Economy Financial News

growth has started petering out in various parts of the industrial world, particularly the US, there is an increasing likelihood of a soft landing for the major economies emerging out of the «long tail of Covid», Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser tells MC Govardhana Rangan and Bhaskar Dutta. Edited excerpts: You were prophetic about market volatility in 2022. What's in store for 2024?

By Chuck Mikolajczak

OTTAWA (Reuters) — The Canadian province of Quebec on Tuesday forecast its 2024/25 budget deficit would hit a record C$11 billion from the C$4 billion forecast last November and blamed a sluggish global economy and investments in public services.

By Caroline Valetkevitch

A 'Mornings with Maria' panel discusses the U.S. economy and markets after the January year-over-year CPI comes in at 3.1%.

Russia's economy is holding up despite massive Western sanctions and foreign businesses pulling out of the country

Germany’s vice chancellor has launched a program initially worth up to 4 billion euros to help heavy industry shift to more climate-friendly production over a 15-year period

companies are likely to provide better salary hikes this year than those headquartered abroad to their India-based employees, continuing a trend that started two years ago, according to a survey. Professional services firm Aon, which surveyed more than 1,400 organisations in 45 sectors, estimates India-based companies to pay a 9.6% increment on average and foreign-headquartered firms to pay 9.3%. Compared with 2023, the hikes will be smaller for both groups.

NEW DELHI : Digital economy firms violating provisions of an upcoming competition law to govern them may be penalized up to 10% of their global turnover, a top government panel recommended. The corporate affairs ministry panel led by its secretary Manoj Govil on Tuesday proposed a new set of compliance obligations for influential digital economy firms such as Google, Apple and Meta.

Quiver Quantitative — Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan (JPM), recently expressed caution about the U.S. economic outlook, suggesting that a recession could still be a possibility. Speaking at the Australian Financial Review Business Summit, Dimon remarked that while many are expecting a soft economic landing, the chances of such an outcome might be lower than anticipated. He voiced concerns about stagflation, a scenario where inflation and unemployment rise simultaneously while economic growth stalls. Dimon’s comments come at a time when economic indicators have been skewed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, leading him to advise the Federal Reserve to wait for more clarity before cutting interest rates.

The world’s original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, scaled a fresh peak on Monday. It touched $72,234 per token, whipping past its pandemic summit of almost $69,000 back in November 2021. It lost about three-fourths of its value in a prolonged slump after that, with cryptosceptics gloating over the deflation of an ‘asset’ with neither any intrinsic value nor yield.

The Bank of Canada runs the risk of depressing an already fragile economy by waiting too long to cut interest rates, says a report from Moody’s Analytics.

Consumer prices in the United States picked up last month, a sign that inflation remains a persistent challenge for the Federal Reserve and for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, both of which are counting on a steady easing of price pressures this year.

Economist Kevin Hassett weighs in on President Biden's proposed 2025 budget on 'The Bottom Line.'

Ind-Ra) has released its analysis on the current account balance (CAB) for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2023-24 (3QFY24), projecting a deficit of approximately USD11 billion, equivalent to 1.2 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). According to a press release, this forecast represents a marginal increase from the previous quarter's deficit of 1.0 per cent of GDP and marks a year's high, surpassing the deficit recorded in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year (3QFY23: USD16.8 billion, 2.0 per cent of GDP). Sunil Kumar Sinha, Principal Economist at Ind-Ra, expressed expectations for a dip in the current account deficit in the subsequent quarter, attributing this outlook to signs of economic recovery amidst the global economic environment's uncertainties.

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for $125 million to fund mostly farmers and women entrepreneurs in rural and semi urban India. This is the second such fund raise by the company in the past four months. At least 40% of the funds will be allocated to women borrowers while the rest will be disbursed to farmers, MSMEs, and two-wheeler loans. Last November, L&T Finance sourced $125 million from Asia Development Bank for a similar lending programme. “Despite steady rural economic growth, accessing financial services remains a challenge for rural communities, Ms. Apurva Rathod, Company Secretary & Chief Sustainability Officer of the company. ``A large percentage of marginal farmers lack formal access to credit, with women being disproportionately affected.”

Investing.com — Headline U.S. consumer price growth accelerated in February, while the underlying measure was faster than anticipated, in a sign of sticky inflationary pressures that could complicate the timing of potential Federal Reserve interest rate cuts this year.

Last year, Mexico became the United States’ biggest trading partner, surpassing Canada and China for the first time. This humiliating fact is simply the latest statistic that illustrates Canada’s economic decline since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took power in 2015.

Edited excerpts from the interview: It has played out really well. For me real estate has outperformed the equities portfolio. If you remember, around the end of 2020 and early 2021, the stock market had already recovered from the covid lows.

Euphoria of mid and small caps will consolidate going ahead, says market expert Notably, in the previous decade (2003-2013), the Nifty 500 index generated a return of about 14 per cent, slightly lagging behind the 15 per cent return of the MSCI Emerging Markets index during the period. Among large, mid and smallcaps, the Nifty Midcap 100 index noted the highest total returns of 20.3 per cent, followed by the Nifty Smallcap 100 (17.3 per cent) and the Nifty 50 index (14.6 per cent) during 2013-2023.

roti-kapda-makan (food, clothes, housing) troika dropped to below 50% in 2019-20, making way for other items that improve the quality of life—notably health, education, transport, communication, and recreation. A fortunate confluence of factors has the potential to seed rapid consumption growth in the coming two to three decades. First, the much-touted demographic dividend puts India at an advantage over East Asian rivals such as China and Thailand.