- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Here are news in brief related to Indian economy and business for Monday, August 8, 2022:
The Indian government has not abandoned the target of increasing its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 while reassessing its commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the country’s Energy Conservation (Amendment) Bill 2022 aims to help achieve these goals, India’s power minister RK Singh said in the parliament on Monday. The Energy Conservation (Amendment) Bill 2022, which was passed by the Lok Sabha or Lower House of the parliament the same day, aims to boost clean energy and help in achieving New Delhi’s commitments towards climate change.
The Reserve Bank of India is likely to raise its key policy rate by up to 60 basis points by the end of 2022, before pausing, but the pace of rate hikes is likely to slow down, analysts said, according to Reuters. “We are retaining our view of a terminal policy rate of 6 per cent…We expect a 35 bps hike at the next meeting in September and a final 25 bps hike in December, before growth concerns and the cumulative rate hikes delivered thus far lead the MPC to shift into an extended pause,” Nomura economist Sonal Varma said in a note. The RBI’s monetary policy committee raised its repo rate by 50 basis points on Friday, the third increase in the current cycle, to cool stubbornly high inflation that has remained above its tolerance band for six straight months.
Akasa Air, India’s latest airline to take off, is a frugal airline and will be very competitive in the aviation space, its co-founder Rakesh Jhunjhunwala said on Monday, a day after the Mumbai-based company launched commercial operations. Jhunjhunwala, a billionaire who is also known as “India’s Warren Buffett”, expressed confidence in the future of the country’s aviation sector. “Our competitors are ordering new chairs in response to Akasa’s chair,” he told CNBC TV-18 in an exclusive interaction. Akasa will compete against the likes of IndiGo and SpiceJet for a share of India’s growing domestic air-travel market.
The Vedanta Group has received ‘multiple expressions of interest’ for the Sterlite plant in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the group was yet to take a call on the bids, Anil Agarwal, chairman of the group, told the Hindu BusinessLine. “I have trust in the judiciary. I have no doubt, whether we open it or somebody else does, the plant is a national asset. We have received multiple expressions of interest,” he said . The company is seeking to divest the controversial plant which has been shut since 2018 following protests on alleged environment norm violation.
The Narendra Modi government has set a target to monetise infrastructure assets worth Rs 1.62 lakh crore (£16.8 billion/$20.3 billion) in the current financial year, minister of state for finance Pankaj Chaudhary said on Monday. In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Chaudhary said infrastructure assets worth Rs 97,000 crore (£10 billion/$12.1 billion) were monetised during the financial year ended March 2022. The minister also informed the lower house of the parliament that the government has announced Rs 6 lakh crore (£62.3 billion/$75.3 billion) National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) to unlock the value in infrastructure assets in sectors ranging from railways and roads to power.
Indian telecom service provider Bharti Airtel on Monday said its consolidated net profit surged by 466 per cent year-on-year to Rs 1,607 crore (£167 million/$202 million) for the quarter ended June 30, 2022, helped by a jump in revenue per user and increase in subscribers, Asian News International reported. During the first quarter of the last financial year, Bharti Airtel’s net profit stood at Rs 284 crore (£29.4 million/$35.6 million). Its consolidated revenue jumped by 22 per cent year-on-year to Rs 32,805 crore (£3.4 billion/$4.1 billion) for the first quarter of the current financial year. “This has been another solid quarter. We continue to deliver strong and sustained growth at 4.5 per cent sequentially. EBITDA margins are now at 50.6 per cent. Our enterprise and homes business has strong momentum and delivered strong double-digit growth, improving the diversity of the overall portfolio. Airtel’s strategy of winning with quality customers continues to yield good results with an industry beating ARPU at Rs 183 (£1.9/$2.30),” Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO, Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.
The Narendra Modi government is running a labour welfare scheme for nearly 50 lakh ‘beedi’ workers and their families living across the country, the country’s labour and employment Minister Bhupender Yadav said in Lok Sabha on Monday. Yadav said the scheme envisages health care facilities, scholarships and housing. He said under the scheme health care facilities is provided to ‘beedi’ workers and their families with a network of 285 dispensaries and 10 hospitals located across the country. There are 49.82 lakh (4.98 million) beedi workers in the country of whom 18.29 lakh (1.82 million) belong to the state of West Bengal, he said. The scheme covers both men and women beedi workers, he said.
Shubham Tanks and Liners Pvt. Ltd. (STLPL), an Indian company focused on water storage and water management solutions has invested in creating the capacity to supply 4000+ tanks per annum from its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility located at Kalyan in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, ANI reported. With this the company is set to achieve a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore (£104 million/$126 million) by 2025. Started by a first-generation entrepreneur, Sunil Uplap, STLPL today has evolved into a strong international player in its chosen lines of business. The company is poised at inflection point with the zincalume steel bolted liner tanks market waiting to explode. STLPL is the pioneer in bringing the bolted steel with liner tank technology into India.
