by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, Markets, News
Mumbai : Key Indian equity indices on Tuesday fell from their record high levels to close on a flat-to-negative note as investors booked profits in metals, automobile and IT stocks.
According to market observers, mixed global cues, coupled with heavy selling pressure in index heavyweights like Infosys, Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M), Tata Steel, State Bank of India (SBI) and Tata Motors, among others, added to the losses.
The broader Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) closed lower by 28.35 points, or 0.27 per cent, at 10,335.30 points.
The barometer 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE closed at 33,213.13 points — down 53.03 points or 0.16 per cent.
The Sensex touched a high of 33,294.30 points and a low of 33,164.28 points during the intra-day trade.
However, the BSE market breadth was slightly bullish — 1,398 advances and 1,320 declines.
The broader market indices outperformed the BSE Sensex. The S&P BSE mid-cap index closed higher by 0.14 per cent and the small-cap index by 0.46 per cent.
“Markets corrected on Tuesday after the Nifty touched life highs in the previous session (on Moday). The indices had opened lower in the morning on the back of mixed Asian markets and a negative closing for the US markets overnight,” Deepak Jasani, Head – Retail Research, HDFC Securities, told IANS.
On Monday, the key indices scaled fresh highs, both on closing as well as intra-day basis.
The Sensex closed at a fresh high of 33,266.16 points, after touching a record high of 33,340.17 points intra-day, while the broader Nifty50, which touched an intra-day record high of 10,384.50 points, closed at a new high of 10,363.65 points.
“Major Asian markets ended on a mixed note, while European indices like FTSE 100 and CAC 40 traded higher,” Jasani added.
Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services, said: “Markets ended on a negative note after a volatile trade due to strong resistance around recent high and profit booking in PSU banks and metal stocks after the recent solid performance.
“The domestic macros remain positive supported by ample reforms and good Q2 results so far, while rising oil price in the global market and tomorrow’s (Wednesday) FED policy influenced domestic market to take a wait and watch approach.”
On the currency front, the rupee strengthened by 10-11 paise to close at 64.75 against the US dollar from its previous close at 64.85-86.
“Indian shares fell on Tuesday, retreating from record highs hit in the previous session, as recent outperformers such as SBI fell, while Infosys dropped after going ex-dividend,” Dhruv Desai, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Tradebulls, told IANS.
“Government’s measures on bank recapitalisation, infrastructure, and crop prices, coupled with domestic flows, would support India stocks even as downgrades in earnings continue,” he added.
Sector-wise, the S&P BSE metals index declined by 264.53 points, followed by automobile index by 104.34 points and IT index by 66.72 points.
On the other hand, the S&P BSE consumer durables index rose by 139.98 points, banking index by 69.52 points and realty index by 67.73 points.
Major Sensex gainers on Tuesday were: Axis Bank, up 8 per cent at Rs 523.05; ONGC, up 2.38 per cent at Rs 191.10; Bharti Airtel, up 0.98 per cent at Rs 497.65; Hero MotoCorp, up 0.63 per cent at Rs 3,854.75; and Wipro, up 0.39 per cent at Rs 294.35.
Major Sensex losers were: Infosys, down 2.43 per cent at Rs 921.65; M&M, down 2.14 per cent at Rs 1,345; Tata Steel, down 2.11 per cent at Rs 703.65; SBI, down 2.02 per cent at Rs 305.80; and Tata Motors, down 1.66 per cent at Rs 428.55.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business Summit, Events, Muslim World
Riyadh : The Saudi capital Riyadh will host on Tuesday the A-list of global corporate leadership in the most keenly awaited business gathering of the year.
Dozens of the biggest names in global business have arrived in the Kingdom for the Future Investment Initiative (FII), which is being hosted by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the body that is spearheading a slew of economic reforms. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, will inaugurate the investment summit.
The high-profile FII is being held under the patronage of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Christine Lagarde and BlackRock boss Larry Fink are among those attending the event, which is being called the “Saudi Davos” a reference to the Swiss town that hosts the main World Economic Forum meeting each year, Arab News reported.
“We see FII as a unique opportunity for the global community to bring together aspirational thinking around the future of the world economy,” said Pedro Oliveira, Oliver Wyman’s regional managing partner.
Saudi Arabia is undergoing unprecedented economic and social reforms as the Kingdom seeks to reduce reliance on oil and gas revenues while creating thousands of new jobs for a youthful population.
The FII will see “internationally-renowned business leaders and influencers discuss … how the challenges of the future can be addressed,” said PIF Managing Director Yasir Othman Al-Rumayyan.
Bankers and fund managers in the audience will be especially interested to hear about the planned initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company.
Aramco CEO Amin Nasser will be among the homegrown business heavyweights at the conference. On Monday, he quashed market rumors about possible delays to the planned IPO, which could raise $100 billion from investors.
“We have always said that we will be listing in 2018, and to be more specific, in the second half of 2018,” he told CNBC in an interview.
He added: “The IPO is on track. The listing venue will be discussed and shared in due course.”
The Aramco IPO is being seen as a touchstone for wider financial reforms that is drawing interest from the world’s biggest money managers — many of them attending the three-day event in Riyadh.
