ECONOMY


Last week, the CNX SmallCap 100 index cracked by 7.3%. On Monday, it crashed a further 4%. The last time the index fell more than this was way back in December 2022 (8.33%). This serious decline comes after months of churning, with the index trying, but unable, to head higher. With the benefit...

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Moneylife Digital Team 08 January 2025
The National Statistical Office's (NSO’s) first advance estimate (FAE) for FY2024-25 projects India's real gross domestic product (GDP) growth at 6.4%, significantly slower than the 8.2% last fiscal. According to CRISIL Ratings, fiscal consolidation, elevated interest rates and prolonged high...

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In early November, I wrote a piece suggesting that the Indian economy is functioning as expected: muddling along. It rarely falls into a full-blown recession, but it also struggles to achieve sustained acceleration. This observation was immediately illustrated when India’s gross domestic...

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Dr TV Gopalakrishnan 03 January 2025
An egalitarian society cannot thrive if wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while many remain in poverty.    As finance minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman prepares to present her seventh Budget, the nation is abuzz with hope, anticipation and excitement. Everyone—from industry leaders...

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Moneylife Digital Team 31 December 2024
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has flagged increased stress in the microfinance sector, with rising delinquencies across all types of lenders and ticket sizes. While delinquency levels in consumer credit remained stable for banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), rising impairment can...

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Prachi Salve (IndiaSpend) 30 December 2024
Sixteen critical government datasets are delayed, and nine Union ministries have not released their annual reports--some of them for several years. The Census of India is now three years overdue.   The delay is spread across government datasets spanning multiple sectors including health,...

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Moneylife Digital Team 27 December 2024
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has raised concerns about the growing risks associated with unsecured lending and private credit markets, urging heightened vigilance amidst a cooling credit growth environment. In its annual report on Trends and Progress of Banking in India 2023-24, RBI...

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In the mid-1990s, when Indian corporates were struggling to handle an economic slowdown and high interest rates, I had developed a simple rule of thumb to filter high-quality companies: Does the company earn a significant part of its revenues from exports? The logic behind this was...

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Moneylife Digital Team 19 December 2024
India's merchandise trade deficit in November widened to an all-time high, led by a surge in gold imports, while exports fell, driven by a drop in crude oil prices. In November, the trade deficit printed at an all-time high of US$37.8bn (billion) compared to the average of US$23.5bn during...

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Moneylife Digital Team 06 December 2024
For the 11th consecutive time, the monetary policy committee (MPC) of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) decided to maintain the status quo on the repo rate, the central bank's rate for short-term loans to banks, unchanged at 6.5%. Consequently, the standing deposit facility (SDF) rate remains...

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Moneylife Digital Team 05 December 2024
In November, the average cost of a veg thali jumped 7% and non-veg thali increased by 2%, mainly due to an increase in the prices of tomato and potato, which collectively account for about 26% of the thali cost, says CRISIL Ratings.    According to Roti Rice Rate (RRR), CRISIL's monthly...

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Azera Parveen Rahman (IndiaSpend) 25 November 2024
The last quarter of each year is chock-full of festivals—which, traditionally, is when Indians shop for new clothes, spurred on by myriad sales and big discounts.   The textile industry is a vital sector of the Indian economy, contributing 2.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP), 13% of...

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The Indian stock market has experienced a remarkable surge over the past four years, recovering from the depths of despair during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Nifty 50 closed at 8,598 at the end of March 2020, and no one could have predicted the extent of the rebound: a pandemic, the Russian...

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Moneylife Digital Team 21 November 2024
Rating agency ICRA has projected the year-on-year (y-o-y) expansion of India's gross domestic product (GDP) to dip to 6.5% in the second quarter (Q2) of FY24-25 from 6.7% in the first quarter (Q1), with heavy rains and weak margins offsetting the buoyancy injected by the turnaround in...

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Varsha Torgalkar (IndiaSpend) 19 November 2024
Balasaheb Solanki, a 52-year-old farmer from Parbhani district in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region, is keen to cultivate sugarcane, oilseeds and pulses for the rabi season (winter harvest), which begins around November and lasts till late March. But his five acres of land does not have...

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With the Indian economy and markets, if you are too pessimistic, you will miss an opportunity; we saw this starting from the middle of 2022 until now, when growth has been strong across the board and stocks shot up in unison. However, once the cycle has turned, if you start to extrapolate,...

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Moneylife Digital Team 30 October 2024
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) added another 102MT (metric tonnes) to the domestically held gold in April-September 2024.   In its 43rd half-yearly report on management of foreign exchange reserves, RBI says its foreign exchange reserves as of 18 October 2024 are valued at US$688.27bn...

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What seemed like a one-off issue is starting to look like a trend. Collections from the goods and services tax (GST) fell to 6.5%, its lowest level in 40 months. At 6.5%, it barely tracked inflation which means there was no volume growth. The trade deficit widened to US$29.7bn (billion) in...

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Moneylife Digital Team 16 October 2024
Consumer price index (CPI)-based inflation rose to a nine-month high of 5.5% in September from 3.7% in August on high and volatile prices of vegetables, oils and costlier gold. At the same time, the index of industrial production (IIP) contracted by a slight 0.1% year-on-year (y-o-y) in August,...

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Many people seem convinced that the India is on track to our becoming a developed nation. The untrammelled bullish case is that we have shed the vulnerabilities that were obvious until 2014 when the Indian economic renaissance burst forth. In this view, a steady gross domestic product (GDP)...

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