businessfortnight

In February 1, Anil Bhardwaj hopes Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will read out what he badly wants to hear. And he is more hopeful than he has ever been. As secretary-general of FISME (Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises), he represents 743 countrywide associations with two million members and over 10 million employees. Small and unorganised, FISME members are often unheard and invisible on India’s economic radar. Yet, part of the informal sector — which contributes over half of India’s economic output and employs 90% of India’s 470 million workforce — it is critical for the economy. Right now they are hurting. “Demonetisation has given us the biggest jhatka,” says Bhardwaj. For example, in Uttar Pradesh’s Yamuna Nagar, the hub of India’s plywood industry, factories are shut. “Now, they have only two options: shut down or shift to the formal economy (where cashless transactions can be resorted to),...

MUMBAI - Moving the head of Tata Consultancy Services to the top job at Tata Sons' holding company fills a critical hole for the salt-to-software conglomerate, but it leaves another at its most valuable company ahead of a complex and unpredictable 2017. The promotion of Tata veteran Natarajan Chandrasekaran - the well-regarded, high-performing boss of TCS under whom shares have quadrupled - should be no surprise. But the departure of Chandrasekaran, known as Chandra, from the Tata group's most profitable arm still rattled investors. They sent TCS shares down more than 4 percent on Friday, a day after it also posted better-than-expected quarterly results. "The IT industry is facing headwinds, and shareholders would have preferred Chandra to stay as CEO for some more time," said Souvik Guha, an analyst with Shriram Asset Management, which owns shares in TCS. Indeed, for Tata Sons, promoting one-time Tata intern Chandrasekaran to chairman of the $100 billion conglomerat...

Supporting the letter written by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) employees to Governor Urjit Patel protesting against operational "mismanagement" post demonetisation, the Congress on Sunday said the Central Bank's reputation lies in tatters due today. "RBI was told only on November 7. The currency management and the management of the capital is responsibility of the reserve bank under law. The Reserve Bank could have told the government it cannot be done...RBI's reputation and respect today lies in tatters. It has been battered very badly," Congress leader Anand Sharma told ANI. Calling the step of demonetisation 'illegal', Sharma said the autonomy of the Central Bank has been undermined due to the invalidation of the Indian currency. "The RBI's autonomy has been severely undermined by the invalidation of the Indian currency. What has happened is illegal. It is violation of the RBI act because neither the RBI has the powers to demonetise nor...

Jaipur: To protect the interest of public shareholders, Sebi will strengthen the regulations for mergers whereby very large unlisted companies would be restrained from getting listed by merging with a very small company. Besides, to improve the disclosure standards, an unlisted company merging with a listed one would have to comply with the requirement of disclosing material information. Amendments to the regulatory framework on schemes of arrangements -- mergers and demergers -- has been cleared by the Sebi board at its meeting held here on Saturday. Moving ahead to streamline as well as strengthen the norms, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said that an unlisted company can be merged with a listed one only if it is listed on a stock exchange having nationwide trading terminals. With the revised norms, the holding of pre-scheme public shareholders of the listed entity as well as that of Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) of the unlisted company should not be less t...

New Delhi: Halting its four-day winning run, gold drifted lower by Rs. 100 to Rs. 29,350 per 10 gram at the bullion market here today due to weak retail demand. However, silver recaptured the Rs. 41,000-mark by rising Rs. 250 to Rs. 41,200 per kg on increased offtake by industrial units and coin makers. Traders attributed the slide in gold prices to fall in demand from jewellers and retailers at existing levels but a firm trend overseas capped the fall. In the national capital, gold of 99.9 per cent and 99.5 per cent purity fell by Rs. 100 each to Rs. 29,350 and Rs. 29,200 per 10 grams respectively. The precious metals had gained Rs. 750 in the previous four days. Sovereign, however, held steady at Rs. 24,300 per piece of eight gram. On the other hand, silver ready rebounded by Rs. 250 to Rs. 41,200 per kg and weekly-based delivery by Rs. 180 to Rs. 41,000 per kg. Silver coins, however,continued to be traded at previous level of Rs. 72,000 for buying and Rs. 73,000 for selling of 100 p...

India’s unemployment index in 2017 will witness a marginal increase in 2017 according to a United Nations labour report. The report noted that workers in Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have more than a 70 per cent chance of falling into vulnerable employment. Vulnerable unemployment is the sort of employment that doesn’t grant workers any social security scheme (which is a common feature when it comes to wage and salaried workers), the report titled “2017 World Employment and Social Outlook” noted. Conducted by UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), the report found that economic Growth trends are lagging in a race against employment needs in 2017. With the Global GDP hitting a six-year low, at 3.1 per cent, in 2016, the global economic growth is expected to pick up in 2017. However, over the past few years forecasts of growth have been revised continuously for 2017 due to uncertainty, leaving behind questions of its ability to g...

Small-time private sector lender DCB Bank on Friday reported a 25 per cent surge in December quarter net at Rs 51 crore, driven primarily by a surge in the core interest income. The city-based lender had reported a post tax profit of Rs 41 crore in the year-ago period. Its net interest income rose 31 per cent to Rs 209 crore, while the non-interest income was up 36 crore to Rs 64 crore during the reporting quarter. The share of low-cost current and savings account balances increased to 25.85 per cent as on December 31, from the 21.91 per cent three months ago, on the back of a surge in deposits following the move to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes by the Central government. The surge in deposits, coupled with a massive slowdown in advances (which grew only two per cent sequentially) led to a drop in the credit-deposit ratio to 77.41 per cent from 83.33 per cent in the year-ago period. The bank's net interest margin was down 3.95 per cent as against 3.96 per cent in the year-ago per...