It has spurred interest from several international banks and rating agencies have set up operations in the kingdom in anticipation of a flood of new deals.
One of them is S&P Global Ratings, a credit ratings agency that assesses the creditworthiness of companies and countries seeking to raise debt.
S&P said on Monday it has opened a branch in Riyadh, making it the first international credit rating agency to be fully licensed to operate in Saudi Arabia.
Companies in Saudi Arabia have typically used bank loans to meet their financing needs, but that is expected to change. “As Saudi Arabia’s capital markets evolve to match the size of the country’s economy, there is a prime potential for greater debt issuance,” said Meshari Al-Khaled, the newly appointed S&P office head in Riyadh.
—OIC-UNA/IINA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate finance, Corporate Governance, Corporate Reports, Economy, Finance, News, Politics
(Note Ban Series)
By Biswajit Choudhury,
New Delhi : While the immediate impact of demonetisation was seen in the long queues outside ATMs and felt through acute cash shortage, its anniversary is an appropriate vantage point to assess the less visible and generalised effect on the economy of what was easily the most disruptive measure post-Independence.
The difficulty in making a cost-benefit analysis is that the move was not purely economic, given the fact that the currency issuer Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had no role in the decision, as testified by former Governor Raghuram Rajan.
So demonetisation comes across more as a measure of political economy with the declared objective of curbing black money and countering counterfeiting and terror finance, and which appeared to have paid political dividend to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Uttar Pradesh elections this year.
Starting with the official figures, at the end of May, the Central Statistics Office announced that GDP during the fourth quarter, ending March this year, fell sharply to 6.1 per cent from seven per cent in the previous quarter, while growth for the year as a whole was also expected to decline correspondingly. India’s GDP during the past fiscal grew at 7.1 per cent, at a rate lower than the 8 per cent achieved in 2015-16.
In terms of gross value added (GVA), which excludes taxes but includes subsidies, the growth came in even lower at 5.6 percent over the GVA for 2015-16.
Chief Statistician T.C.A. Anant sought to downplay the impact of the note ban, saying he “would caution against reading a single number that comes out after an event as being reflective of consequences of the event”. At the time of releasing the previous quarter’s GDP, he had said that this was based on figures on industrial production and only on the advance filings of corporates.
The numbers, therefore, had not factored in the informal economy, which accounts for an estimated 45-50 per cent of output in the Indian economy and employs around 85 per cent of the country’s workforce. More importantly, this sector transacts entirely in cash and was the hardest hit by demonetisation, which withdrew 86 per cent of currency from circulation.
Former Chief Statistician Pronab Sen had said in March that once the informal sector numbers came in, the growth rate could go below 6.5 per cent, which turned out to be close to the actual figure.
At the same time, both the RBI and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered India’s growth estimates for 2016-17 by up to 1 percent, citing the impact of demonetisation.
This was not too far from former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s prediction that the economy would be hit by around two per cent because of the note ban.
Rating agency ICRA said in a note earlier this year that “since the early estimates of quarterly GVA rely heavily on available data from the formal sector, which is expected to have weathered the note ban better than the informal sector, the third quarter (October-December) projected GVA growth of 6.6 per cent may not fully capture the impact of the note ban”.
In October, the IMF said in its latest World Economic Outlook that India’s economic growth for 2017 and 2018 will be slower than earlier projections. The report cited “lingering impact” of demonetisation and the goods and services tax (GST) for the expected slowdown during the current and the next year. The IMF projected India to grow at 6.7 per cent in 2017 and 7.4 per cent in 2018, which are 0.5 and 0.3 percentage points less than the projections earlier this year, respectively.
The World Bank too forecast that India’s GDP may slow from 8.6 per cent in 2015 to 7.0 per cent in 2017 because of disruptions by demonetisation and the GST.
Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, who, on being asked by Modi for his informal opinion, had said the costs of such a measure would outweigh any long-term benefits, while there were less costly alternatives to achieve the stated goals of demonetisation.
“On the short-term costs of such a measure, monetary economists would say that you’d see an immediate impact on activity. People who used currency, things would shut down for them… there would be an unrecoverable effect on economic activity,” Rajan said here at the launch of his book “I Do What I Do”.
Citing the cost analysis by metrics of demonetisation done by JP Morgan, Rajan said the GDP took a hit of around 1.5 per cent, which translates to a sum of Rs 200,000 crore.
“On the benefit side you have Rs 10,000 crore coming in, but you need a lot more taxes than that to really benefit,” he said.
Coming back to the beginning, this is what Nobel winning economist Amartya Sen had to say of demonetisation: “It is a despotic action that has struck at the root of the economy based on trust. It undermines notes, it undermines bank accounts, it undermines the entire economy of trust. That is the essence in which it is despotic.”
With demonetisation also designed to enlarge the tax base, an ex-IRS official’s perspective on Modi’s likely motive is provided by former Director of Revenue Intelligence B.V. Kumar, who writes in his book, “Underground Economy”: “One reason could be that Modi has completed half his term and not a single initiative during his term has shown results which can be termed as ‘spectacular’ and ‘vote spinners’.”
