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The Indian Express Thursday, November 21, 2019 THE Reserve Bank of India Wednesday superseded the board of directors of crisis-ridden Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL), which has liabilities of close to Rs 84,000 crore, and initiated the bankruptcy proceedings “owing to governance concerns and defaults by DHFL in meeting various payment obligations”. The RBI, which stepped in after the banks and DHFL failed to agree on a resolution plan to bring the firm back on the rails, has appointed R Subramaniakumar, former MD and CEO of Indian Overseas Bank, as the Administrator to run the affairs of the company. The immediate fallout of the move is that banks will have to declare DHFL loans as non-performing assets (NPAs), adding to the bad loan worries of the banking system. The RBI announcement came after market hours. The DHFL stock which closed at Rs 20.15 Wednesday had touched a 52-week high of Rs 252.20 on December 31, 2018. The central bank said it would take the

The Indian Express  Thursday, November 21, 2019 The government is expected to launch India’s first fixed income Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) comprising debt securities of about a dozen state-owned companies by mid-December 2019. The ETF is expected to have a size of Rs 15,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore. Government sources said roadshows are currently on for the Fund, which could be launched as early as December, and that there is significant interest in the market. The fund will comprise only AAA-rated papers of the PSU companies. The debt ETF provides a new option to conservative investors to own securities of government-owned companies along with the facility of overnight liquidity as ETF units will be listed on exchanges. Compared with bank fixed deposits that generate a post-tax return of around 5.5 per cent, this product could generate a return of over 7 per cent for the investors. The debt ETF can comprise corporate debt securities in the form of bonds, credit-lin

Economic Times  Nov 20, 2019, 10.40 PM IST   The Cabinet on Wednesday gave its approval to the Food Ministry's recent decision to import 1.2 lakh tonnes of onions in a bid to improve the domestic availability of the key kitchen staple and check prices.  Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed about the decision at a media briefing after the Cabinet meeting.  On November 16, Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had announced that the government will import 1,00,000 tonnes of onions through state-run MMTC NSE -2.65 % , which has already floated a tender for buying 4,000 tonnes of the commodity from the global market. The government is also facilitating private imports and also relaxed phytosanitary and fumigation norms till December.  The move comes after the government's various efforts to boost the domestic availability failed to cool down the retail prices significantly. Retail prices of onions are continuing to rule above Rs 60/kg in the nationa

The Hindu,  NOVEMBER 21, 2019 00:07 IST The process to make a National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be carried out across India, Home Minister Amit Shah said in the Rajya Sabha on November 20 and whenever it is done, the exercise will be repeated in Assam, he added. He was replying to a question by Congress MP from Karnataka Syed Nasir Hussain. “The Home Minister while speaking in Kolkata recently had said that all those names which didn’t figure in the NRC, belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Christian community need not worry. My question is whether under NRC citizenship can be granted to certain communities and exclude the Muslims,” Mr. Hussain said. Mr. Shah said, “I think the member is confused between NRC and Citizenship Amendment Bill. NRC has no provision to exclude any person of any religion. All Indian citizens will be included irrespective of their religion.” As a supplementary, nominated MP Swapan Dasgupta asked whether the government will make a distinction betwe

    Live Mint  Updated: 20 Nov 2019, 08:47 AM IST Indian stock markets may continue to be tepid on Wednesday following muted performance in global peers. Asian shares lumbered lower on Wednesday as the Sino-US trade talks produced nothing but a stream of conflicting messages, while concern about a global glut saw oil prices suffer their biggest spill in seven weeks. Data from the American Petroleum Institute, out late Tuesday, showed a far larger rise in crude stocks than expected. That followed reports that Russia was unlikely to deepen its crude output cut. Brent crude futures stood at $60.91 a barrel early on Wednesday, after sliding 2.6% overnight, while US crude recouped a single cent to $55.22. Action in share markets was subdued, with MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan off 0.25%. Japan's Nikkei eased 0.2% and South Korea 0.4%. Hopes of progress in the resolution of US-China dispute had risen on Tuesday when  Bloomberg  reported that talk

The Economic Times  Nov 19, 2019, 10.59 PM IST A partnership between two democracies like India and Australia should be "far easier" to build than one between Australia and a one-party communist state like China, former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott said. He made the remarks on Monday while speaking at an event organised here by the India Foundation. The theme of the event was 'Vision For Free & Open Indo-Pacific'. "A partnership between two democracies such as India and Australia should be far easier to build than one between Australia and a one-party communist state like China," Abbott said. "Perhaps this is why the relationship between Australia and India, until recently, has largely been taken for granted; while that with China has been carefully cultivated by all governments and assiduously fostered by all prime ministers since Bob Hawke," he added. While still keeping up the China relationship, Abbott said, it was the relati

Business Standard,  Swansy Afonso   &   Suvashree Ghosh | Bloomberg   Last Updated at November 20, 2019 11:04 IST India’s central bank has unearthed more than $450 million in extra bad loans at Yes Bank Ltd., the lender that is contending with a shadow-banking crisis and concerns over soured debt and capital. Gross non-performing assets assessed by the Reserve Bank of India were 32.77 billion rupees ($457 million) higher than Yes Bank had disclosed as of March 31, the Mumbai-based lender said Tuesday. The bank has already classified 12.59 billion rupees of the divergence as bad loans as on Sept. 30, it said. An earlier dispute with the central bank over Yes Bank’s reporting of bad debts culminated in co-founder Rana Kapoor’s departure as chief executive officer at the start of this year. New CEO Ravneet Gill is trying to raise funds by December to revive growth and reassure investors that the worst is over for the bank, which has tumbled 65% this year. Worst-Performing

