War Financial News

Nayara Energy and Shell, have already raised prices in recent months. Reliance Industries is also India’s largest exporter of petroleum products.A dealer operating Jio-bp pumps said, "About 30% of diesel sales have dropped in the past few days due to the limit on sales.

Strait of Hormuz."The war will be over only when Israel wants it to be over and so it will continue in some form or shape and keep crude elevated," said the UAE-based ace investor Shankar Sharma. "The Indian market is going to be in a troublesome situation and returns at the portfolio level will remain muted as they have been for the past couple of years."Brent crude has risen 33% since the outbreak of the war on 28 February, reaching $96.62 a barrel on Thursday.

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This will be the third CPI print under the new series with the 2024 base year. Economists in the poll expect March CPI to be within a wide range of 3.1% to 4%, with some flagging upside risks as the war has driven crude oil prices sharply higher.“Headline CPI is expected to rise in March, led by an increase in non-food segments, even as food inflation is expected to remain steady,” said Aditi Nayar, chief economist at Icra Ltd.Some economists flagged a fading base effect as another key driver.

construction to consumer durables, aluminium’s price movements have wide-ranging implications for industry.“Caustic soda prices are highly vulnerable to energy price fluctuations, and energy remains a key variable in the current conflict scenario. Any increase in raw material prices is bound to impact user industries,” said Nirmal K.

Throughout this decade, India’s household savings have steadily left the safety of bank deposits to chase returns in equities. This was supposed to provide a stable pool of risk capital to entrepreneurs and act as a shock absorber against fickle hot-money inflows from overseas. The Iran war punched holes in this cheery thesis that a ceasefire may not mend.For the first time since the pandemic, individual investors were net sellers in the secondary market in the first 11 months of 2025-26.

including the temporary ceasefire in West Asia, have once again shown how quickly sentiment can shift once the immediate risk of escalation eases.History shows that once the contours of a geopolitical crisis become clearer, markets often stabilize and recover.Whenever geopolitical tensions escalate, investors instinctively ask: what is the worst that could happen? Could the conflict spiral into something larger, like a global confrontation? Such fears are not irrational.History offers a useful perspective. Wars, crises and geopolitical rivalries have repeatedly unsettled markets, but they have rarely derailed long-term wealth creation.During the Gulf War in 1990, global equity markets fell sharply when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and oil prices surged.

Has economic forecasting ever seemed so fraught with risk? A mix of almost imponderable new possibilities made possible by AI and the unpredictable state of the world makes people who trade contracts on so-called prediction markets seem foolhardy. Still, spare a kind thought for those of us in the commentariat who must hedge our prophesying.Put aside for a moment how long the truce between the US, Israel and Iran will last. And, if it does, how to estimate the huge backlog of ships and tankers waiting to transit through the Strait of Hormuz and how long this will take to clear.

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₹2.5 trillion relief package, including credit guarantees for MSMEs amid feedback from banks indicating potential stress in their MSME portfolios starting Q1 FY27, the persons cited above said, requesting anonymity.The current environment, shaped by the West Asia crisis, is creating conditions similar to the covid-19 period, warranting a closer look at relief measures. This assumes significance given that the MSME sector contributes about 30.1% to India’s gross domestic product (GDP) and accounts for 35.4% of manufacturing output and nearly 45% of India’s merchandise exports.MSME borrowers have increasingly approached lenders seeking relief measures, citing business disruptions from the West Asia war.

Write to Benoît Morenne at [email protected], Theo Francis at [email protected] and Collin Eaton at [email protected] all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint.

Over the past three days, 6-8 April 2026, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) that is responsible for setting the policy interest rate (repo) has, doubtless, burnt the proverbial midnight oil deliberating on the growth-inflation trade-off. As expected, it has concluded, like most central banks, that it is best to mark time.The ceasefire in the West Asia conflict, announced just a little over an hour before US President Donald Trump’s deadline to “wipe out an entire civilisation” was to end (and, coincidently, just hours before RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra’s statement), brings only a temporary reprieve (of a fortnight).It is far from clear whether the ceasefire will hold.

