Economy Financial News

The Bank of Canada’s next rate-setting verdict is just six days away. Wake me up if something happens.

First, the good news: Canada’s economy closed 2024 in slightly better shape than was expected, with real gross domestic product growth inching up to a one per cent annual rate (consensus was 0.8 per cent) in the fourth quarter, while the third quarter was revised to a “less negative” print of minus 0.5 per cent from minus 1.1 per cent in the initial report.

By Lucia Mutikani

MUMBAI : Benchmark indices vaulted to record highs on Friday after India’s economy surprised the markets with a faster-than-anticipated pace in the December quarter, a momentum expected to continue led by large cap stocks. Banks, capital goods, and oil and gas stocks catapulted the Nifty index to a record high of 22,353.30 points, and the Sensex to 73,819.21 on Friday. This was driven by provisional domestic institutional investors buying of ₹3,814.53 crore and proprietary trader purchases of ₹618.58 crore, BSE data show.

₹3,76,217 in 2021-22 to ₹4,61,910 in 2023-24. Atishi claimed this is 2.5 times higher than the national per capita income and added that this represents an increase of 22 percent over two years. 2) According to official figures for 2021-22, Delhi was placed third in the list of per capita income behind Sikkim and Goa.

India collected Rs 1.68 lakh crore as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for the month of February, up 12.5%, against the same month last year. The growth was driven by a 13.9% rise in goods and services tax from domestic transactions, showing resilience of india economy despite the global headwinds. The average monthly gross collection for FY2023-24 stood at Rs 1.67 lakh crore, exceeding Rs 1.5 lakh for FY2022-23.

FOX Business’ Kelly O’Grady provides analysis of the U.S.’s inflation data as the Federal Reserve continues to grapple with a smooth economic recovery.

BJP on Friday described the UPA's 10 years as the «lost decade of corruption and cronyism» and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's «politics of performance» has made India the world's fastest-growing economy. The UPA government left behind a «devastated» economy and Prime Minister Modi «rebuilt» it in five years, senior BJP leader and Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said at a press conference at the party headquarters here. Prime Minister Modi's two consecutive terms have seen «tremendous structural changes» in the country, he said. «The most defining changes have been Prime Minister Narendra Modi's politics of performance, his ability to transform and execute it at an unprecedented scale and depth, solve problems that remained unsolved for decades and change the narrative about India,» he said.

GDP growth for the current financial year could be within striking distance of 8 per cent, a study by the State Bank of India (SBI) said on Friday, a day after India posted an 8.4 per cent growth in the December quarter, and revised upwards the estimates for the preceding two quarters. «The third quarter GDP numbers jolted the psyche and cognitive framework of most in markets, while sweeping some by a pleasant surprise. Clearly, right policy prisms and perspectives can trump irrational expectations bordering fault lines,» SBI said in its research report 'Ecowrap'. It noted that defying all estimates, the economy grew 8.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2023-24 after exhibiting more than 8 per cent growth in the preceding two quarters. The buoyancy in indirect tax mop-up (32 per cent year-on-year growth), gap between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross Value Added (GVA) growth widened.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise on Thursday forecasted second-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates, as businesses scale down spending on the server maker's technology solutions. Shares of the Spring, Texas-based company fell about 3% in extended trading.

Iris scanning Worldcoin project’s key contributor Tools for Humanity has acquired Solana-based Ottr Wallet to foster Worldcoin’s user onboarding process.

More Americans applied for jobless benefits last week, but layoffs remain historically low even as more high-profile companies have announced job cuts this year

Manufacturing in China contracted for a fifth consecutive month in February, according to an official survey of factory managers

Inflation just keeps dropping in Europe

The U.S. economy is humming and there are hundreds of thousands of jobs being added every month

The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate rose for the fourth week in a row, another affordability setback for prospective homebuyers just as the spring homebuying season gets going

Japanese stocks have again set a record, a day after U.S. stocks climbed to all-time highs

Read here: India's Q3 GDP growth at 8.4%, beats D-Street estimates; economy grows at fastest pace in 6 quarters: 5 key highlights Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Group Chief Economic Adviser at State Bank of India believes FY24 GDP growth to be near 8%. “The third quarter GDP numbers jolted the psyche and cognitive framework of most in markets, while sweeping some by a pleasant surprise. Clearly, right policy prisms and perspectives can trump irrational expectations bordering fault lines.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now released a draft framework for banks to follow. As per the framework, banks will be mandated to disclose those climate-related risks which have a bearing on their financial stability. While observing that climate-related risks are one of the emerging risk and are expected to significantly impact them, these entities play an important role in financing the transition towards an environmentally sustainable economy.

Radhika Rao, Sr Economist & Executive Director, DBS Bank, says “if we look at the real GDP, I do not see any justification that the authorities might find to go too dovish too fast. Even this real rate gap that we all refer to, even that kind of loses the debate if this is the kind of growth momentum we are carrying. So, net-net, we will certainly wait for one more quarter of data. I think backward revisions need to be factored in and this kind of a gap between GDP and GVA in two quarters might normalise so that we might see real GDP adjust lower.” What is your first take of the completely divergent GDP number that has come in at 8.4%. What were you pencilling in? Radhika Rao: I think we were at about 6.8% for the real GDP and expecting the GVA to be about 6.5-6.6%. I think our GVA number is along what the print is, but the real GDP is certainly seeing a very strong upside surprise. In fact, we did a double take to see it was in fact, 8% plus! That means for the three quarters of the fiscal year, we are actually averaging about 8%, a massive upside surprise to the RBI's forecast, our forecast, as well as certainly what the advanced estimates were suggesting.

India Q3 GDP data: Indian economy grows by 8.4% in Dec quarter driven by construction, manufacturing sector Asia's third-largest and the world's fastest-growing major economy expanded 8.4% in the October-December quarter, partly helped by a surge in manufacturing, according to data released by the government on Thursday. That growth rate was much stronger than the 6.6% expansion predicted in a Reuters survey, where the highest forecast was 7.4%. The manufacturing sector, which accounts for 17% of India's economy, expanded 11.6% year-on-year last quarter.