Gold traded within 40 cents of a four-year low after the Bank of Japan boosted stimulus and the Federal Reserve ended asset purchases, highlighting divergent central-bank policies and hurting bullion demand as the dollar climbed. Silver retreated to the lowest level since 2010. “One printing press stops and another one cranks up,” Felicity Emmett, senior economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., wrote in a […]
The scope of Britain’s Islamic finance market is widening with several initiatives from the government and private sector, although the country is about to lose one of its six full-fledged Islamic banks. In June, Britain became the first Western country to sell sovereign sukuk (Islamic bonds), helping boost its industry credentials as competition intensifies among global financial centres for a slice of Islamic business. Britain has 22 […]
Demonstrators protest outside a Labour gala dinner, which Ed Miliband attended Photo: Getty Images Professor Brian Cox has made explaining the inexplicable his life’s work. In recent episodes of his television series – Human Universe – the physicist has tramped from Ethiopia to Peru, via Morocco and Ohio, in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. He has asked whether we are alone in the galaxy, […]
By Harihar Swarup Can government ever find out black money deposited by Indians in foreign banks, particularly in Switzerland? Judging by records of the past governments, one wonders if Modi government can perform a feat—unearth back money stashed in foreign banks. Making election promises is one thing and fulfilling them is another thing. One of the main electoral promise of Narendra Modi was to unearth black money […]
By Barun Das Gupta The Union Cabinet has just cleared a Rs. 80,000 crore proposal for modernization of our defence forces. Earlier it had sanctioned another Rs. 40,000 crore for the same purpose. The decision has come not a day too soon. Defence has been the proverbial Cinderella of the Government ever since independence. Even the Chinese aggression of 1962 failed to make us realize the importance […]
New Delhi: Output of core industries grew at an eight-month low of 1.9 per cent in September, down from 5.8 per cent in August, indicating overall industrial production will be subdued. This could have repercussions on the gross domestic product for the second quarter. Official data showed on Friday infrastructure industries had slowed down the most since January when production grew 1.6 per cent. Output had […]
Mumbai: The Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (Irda) has come out with a new product planner rule, by which an insurance company can file only five products for approval in a year. However, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the country’s largest insurer, might be given a special dispensation by the regulator. In order to reduce the time taken for product approvals, Irda has asked life insurers for […]
New Delhi: State-owned NTPC Ltd’s concerns over the revised electricity tariff norms came home to roost with India’s largest power generation utility posting a 17% decline in its second quarter profit. NTPC posted a net profit of `2,071.63 crore for the quarter ended 30 September, compared with `2,492.90 crore a year earlier. Also, revenue increased by only 1% to `17,267.32 crore compared with a year ago. […]
Mumbai: Cairn India Ltd (Cairn India), the oil and gas unit of Sesa Sterlite Ltd, has initiated a polymer injection programme in the Mangala field in its Barmer oil and gas block in Rajasthan, said a company note released on Friday evening. This will help to arrest the falling output from the field and help the company in enhancing the oil recovery from the field. […]
India will launch an unmanned crew module in December onboard a heavy rocket to test its re-entry into the atmosphere for the country’s future maiden human space flight, the space agency chief said Thursday. “We will send an unmanned crew module on the experimental GSLV-Mark III rocket in December and test its re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere for a human space flight plan in future,” Indian […]
By Alwyn Scott and Irene Klotz NEW YORK/CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. Sat Nov 1, 2014 6:22am IST A piece of debris is seen near the scene of the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo near Cantil, California October 31, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson NEW YORK/CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. (Reuters) – The wait for paying passengers to see Earth from the vantage point of space looked a lot longer on Friday, […]
Gold and silver slumped to the lowest since 2010 as the dollar strengthened after the Bank of Japan unexpectedly boosted stimulus and the Federal Reserve ended asset purchases this week. The Fed is weighing the timing of interest-rate increases as other central banks add to stimulus to bolster their economies. The Bank of Japan today raised its annual target for enlarging the monetary base to 80 trillion […]
