DevOps, ServiceNow told ET.

Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said that inadequate access to developmental finance is hindering developing economies from achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and underscored the urgent need to address this USD 4 trillion annual financing gap. Addressing the third Voice of Global South Summit virtually, Sitharaman said that recent reports reveal that the implementation of many SDGs in developing economies is stagnating, with some indicators even regressing. The SDG financing gap is estimated to be USD 4 trillion annually for developing countries, she said. Observing that the global South is affected by global uncertainties, she said one in four developing countries will be poorer by the end of this year than they were before the pandemic as per a recent World Bank report.

“Defence and railway stocks which are largely in the public sector had become very overvalued and a lot of the future execution was already factored in. So, they were due for a correction. We have seen very good results coming through and there is a growth on the top line and bottom line. But the valuations have gone into multi-year, this kind of growth continuing. So, it was quite viable that we would see some amount of consolidation, a breather for a few months and then the next leg up starts as the execution comes in,” says Ajay Bagga, Chairman, Elyments Platforms. ET Now: Because the damage was coming from the macro front, tell us that since the US recession worries cools off, US seems to be on a disinflationary path, the kind of economic data coming in, talks are about Fed taking a rate cut in September and so are the expectations building up for other central banks only. But in such a scenario, what could be the possible and, of course, this is a good news for the markets, but then I wanted to understand how would FIIs approach the emerging markets in such a scenario when rate cuts are going to take place?

The industries department of the Delhi government has also collected feedback from stakeholders and the general public on three policies — Delhi Electronic System Design, Manufacturing and Refurbishment (ESDMR) Policy 2022-27, City Logistics Policy, and Industrial and Economic Development Policy 2023–33. This feedback will also be shared with the cabinet as and when it meets, sources told ToI. “We are ready with our draft proposal. We will start rolling them out once we get approval from the cabinet and the policies are notified,” said a Delhi govt official.

(This story originally appeared in on Aug 16, 2024)