Nasheman News : The coming general elections, along with the ongoing US-China trade war and crude oil prices will determine the trajectory of Indian equities in 2019.

Additionally, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) rate stance, direction of foreign fund flows, the rupee’s strength against the US dollar, quarterly earning results as well as premium valuations are expected to impact investors’ sentiments in the current year.

“The ongoing volatility may continue in the near-term due to premium valuation, slowdown in the domestic economy, muted earnings growth in the next two quarters, cascading effect of liquidity crunch in the urban and rural market,” Geojit Financial Services Head of Research Vinod Nair told media.

“Short-term effect of national elections, with the risk of populist measures, and the global effect of current uncertainties, will impact the performance during the initial part of 2019.”

HDFC Securities’ Retail Research Head Deepak Jasani told media : “The Nifty has the potential to touch 12,400 points during CY2019. This is based on various factors, namely the expectations of an earnings pick-up in Indian corporates post Q4FY19, and the resumption of FII (foreign institutional investor) inflows to the Indian markets around and post the general elections.”

“Till February, corporate earnings trends, US Fed outlook on interest rates and trade war issue developments need to be closely watched.”

In 2018, despite heavy volatility, foreign fund outflows and a weak rupee, the Indian equity market emerged as one of the best performers globally, mainly on account of a rise in the pace of economic expansion, lower inflation and a normal monsoon.

The two key indices — the S&P Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex and the National Stock Exchange’s (NSE) Nifty50 — closed higher by just six per cent and three per cent respectively, placing the Indian indices among the best-performing benchmark indices among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group of countries.

However, gains were capped as crude oil prices rose and fears over a tariff war-induced global slowdown grew.

“Markets appear to be much better in the year 2019 compared to the behaviour we saw in 2018. Two important variables among others that went negative for Indian markets were rise in crude prices and consistent selling by FIIs,” SMC Investments & Advisors CMD D.K. Aggarwal told IANS.

“As of now, undoubtedly, surging crude oil prices have reversed, rupee is now stable, but the political risk and trade war concerns and other global risk factors remains as a key headwind for the markets.”

On the currency front, the Indian rupee’s strength against the US dollar will play a decisive role in charting the course of the key indices.

The Indian rupee was heavily dented in 2018. The currency fell by 9.23 per cent against the US dollar at 69.77 from its previous close of 63.87 at the end of 2017, making it the worst-performing Asian currency of the year.

Another important factor for 2019, will be the direction of foreign fund flows. Last calendar year, NSDL data showed that foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold Rs 33,014 crore worth of equities in 2018.

Similarly, provisional data from the stock exchanges showed that FIIs sold over Rs 73,000 crore worth of equities.

“For the short term, FIIs may come in a big way around general election time, if the markets are at an attractive entry level. Their subsequent behaviour will depend on the political situation in India and interest rate trends abroad,” Jasani added.

 The State Government has hiked the guidance value of properties by 5% to 25% and the revised rates have come into effect from today (Jan.1, 2019) at all Sub-Registrar Offices. Henceforth, property rates are set to go up along with registration charges in city and its outer limits.

Guidance value is the price of a property fixed by the Government, and property registrations cannot go below that fixed price. This is also a major revenue source for the Government. The rates have remained unchanged in State since 2016 owing to a sharp decline in the Real Estate sector. The guidance value has been increased to give a fillip to the Real Estate sector which has seen a slump in recent times. Statewide, Mysuru and Mangaluru have seen the steepest hike of 5 percent to 25 percent. The guidance value has been published by the Department of Stamps and Registrations after inviting objections. The Department had published a notification in this regard in September last year.

Properties coming under all the four Sub-Registrar Offices in Mysuru (all Taluks, Corporation, Gram Panchayats, Town Panchayat) including land, houses, agricultural land, sites, flats, villas, villaments, apartments, corner sites, sites on approach roads, industrial and commercial properties, multi-storeyed buildings and all immovable properties will see an increase in prices.

As per the Stamps and Registration Act, the guidance value has to be revised every year. However, the revision was postponed last year due to the Assembly elections held earlier this year. The hike will mean an increase in stamp duty rates, which the buyer has to pay while buying or leasing properties and also premiums charged on Floor Space Index and other property-related payments.

