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Suzuki Motorcycle India today said it has slashed the prices of its superbikes — GSX-R1000R and Hayabusa by up to Rs 2.2 lakh on account of reduced customs duty on such bikes. The company has reduced the price of GSX-R1000R by Rs 2.2 lakh to Rs 19.8 lakh. It used to cost Rs 22 lakh earlier. Similarly, Hayabusa is now priced at Rs 13.59 lakh, Rs 28,623 cheaper from earlier price of Rs 13.87 lakh (all prices ex-showroom Delhi). “Considering our focus on offering a premium range of products to our Indian customers, both the CKDs and CBUs form a key component of our existing and upcoming motorcycle line-up,” Suzuki Motorcycle India Executive Vice President Sajeev Rajashekharan said in a statement. The company plans to pass on the benefits of government’s decision to reduce the customs duty on CBU and CKD (completely knocked down) units to its customers, he added. “Conducive policies will encourage manufacturers like us to bring more products and support the emerging big-bike culture in In

There is no denying the fact that how good we are at planning our travel journeys, there’s always a time when we go wrong with it and have to make our bookings at short notice. This is where the Tatkal train ticket booking service of IRCTC comes in handy. Established by the Indian Railways in 1997 to book train tickets at a short notice, the Tatkal scheme has undergone lots of changes, including change in timings of its booking in 2015. Also, ticketing agents, including IRCTC agents, are prohibited from booking non-Tatkal tickets from 10 a.m to 12 a.m.  About 1.3 lakhs Tatkal transactions are processed by IRCTC daily but a bulk of these are booked within minutes of the Tatkal quota opening. Here’s what you need to know about Tatkal Booking window : The bookings of Tatkal AC tickets begin from 10:00 am while non-AC tickets can be booked from 11:00 am onwards, one day in advance of actual date of journey, excluding date of journey. The tickets can be procured either from over the counte

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd or HAL shares made a weak debut on Wednesday, with the share price falling more than 5 per cent. Hindustan Aeronautics shares fell to as low as  Rs. 1,150 – a discount of over 5.3 per cent compared with the issue price of  Rs.  1,215. Hindustan Aeronautics shares on Wednesday started trading with symbol ‘HAL’ on stock exchanges NSE and BSE. Listing of Hindustan Aeronautics shares comes after the company’s IPO last week, which saw a tepid response from investors with a subscription of 99 per cent. Government-owned Hindustan Aeronautics had raised  Rs.  4,113 crore ($633.35 million) in the initial public offer. The HAL or Hindustan Aeronautics IPO had opened on March 16 and closed on March 20. Wednesday marks the last trading session of financial year 2017-18. COMMENTS At 10:27 am, Hindustan Aeronautics shares were trading at  Rs.  1,176.25 on the BSE, whose benchmark index Sensex was down 200 points at 32,973. Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) is a fully-owned Gove

The bond market was mired in the longest slump since 1998, one that has stretched for more than six months, according to  Bloomberg . That ended on Tuesday, as sentiment took an about-turn to begin an impressive rally. Bond yields dropped 25 basis points, the biggest single-day fall that even the deluge of demonetization in 2016 couldn’t take credit for. The benchmark 10-year bond is now around 7.37% and trade volumes have jumped. It seems all the government had to do to escape higher cost of borrowing was nod to everything that the bond market wanted. So for the first time in a decade, the government will borrow only 48% of its full-year borrowing in the first six months. It will issue floating rate bonds, and borrow more through short-term bonds, thereby making it easier for investors to manage treasury. Voila, public sector banks which had forsaken the bond market are now back, sparking up trade volume. They will be the biggest beneficiaries of the rally. Many of these lenders will

While high-cost metro services are being planned and rolled out across the count ry with state governments wanting to replicate the Delhi Metro success, these systems could end up being white elephants, if the host city does not give enough ridership. Experts believe LRTS or the Light Rail Transit System are, therefore, best suited for Tier-II and Tier-III cities which have low population. Cities like Dehradun, Kozhikode and Trivandrum have been found to be feasible for such systems that can be put up at 40 per cent of the cost incurred for building a metro system. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) was engaged by the state government of Uttarakhand to prepare a detailed project report for a metro project in Dehradun. The corporation, instead, suggested LRTS that would cost less and could be later converted to full metro, if the ridership increases. The peak hour peak direction traffic for the city is not more than 12,000 passengers, and, therefore, it was felt LRTS was better.

Defence public sector undertakings Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) and Bharat Dynamics (BDL) decision to withhold material information from public shareholders is the key reason for tepid demand for their shares, particularly from overseas investors. Several institutional investors were left ineligible from investing in these companies as they fail to meet the disclosure norms. Several big-ticket foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) had to stay away from participating in these IPOs despite attractive prospects, say bankers. Both the issuances failed to garner any applications from FPIs and barely scraped through with the support of state-owned institutional investors such as Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). Any unlisted shares being issued to the US-based qualified institutional investors (QIBs) should either be registered with the US market regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or will have to comply with the so-called “Rule 144A”of the Securities Act. The rule allows non

Bond dealers were in for a surprise as the government on Monday moved to ease pressure on the market considerably by reducing the first-half borrowing programme to 47.5 per cent of the total budgeted borrowing, against the normal practice of borrowing 60-65 per cent.The Centre said it would borrow Rs 2.88 trillion in April-September 2018-19, against market expectation of Rs 3.3-3.6 trillion. The weekly borrowing size would also be Rs 120 billion, against the usual Rs 150-180 billion, a great relief for the markets.Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Garg told reporters that the government would draw an additional Rs 250 billion from the National Small Savings Fund (NSSF) to finance the fiscal deficit for 2018-19. As against an earlier estimate of Rs 750 billion, now Rs 1 trillion will be drawn from the NSSF to finance the fiscal deficit.The Centre will also reduce its planned buyback of government securities (G-Secs) by Rs 250 billion. Hence the gross borrowing for the year will be red