Demonetisation, after one year, does not look as rosy as it was painted out to be by the image spinners in the government.
(Biswajit Choudhury can be reached at biswajit.c@ians.in)
(Editors: The above article is the second in the series of demonetisation stories leading up to November 8, the day note ban was imposed last year).
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Rabat : Morocco’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to reach $121.4 billion in 2017 compared to $116 billion in 2016, according to the latest projection of the African Development Bank (ADB) published recently in Abidjan.
For the first time, Morocco’s GDP is forecasted to exceed MAD 120 billion. According to a statistical bulletin of socioeconomic indicators in Africa, the performance of the Moroccan economy almost doubled in the last 12 years, from $65.62 billion in 2006 to 121.42 billion in 2017.
With this significant growth in the national GDP, Morocco ranks sixth in Africa’s economic powers, following Nigeria with $581.5 billion, South African with $276.1 billion, Egypt with $263.7 billion, Algeria with $170.3 billion, and Sudan with 123.9 billion.
For the ADB, Morocco’s economic growth is expected to see a significant acceleration in 2017, settling at 4.5 percent and 3.9 percent in 2018, mainly due to a strong rebound in agricultural production. According to the bank, the kingdom will exceed the global, African, and North African average growth rates set at 3.5, 3, and 3.1 percent respectively in 2017.
Globally, the bank is expecting a general improvement of the African economic performance in the medium term, boosted by the efforts deployed by the countries in the structural transformation of their economies, which “must continue with urgency and intensity” in the face of volatile commodity prices.
According to the ADB, the dynamics of domestic demand and public investment in infrastructure have also helped support growth in many countries.
“Beyond the accumulation of physical capital, the productivity of these investments, which is important for sustainable growth, must remain a political priority,” ADB experts recommend. According to the bank, budgetary and current account deficits are expected to narrow due to strong export performance and increased government revenues.
At the regional level, East Africa remains the fastest growing region, with an estimated 5.4 percent in 2017 and 5.8 percent in 2018.
—SM/OIC-UNA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, Markets, News
Mumbai : Even as the general investors’ sentiments were subdued on Tuesday, the key Indian equity index — the NSE Nifty50 — made marginal gains to close at a new high.
According to market observers, low volumes and profit booking subdued investors’ sentiments — however, expectations of healthy quarterly results aided the key indices in paring some of their losses.
On a closing basis, the wider Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) inched up by 3.60 points or 0.04 per cent to close at a new high of 10,234.45 points.
However, the 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE, closed on a negative note, ending at 32,609.16 points, lower by 24.48 points or 0.08 per cent from Monday’s close at 32,633.64 points.
In terms of the broader markets, the S&P BSE mid-cap index rose by 0.40 per cent, and the small-cap index gained 0.53 per cent.
On Monday, better-than-expected macroeconomic data pushed the key Indian equity indices to close at record highs. The NSE Nifty50 had gained 63.40 points, or 0.62 per cent to end at 10,230.85 points, while the Sensex of the BSE closed higher by 200.95 points or 0.62 per cent to 32,432.69 points.
“Markets ended flat on Tuesday as they traded in a narrow range. Trading sentiment seemed to be subdued ahead of a long Diwali weekend,” Deepak Jasani, Head – Retail Research, HDFC Securities, told IANS.
“Major Asian markets have ended on a mixed note. European indices like FTSE 100 and DAX traded higher.”
Anand James, Chief Market Strategist, Geojit Financial Services, said: “Earnings positivity helped to maintain gains, but headaches over Korea as well as valuation fears characteristic to bull market rallies, ensured that sharp gains were limited to few stocks, especially as investors profit booking was seen in the index heavy weights eyeing the long weekend.”
On the currency front, the rupee weakened by 30 paise to close at 65.02 against the US dollar from its previous close at 64.72.
According to Dhruv Desai, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Tradebulls, the benchmark indices snapped a three-session long gaining spree as it tracked mixed trends in global markets.
“Most of the sectoral indices traded in the positive territory, except for consumer durables, bankex and IT index,” Desai told IANS.
Sector-wise, the S&P BSE oil and gas index surged by 116.18 points, followed by capital goods index by 75.21 points and healthcare index by 53.78 points.
On the other hand, the S&P BSE banking index fell by 66.74 points, consumer durables index by 36.88 points and IT index by 25.49 points.
Major Sensex gainers on Tuesday were: Cipla, up 4.09 per cent at Rs 631.25; Bharti Airtel, up 2.86 per cent at Rs 465.95; Asian Paints, up 2.06 per cent at Rs 1,194.40; Bajaj Auto, up 1.09 per cent at Rs 3,257; and Hero MotoCorp, up 0.85 per cent at Rs 3,806.
Major Sensex losers were: Axis Bank, down 1.44 per cent at Rs 513.20; Tata Motors, down 1.04 per cent at Rs 432; Infosys, down 0.84 per cent at Rs 931.45; Dr. Reddy’s Lab, down 0.62 per cent at Rs 2,382.35; and State Bank of India, down 0.44 per cent at Rs 251.15.
—IANS
