Page 2218 - Business Finance
Himachal achieves 66% target in providing LPG connections
The Himachal Pradesh government on Sunday claimed that its 'Grihini Suvidha Yojana' (GSY) has been a success as it has achieved 66 per cent target in five months since its launch on May 26.
Petrol, diesel prices down for fourth successive day
State-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) cut the prices of key domestic transport fuels -- petrol and diesel -- for the fourth consecutive day on Sunday on lower global crude oil prices.
JNPT mulls acquisition of 3 ports in Maha; aims at doubling
Country's largest container port JNPT is mulling to acquire three ports in Maharashtra, as it targets to more than double its profits. The Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) is also going ahead with its efforts to develop an offshore port at Wadhawan, north of the financial capital. Union Shipping and Ports Minister Nitin Gadkari told PTI that the JNPT, which handles more than half of the overall container traffic, is looking to acquire Vijaydurg, Revas and Dighi ports. It can be noted that of the three, only Dighi is an operational port while the other two are concessions held by corporations with little or no development on the ground. Gadkari said the Revas port, where the concession is held by Reliance Industries, is "in problem" and a solution will have to be found in co-ordination with the Maharashtra government. The minister also said that the port is in talks to acquire Vijay Kalantri-promoted Dighi Port in Raigad district, which is facing financial trouble and ..
U.S. Treasury's Mnuchin hails Israel investment opportunities, eyes infrastructure
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin praised investment opportunities in Israel on Sunday and said Washington would increase its participation in infrastructure projects there.
'Last time Pak has approached IMF'
Pakistan's Finance Minister Asad Umar said that Islamabad has approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for one last time for a bailout, in a bid to stabilise the country's debt-ridden economy.Speaking at an event at the Pakistan Stock Exchange here on Saturday, Umar was quoted by Geo News saying, "This will be the last IMF programme".Asserting that news organisations were portraying Pakistan's financial condition in a negative light, Umar asserted, "The media is portraying the country's economy as collapsing but that is not the case. No alarm bells are ringing." He added that financial gap was USD 12 billion in this year."In the next seven to eight months, the US dollar will see a decrease of 26 per cent to 27 per cent against the Pakistani rupee. The current account deficit, which earlier rose from USD 2.5 billion to USD 18 billion has started to decrease," he added.Umar informed that the central government had announced steps to improve the growth of stock exchange market ...
China says must balance stable growth and risk prevention
BEIJING (Reuters) - China must balance the need for stable growth while managing risks and maintain a prudent and neutral monetary policy, the State Council, the country's cabinet, said on Sunday following a meeting of top economic and financial policymakers.
Droom bets on Hindi, vernacular languages to drive biz
Online automobile marketplace Droom is working on introducing Indian languages on its platform, including Hindi, Telegu and Gujarati, by the next quarter as part of its efforts to expand user base on its platform. "As part of our international expansion, we had identified Thailand as one of the markets and developed a Thai language platform. We realised there is tremendous potential to do that in the Indian market as well as started working around it. By Q1 2019, we should be availablde in Indian languages like Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Tamil and Telegu," Droom founder and CEO Sandeep Aggarwal told PTI. He added that the company is working with its in-house team as well as external experts to make the language options available. "It is not just using a translate feature, it is a challenging process. Languages have a lot of nuances and it needs to be understood how the customer will respond to terms like 'check pricing', 'check vehicle inspection' and others in regional languages," he .
Goa global investors' meet with focus on start-ups in Dec: Prabhu
Global investors will meet in Goa in December to help finance the start-up community in the state, Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said Sunday. He said the Centre was thinking of making Goa as the start-up and logistics hub to create more jobs and that it will also promote agricultural export from the coastal state. "One of the problems faced by start-ups is finance. We have called all global players who are into financing. This event, to be held on December 7, will bring in global players for investment in the sector for the first time," Prabhu said. He was addressing a gathering after inaugurating the 'green' building centre at Kudaim Industrial Estate by ACC Cement company in partnership with Goa's ALCON group. It is a concept introduced by ACC to provide green solutions for building constructions. Prabhu said the event (to facilitate financing for start-ups) will be held in Goa annually during which the financiers, venture capitalists, investors and growth capital providers .
China must balance need for stable growth while managing risks: State Council
BEIJING (Reuters) - China must balance the need for stable growth while managing risks and maintain a prudent and neutral monetary policy, the State Council said on Sunday.
