Indian 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.

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.

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.

The weakness in rupee, which is inching closer to the 43-mark against the US dollar with a six per cent fall this fiscal, is not being resisted as strongly by RBI as during its appreciation, banking giant HSBC believes.

RBI is not stopping rupee weakness despite the continuing surge in wholesale and consumer price index-related inflation, HSBC's Chief Economist Robert Prior-Wandesforde wrote in a research note on Indian economy.

"Importantly, the impact from RBI intervention has shifted from preventing currency appreciation to reinforcing currency weakness," he said.

New Delhi, May 16 (ANI): The annual inflation rose to 7.83 percent for the week ended May 3 from 7.61 percent for the previous week. The data for the week ended March 8 has been revised to 7.78 percent versus 5.92 percent (provisional).
The food articles index and the manufacturing products index rose by 0.5 percent and 0.3 percent respectively. Fuel and power index was up by 0.8 percent.

New Delhi, May 14 (ANI): Secondary steel makers, Bhushan Steel and National Steel , have announced up to Rs 4,000 per tonne cut on all flat products toeing the line of primary producers even as the government is examining the merit of the steelmakers' request for lower export duty on the metal.

"The secondary steel producers have assured that they will reduce prices of their flat products by Rs 4,000 per tonne and maintain the new price line for the next three months," Steel Ministry Secretary, R S Pandey said after a meeting with the steelmakers.

The visit planned by Dominique Bussereau, French minister for Transport on May 12th is set to kick off a unique partnership between India and France to create a high speed rail network. France is known for its expertise in this area and is expected to help India create such a network.

India's foreign exchange reserves in US dollar terms declined for a continuous second week to reach 312.5 billion dollars according to a release by Reserve bank of India. According to Reserve Bank of India, the foreign currency assets (FCA) declined to 302.2 billion from 302.5 billion last week.

Despite several measures taken by the Government to control inflation, it rose to 42-month high at 7.61 per cent this week as against 7.57 per cent in the previous week.