Economy

Inflation almost halved to 6.61 per cent for the week ended December 13 from the peak of 12.91 four months ago as manufactured goods and some food items turned cheaper. Wholesale prices-based inflation came down for the seventh consecutive week to a nine-month low due to the cascading effect of cuts in fuel prices, providing more space to the RBI for further cuts in key policy rates.

India's foreign exchange reserves swelled to USD 254.052 billion for the week ended December 19, up by USD 3.599 billion over the previous week. Foreign exchange reserves stood at USD 250.453 billion in the previous week. The foreign currency assets (FCA), during the week, went up to USD 245.308 billion, up USD 3.583 billion, from USD 241.725 billion in the week-ago period, the Reserve Bank's weekly data showed here.

Britain's richie-rich club saw their wealth melting away by more than half to 200 billion pounds in a year marked with a severe economic downturn, while Indian- origin steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal took the biggest hit. With the net worth of some billionaires getting hit by as much as 90 per cent, Mittal and another Indian-origin business tycoon in Britain Anil Agarwal are among those having sufferred the biggest losses, The Sunday Times reported today.

Switzerland's second biggest bank Credit Suisse's clients have lost up to a billion Swiss francs in the alleged pyramid scheme of Wall Street titan Bernard Madoff, according to a Sunday media report. Citing the bank's "internal estimates," Swiss Sunday newspaper Sonntag said customers had lost "between 900 and 1,000 million francs (840-934 million dollars, 598-665 million euros)."

A planned British government bailout worth tens of millions of pounds to keep Jaguar Land Rover afloat has helped the company’s owners, Tata, to secure extra funds. Tata found the cash because its banks were convinced that the Government would prevent a collapse, a source said. Officials had been working on the details of the package over the weekend.

The economic meltdown is a reality and has hit this part of the world too. The Jordanian capital Amman is facing the brunt of the meltdown and preparing for the worse. Many sectors including construction work has been hit and the country is looking for many contingency plans.

Chairman of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. R C Bhargava has said that sales of automobiles have not picked up due to lack of easy loans from Banks.Talking to reporters during a National Road Safety Mission programme here on Wednesday, Bhargava said, "It''s not about loans being cheap, till the time these loans won''t be available easily, automobile sector will have problems, lot of loan applications are getting cancelled. There are many banks which are not ready to provide loans, to the customers, who want to buy cars."

Global economic crisis and recent terror attacks in Mumbai affected the otherwise thriving pub business in India as people shied away from splurging even during the festive season.Festive season is considered as the boom time for the restobars and pubs, as people loosen strings to their purses. But economic meltdown and recent terror attacks appears to have changed the trend during this festive season.

Gold and Silver bounced back on the mumbai bullion market on fresh demand from stockists. The expectation of a uptrend has increased in view of the upcoming marriage season and late recovery of precious metals including gold and silver in the overseas markets. Industrial demand for silver continued to be strong. In the global market, gold prices fell in line with other commodities as oil and industrial metals as the collapse of mooted deal to rescue ailing US car-makers knocked investors' confidence.

The Senate on Thursday night abandoned efforts to fashion a government rescue of the American automobile industry, as Senate Republicans refused to support a bill endorsed by the White House and Congressional Democrats.

The failure to reach agreement on Capitol Hill raised a spectre of financial collapse for General Motors and Chrysler, which say they may not be able to survive through this month.

Ford India on December 12 said its $500 million investment plans for the country are on track. Our investment plans have not changed, a Ford India spokesperson said. She, however, did not take questions on how the company was planning to fund the investments. The US Senate had shot down a 14 billion dollar rescue package of GM, Chrysler and Ford. Questions have been raised on the capability of these companies to fund their expansions in other parts of the globe.

Data released friday shows that India’s economy could expand at a much lower page than expected and that the industrial output may have contracted by 0.4%, the first time in the last 15 years. This has been attributed to both a domestic and external demand for goods produced by Indian companies.The sharp fall is likely to increase pressure on the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to undertake another round of policy measures to boost domestic demand.

Oil Public Sector Units of India continue to bleed and be in a precarious situation as government defers its decision to raise prices of petrol, diesel and domestic LPG atleast until next week. The UPA government is fearful of the negative political impact of a raise in Oil and other prices considering the inflation of india continues to rise inspite of subsidized oil.

A marketplace for small farmers in India may soon be a reality with NSEL [ National Spot Exchange Limited ] being accorded the necessary licenses in 3 states of India including Gujrat, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

According to NSEL, they have received the licenses to launch an electronic platform that would allow them to launch a spot exchange where farmers can sell as low as one quintal of product without having to deal with too many middlemen. This level of openness in the market will allow farmers to reap much larger benefits than they have access to in today's Indian trading markets.