20% higher demand for full stack developers this yr:Report
There is a 20 per cent growth in demand for 'full stack developers' compared to last year as companies look for multi-skilled professionals, according to a report. A full stack developer is someone who can work on both the front-end and back-end portions of an application. The full stack development process involves work with all three layers of development - presentation layer, business logic layer and the database layer. While a front-end developer is a programmer who codes and creates the features that are directly accessible by the end user, back-end developers build the core functional logic and operations of the application. Thereport by predictive hiring solution provider Belong has revealedfull stack developers in India on the front end side are normally skilled in JQuery, HTML5, CSS and Javascript while on the backend stack are familiar with RubyOn Rails, Python, Java or PHP and multiple databases like SQL, MongoDB among others. Belong co-founder Rishabh Kaul ...
Muthoot Microfin aims to raise Rs 1,000 cr from IPO
Muthoot Microfin, which recently received markets regulator Sebi's approval for its initial public offering (IPO), plans to raise Rs 1,000 crore from share sale. According to market sources, the company plans to hit the market in the first half of the 2019. By that time market conditions would be conducive to raise around Rs 1,000 crore from the IPO, sources said. The proceeds will be utilised for expansion of the company's footprints in Northern India, sources said. Muthoot Microfin, part of the Muthoot Pappachan Group, IPO comprises fresh issue aggregating up to Rs 500 crore and an offer for sale of up to 16,310,072 equity shares, as per the company's DRHP. Muthoot Microfin is focussed on providing micro loans to women customers predominantly in rural areas. This will be fourth pure play microfinance company to be listed on the bourses after Bharat Financial Inclusion, Satin Creditcare and Credit Access Grameen. Muthoot Microfin had in July filed draft red herring prospectus (DRHP)
Policybazaar.com aims to sell 11 lakh vehicle insurance
Online insurance aggregator Policybazaar.com has set a target to sell 11 lakh policies during the current financial year due to the increased awareness about the online medium and change in consumer behaviour, a top official said. The company had offered motor insurance policies to six lakh vehicles last year of the total 12 lakh that were insured through online mode, Policybazaar.com, Motor Insurance Head, Sajja Praveen Chowdary said here. "For 2018-19, we expect entire market (size) looks to be 2.2 crore cars getting insured. Because there will be 25-30 lakh brand new cars that will come into the market. About five lakh cars which are older than 15-20 years will move out of market", he told PTI in an interaction. Elaborating, he said, "of the 2.2 crore vehicles that are expected to be insured, roughly about 18 lakh insurance policies will be done online and we (policybazaar.com) will be expecting (to offer insurance for) about 11 lakh of them." To a query, he said, the
Eveready to focus on lighting, appliances to grow topline
Dry cell battery major Eveready is focusing on the lighting and appliances business to drive its growth and expects the two segments to contribute almost half in its turnover in the next 4-5 years, a senior company executive has said. At present, the Kolkata-based company's total torch and battery business accounts for 70 per cent of its turnover. "Torch and battery business has been growing at a compounded annual growth rateof 2-3 per cent over last few years. We are focusing on other categories to grow our business ortopline,"Anil Bajaj, senior vice-president for sales and marketing, Eveready,toldPTI. "The projection in the next four to five years time is our turnover from the non-torch and battery category should start reflecting 45-50 per cent on our business. For this the challenge is to grow to lighting business andappliance business," he added. It had clocked a turnover of Rs 1,450crorelast fiscal, of which torch and batteries accounted for Rs 950 crore ...
Nafed to offload 200 tonnes of onion daily in Delhi to check prices
Cooperative Nafed will offload 200 tonnes of onion daily from Monday onwards in the national capital from the government's buffer stock in a bid to arrest price rise, its managing director Sanjeev K Chadha said. Retail prices of onion, the main kitchen stable, have shot up to Rs 30-40 per kg because of tight supplies from the producing states, as per the trade data. "We were off-loading 75-100 tonnes of onions from the buffer stock in the last ten days. Now, we have decided to release more quantity, at least 200 tonnes, on a daily basis in the wholesale markets," Chadha told PTI. Nafed (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) will offload onions not only in the wholesale markets but also to the Mother Dairy's subsidiary Safal for retail distribution in all its 400 outlets, he added. Mother Dairy has agreed to sell onions at Rs 23.90 per kg for the loose variant and Rs 25.90 per kg for the packed one. The increase in supplies will arrest the price rise in both .