A tie-up between Malaysian and Hong Kong asset managers aims to market Islamic funds in mainland China, helping expand sharia-compliant investment products outside the industry’s core centres in southeast Asia and the Middle East. The asset management arm of Malayan Banking Bhd and Hong Kong-based Bosera International will jointly develop Islamic investment products, Nor’ Azamin Salleh, chief executive of Maybank Asset Management Group Bhd, told Reuters. The […]
|By TAP Staff| Nigerian property investors account for 60 percent of hotel apartment purchases in the Dubai hospitality market, according to a Nigerian newspaper. During the property market boom which suffered a crash in the world economic recession of late 2008 to 2010, Nigerian investors accounted for well over 40 percent of Dubai’s residential market, such that a significant number of houses on Palm Jumaireh—one of Dubai’s exclusive […]
BEIJING Fri Oct 31, 2014 2:56pm IST Visitors use their smarts phones underneath the logo of Tencent at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing May 6, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon/Files Related Topics Stocks Photographs from India which caught our eyes this week Pics BEIJING (Reuters) – Tencent Holdings Ltd said on Friday it would collaborate with International Business Machines Corp (IBM) on a new […]
By S. Sethuraman The American economy on an expanding phase is welcome for global growth and India’s exports if our exchange rates are not over-valued, but the ending of Federal Reserve’s asset purchases (QE3) opens way for US interest rates’ to rise in the near future with costs to other economies. This is likely to trigger some capital outflows from emerging market economies including India, which […]
MUMBAI: If order inflows are a harbinger of an improvement in the investment cycle, India Inc has reason to feel happy. In the quarter ended September this year, companies received about Rs 67,000 crore worth of fresh orders, up 45 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter basis and the highest in the past four quarters (see chart). The momentum has continued into the quarter ending December, too, […]
Mumbai: After mark-to-market gains of over 30% from the ONGC stake sale in FY12, LIC is looking forward to the government’s divestment programme to raise its stake further in the oil & gas company if the shares are offered at an attractive price, said a source. Apart from ONGC, the insurer sees SAIL as an attractive opportunity. The government plans to sell 5% stake in ONGC and […]
NEW DELHI: In line with the government’s plans to boost domestic output of coal, India’s largest thermal power producer, NTPC Ltd, could soon become one of the major coal-producers of the country as well. NTPC plans to produce up to 300 million tonnes of coal within the next four to five years, chairman and managing director Arup Roy Choudhury told Hindustan Times. “As we expect […]
SINGAPORE: India’s state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd aims to double its refining margins once it completes the expansion and upgrade of its Kochi refinery in southern India to process high sulphur crudes by 2016, a senior company official said. The refiner’s margins dropped to $3 a barrel this year, from $4.50 to $5 a barrel last year, but levels will increase by a about $3 to […]
Israeli police officers arrested a right-wing activist on Thursday after he tried to access the sacred plateau revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary in the Old City of Jerusalem. By ISABEL KERSHNER and JODI RUDOREN October 30, 2014 JERUSALEM — Under heavy pressure and the threat of new Israeli-Palestinian strife, Israel announced on Thursday that it would reopen a contested holy site in […]
By Kalyani Shankar Will Delhi go for fresh polls or is the BJP in a position to give a stable government? After the people of Delhi chose a hung Assembly, the Capital does not have a popular government since 17 February when the Aam Aadmi party chief Kejriwal resigned as chief minister claiming he was not allowed to get the Jan Lokpal bill passed. Now grapevine […]
By Anjan Roy It began with a bang and appears to be ending with a whimper. The huge noise about cash stashed away in Swiss banks by Indians, hoodwinking the tax authorities had kept the media and the common man salivating. There was this utter glee about knowing the names of those –presumably high and mighty—who might have salted away the nation’s money. We were seeing the […]
NEW DELHI: The government has relaxed the norms for allowing foreign direct investment (FDI) in the construction development sector. It is expected the move will boost affordable housing projects and smart cities across the country. At a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, the minimum built-up area required to attract FDI was reduced from 50,000 sq m to 20,000 sq m, while […]