The turmoil of the last year-and-a half— tariff wars and physical wars (Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine), the abduction of a head of state and assassination of another, territorial ambitions and tattered alliances—has led to claims that the Pax Americana of stable global institutions managing commerce and conflict has ended. If that is true, what comes next? This uncertainty has fostered many forecasts of the future of global politics by policy pundits.Consider the analysis of Hal Brands, a historian at Johns Hopkins University and the American Enterprise Institute.

‘Goldilocks’ refers to a situation that is just right. Derived from the fairytale character who prefers things in the middle, it describes an optimal, balanced condition. In the previous policy review on 6 February 2026, the RBI governor highlighted that this was the prevailing condition in India, and rightfully so.

Since the West Asia war began, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd’s (GCPL) shares had dropped nearly 18% till Monday when it announced its March quarter (Q4FY26) business update. The shares have gained about 8% in the past two trading sessions.Margin pressures, given the higher palm oil price, seem to be worrying investors.

As the US-Iran war enters a fragile two-week ceasefire, with no clear endgame in sight, one may well ask how and why the world has reached this situation. Wars are rarely accidents.At their core, they are bets, and can hence be viewed through the lens of risk—not in a vague rhetorical sense, but by means of rigorous psychological analysis of the kind that forms part of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s Prospect Theory, particularly its four-fold pattern of risk attitudes.This framework maps human behaviour into four quadrants based on whether an outcome involves gains or losses and whether its probability is high or low.

Every month, Mint’s Plain Facts section brings out an update on key global data to thread together the biggest developments in the world that are worth paying attention to. The accompanying analysis and charts explain how each story is creating ripples on the global stage, where it is headed in the coming weeks, and whether it can impact India.Major central banks are expected to remain cautious in the coming weeks as the war in West Asia has clouded the global economic outlook, with supply disruptions and higher oil prices stoking fears of stagflation.The Federal Reserve, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan are widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged in the near future, amid the war fog, trying a balancing act between a possible increase in inflation and a slowdown in growth.

Smartphone makers in India have raised prices by as much as 40%, according to a Mint report, as the war in West Asia and a chip scarcity push up costs. The increases appear to be industry-wide, with brands such as Vivo, Oppo and Samsung, among others, raising their price tags.Ordinarily, this should not attract the attention of policymakers. But these handsets are fast turning indispensable at every socio-economic level, needed as they are for internet access, UPI payments, Aadhaar identity verification and a whole lot more.

. Some dusted off old camping stoves and refilled oil canisters. “When the pain becomes deep enough, the fear fades,” a 42-year-old Iranian woman said, citing five weeks of war and years of repression and economic crisis in the country.Less than 30 minutes after Trump’s post, Iranian officials told Egypt that Tehran had cut off direct communications with U.S. negotiators, according to officials from an Arab government.

NEW DELHI: A shortage of refrigerated containers (reefers) caused by the West Asia war is worrying Indian growers of mangoes ahead of the peak export season, according to five people aware of the development.With the war in its second month, key maritime routes, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, have been disrupted, leading to container shortages and higher freight costs. Many containers are stuck in transit due to congestion or are being re-routed, leading to longer shipment cycles.This poses a unique problem for India, which produces 20.68 million tonnes, or 44%, of the world's mangoes annually, the most by any country.

For at least a decade, developing countries across Asia and Africa have worried about growing dependent on the People’s Republic of China. They’re concerned about debt traps, coercive policies and hidden costs that might push their economies toward crisis.Crisis has come, and that logic has been turned on its head. After six weeks of the US and Israel’s war on Iran and its ensuing counter-attacks, it is the countries that bet on Chinese supply chains that are faring better than the ones that had trusted Pax Americana.