THE BUSINESS LINE, L ast Updated at November 20, 2019 01:37 IST Public sector banks (PSBs) reported frauds of over Rs 95,700 crore in the first six months of the current financial year, Parliament was informed on Tuesday. Finance Minister   Nirmala Sitharaman  said that according to the   Reserve Bank of India  (RBI), PSBs reported 5,743 incidents of fraud involving a total amount of Rs 95,760.49 crore from April 1 to September 30 (based on the date of reporting). She said based on the date of occurrence of frauds, during the same period, the number of frauds was 1,007, involving a total amount of Rs 2,509.86 crore. In a written reply to another question, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur told the Rajya Sabha that government-owned banks reported 26.1 per cent of all frauds worth over Rs 1 lakh brought to notice during 2018-19, while their lending share was 63.81 per cent in the aggregate gross advances of scheduled commercial banks. “On this basis,

The Livemint,  Updated: 20 Nov 2019, 09:03 AM IST NEW DELHI : India’s economic growth probably hit a new low last quarter, with early forecasts showing expansion below 5%. Economists at State Bank of India, Nomura Holdings Inc. and Capital Economics Ltd. lowered their growth forecasts for the quarter ended September to between 4.2% to 4.7%. The government is scheduled to publish the data on Nov. 29. Growth of 4.2% would be the lowest since authorities adopted a new base year for gross domestic product data in 2012. The economy expanded 5% in the three months through June. “We now believe GDP growth did not bottom in" the April-June period, said Sonal Varma, chief economist for India and Asia at Nomura in Singapore, who is predicting 4.2% growth for last quarter. “High-frequency indicators have plunged and domestic credit conditions remain tight amid weak global demand." The Reserve Bank of India has cut interest rates five times this year to boost growth, with t

Business FP Staff Nov 20, 2019 09:15:34 IST Private sector lender Yes Bank's promoter entities now hold merely 900 shares in the company. Kapoor, Yes Capital and Morgan Credits sold 2.04 crore shares or 0.80 percent of holding in the open market on 13-14 November, the bank informed the exchanges. Fifteen years after he co-founded Yes Bank, and a little over a year after his term as its chief executive was cut short by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Rana Kapoor has virtually sold off his entire holding in the private sector lender, according to a regulatory filing by the company on Tuesday. Incidentally, the disclosure about Kapoor and the entities related to him dumping shares also came on a day when the bank made another admission of concealing over Rs 2,299 crore of bad assets for the third successive year, a PTI report said. The city-headquartered bank also said in a separate filing that it had under-reported as much as Rs 2,299 crore of bad loans in the pa

Rahul Wadke   Mumbai | Updated on  November 20, 2019   Published on  November 20, 2019 Maharashtra’s sugar production for 2019-20 (October-September) is likely to dip 45 per cent due to lower acreage, adverse climatic conditions and diversion of sugarcane for animal fodder. Ethanol production is also expected to dip by 40 per cent. An executive with a large sugar mill has said that prices in the wholesale and retail markets, however, are expected to be firm due to massive unsold stocks from previous years. For the sugar year 2018-19 the production was 107 lakh tonnes (lt) and for 2019-20 it is likely decline to 58 lt. On Tuesday, Sugar Commissioner of Maharashtra, Shekhar Gaikwad told  BusinessLine  that in 2018-19, the acerage was 11.62 lakh hectares but for 2019-20 it has dipped to about 8.22 lakh hectares. The Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari met Gaikwad and gave the go-ahead for crushing operations for the year 2019-20. Since the State is under Presidential rule, Gov

PTI New Delhi | Updated on November 19, 2019  Published on November 19, 2019 The Government has extended the date for traders till November 20 to register themselves with Steel Import Monitoring System (SIMS) to import 215 iron and steel products. “One time relaxation till November 20, 2019, for obtaining SIMS registration is notified,” the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in a notification. Earlier, the date was November 1. In September, the government had made it mandatory for traders to register themselves with SIMS to import 215 iron and steel products. These items include certain flat-rolled products, some stranded wire, ropes, cables; certain items of springs and leaves for springs of iron and steel, tubes, pipes and hollow profiles, diesel-electric locomotives, and some parts of railways. The SIMS, under the Department of Commerce, collects and publishes data of steel mill product imports. It provides information on steel trade with the US to stakeho

The Times of India,  TNN | Nov 19, 2019, 07.55 PM NEW DELHI: Reliance Jio, the country’s largest telecom operator, followed rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea in plans to raise consumer tariffs, saying the move is necessitated by the need to make fresh network and technology investments. When it happens, it will be the first significant tariff increase by the new telecom operator which had disrupted the financials of the mobile industry through its aggressive plans after launching services in September 2016. “Like other operators, we will also work with the government and comply with the regulatory regime to strengthen the industry to benefit Indian consumers and take measures, including appropriate increase in tariffs in next few weeks,” the company said in a statement that came a day after Airtel and Vodafone Idea announced plans to raise consumer tariffs from next month. Jio, however, said that the tariff hike will be done “in a manner that does not adve