MapmyIndia expects 30% revenue growth this fiscal on account of new products
Home-grown digital mapping firm MapmyIndia is looking at a 30 per cent growth in its revenue at around Rs 250 crore this fiscal on account of new integrated maps and other product offerings coupled with a large number of business requests, a top company official said. "We have now integrating maps, analytics, navigation ad tracking into single application. It is available for free for users to download. If we get one million download in the next six months we will achieve our objective, it is not that we want to limit ourselves to one million but we will achieve our basic transition," MapmyIndia Managing Director Rakesh Verma told PTI. He further said that the company is on track to achieve its Rs 1,000 crore revenue target by 2023 and expects a sudden spike in growth during any of the transitional year. "We expect to grow business by 30 per cent this fiscal. During one of the year in our 5-year road map, we expect to get something like 100 per cent growth. We are continuously ...
Germany's Scholz wants global tax floor to stop evasion
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has proposed a global minimum rate of corporation tax coupled with tougher measures to prevent tax evaders from stashing their profits in tax havens, newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported.
Mutual funds' exposure to banks hits 3-month low of Rs 1.88 lakh cr in Sept
Mutual funds' holding of banking stocks declined by over Rs 21,600 crore to Rs 1.88 lakh crore in September, driven by the correction in equity markets. Overall deployment of equity funds in bank stocks stood at Rs 1,88,620 crore at the end of September as compared to Rs 2,10,251 crore in the preceding month, as per data available from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). This was the lowest level of deployment since June, when equity funds' exposure to bank stocks stood at Rs 1.87 lakh crore. In May, it was at Rs 1.89 lakh crore. In percentage terms, exposure to banking stocks was at 19.78 per cent of equity AUM last month as against 20.21 per cent in August. "The fall in mutual fund (MF) exposure to banks is more driven by market correction than by any significant reduction by mutual funds. In fact MFs have more or less maintained their exposure in banks compared with six months ago (19.78 per cent in April) adding select banks," said Viday Bala, head of mutual fund ...
InvIT IndiGrid looks to raise Rs 3,000 cr for projects
IndiGrid, the country's first Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT), plans to raise Rs 3,000 crore to acquire projects as it looks to expand its portfolio. IndiGrid had recently raised Rs 250 crore in debentures through the e-bidding platform of BSE, making it the first-ever bond issuance by an InvIT, which was used to fund the acquisition of Patran Transmission Company. "IndiGrid unit holders have approved up to Rs 3,000 crore of equity raising through additional issue of units. Considering 49 per cent cap on leverage, this would allow us to acquire up to Rs 6,000 crore incremental projects. Any acquisition will require approval from unit holders," IndiGrid CEO Harsh Shah told PTI here. The company, which owned 16 independent revenue- generating elements, including 13 transmission lines of 3,361 kms and three substations of 7,000 MVA capacity across nine states in India, recently acquired PTCL's 1,000 MVA, 400/220 KV substation with 14 bays and LILO of both circuits .
Petrol, diesel prices cut for fourth straight day
Petrol and diesel prices were cut for the fourth straight day Sunday on softening international oil prices, providing some relief to consumers battered by two months of relentless rate hikes. Petrol price was cut by 25 paise a litre and diesel by 17 paise, according to the price notification of state-owned oil firms. In Delhi, petrol now costs Rs 81.74 a litre and diesel is priced at Rs 75.19 per litre. In Mumbai, petrol is sold for Rs 87.21 per litre and diesel at Rs 78.82. Fuel prices have been declining since Thursday as oil companies factored in softening of international rates. In four days, petrol price has been cut by Rs 1.09 per litre and diesel by 50 paise. State-run oil marketing companies Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) revise fuel prices with effect from 0600 hrs on a daily basis. The rates were reduced by a minimum Rs 2.50 per litre across the country on October 5, when the government cut excise duty on ...
Sigh of relief for citizens as fuel prices witness further reduction
Citizens have a reason to rejoice, as fuel prices have witnessed further reduction on Sunday.In New Delhi, petrol price has been slashed by 25 paise to retail at Rs. 81.74 per litre, while diesel is being sold 17 paise lower at Rs. 75.19 per litre.Price of petrol in Mumbai has been reduced by 25 paise to retail at Rs 87.21 per litre, while diesel is being sold at Rs 78.82 per litre after an 18 paise cut.Fuel prices have been soaring since the past few months in the country, burning a hole in commuters' pockets. While the Opposition has repeatedly blamed the Centre for the steep hike in the fuel price, the latter has maintained that global crude oil prices and other international factors are responsible for the increase in prices of petroleum products.As per India's pricing mechanism, the domestic fuel prices depend upon the international fuel prices on a 15-day average and the value of the Indian rupee.In a bid to ease the crunch caused by soaring fuel prices, Finance Minister Arun ...