As per the revised guidance value, property prices along the sides of the roads that criss-cross the city will see a steep hike and there are different prices for different areas.

Following reform measures like demonetisation and the introduction of Real Estate Regulation Act, the Real Estate sector had seen a downward trend. Only now, since 2016, the market is showing signs of revival and the Government move is set to  boost the sector.

Karnataka uncorked the New Year in high spirits, which reflects in liquor sales. The grand welcome by revellers has helped the Excise Department rake in a whopping Rs 70 crore in a single day, on December 31, 2018.  Indian Made Liquor and beer together accounted for this huge collection.
The revenue this year, according to Excise Department officials, is around 10 per cent more than the previous year’s liquor sale on New Year’s Eve.

Revellers who bought alcohol to ring in the New Year have helped the excise department rake in a whopping Rs 70 crore in a single day, on December 31, 2018.  This, according to department officials, is around 10 per cent more than the previous year’s liquor sale on New Year’s Eve.

There are 10,400 liquor retailers across Karnataka. According to the data by the excise department, on December 31 (Monday), 3.83 lakh carton boxes of Indian Made Liquor (IML) and 1.48 lakh carton boxes of beer were sold. This is against an average of 1.75 lakh carton boxes of IML and 60,000 CB of beer on other days. According to a senior official from the department, together, they generated more than Rs 70 crore on Monday.

“We expected these sales,’’ the official said. This financial year, the price of liquor was increased and that also resulted in more revenue. “The target for this financial year (2018-19) is Rs 19,750 crore, and by December-end, we have crossed Rs 15,000 crore. In the next three months, we hope to meet and cross the target,’’ the official said.

V Yashavanth, the excise commissioner, told media that the state government had increased prices by 8 per cent on certain liquor slabs, from April 2018. After the new government took charge, from August 2018, the price of liquor was increased across all 18 slabs by an additional 4 per cent. This could be one of the reasons for the higher revenue.

Agencis

Nasheman News : Passing on a new year gift of reduction in global gas prices to consumers, state-run Indian Oil Corp (IOC) on Monday announced a major cut of Rs 120.50 in the rates of non-subsidised LPG cylinders.

In a statement here, IOC also said the subsidised quota of 12 cooking gas cylinders per annum will also cost less by Rs 5.91 per cylinder, effective from January 1. 

Thus, a 14.2-kg subsidised LPG cylinder will cost Rs 494.99 in Delhi from midnight, as against Rs 500.90.

The non-subsidised LPG will now cost Rs 689 per cylinder, in place of the current Rs 809.50.

“The price of Non-Subsidised LPG at Delhi will decrease by Rs 120.50 per cylinder w.e.f. 1st January 2019 due to fall in price of LPG in international market and strengthening of US dollar-rupee exchange rate,” IOC said.

Actual prices following the rate cut will vary across centres owing to local taxes. 

Nasheman News :  Key Indian equity indices opened flat on Tuesday as index pivotals — finance and banking stocks — witnessed selling pressure.

However, oil and gas sector gained.

The S&P BSE Sensex opened at 36,161.80 from its previous close of 36,068.33 on Monday. At 9.25 a.m., the Sensex traded 64.82 points or 0.18 per cent lower at 36,003.51.

The NSE Nifty 50 opened at 10,881.70 after closing at 10,862.55 on Monday.

The Nifty 50 traded at 10,842.90 during the morning trade session, up 19.65 points and 0.18 per cent.

Even though the 2018 gains were marginal, both the Sensex and Nifty50 emerged among the best in attaining the highest growth rates globally.

They were among the best performing benchmark indices in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).

Nasheman News : Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday made it clear that the government does not need RBI’s reserves to bridge the widening fiscal deficit as the Lok Sabha voted the Supplementary Demands for Grants for 2018-19 to the tune of Rs 85,948.86 crore, including Rs.41,000 crore for bank recapitalisation.

“This government’s fiscal deficit track record has been better than any other government in history. We do not need RBI’s reserves for (meeting the) fiscal deficit,” he said, replying to a brief debate on the demands.

India’s fiscal deficit for the eight months till November stood at Rs 7.17 lakh crore, which is 114.8 per cent of the budgeted Rs 6.24 lakh crore.

The Minister’s assertion comes against the backdrop of a raging debate over the government’s reported moves for securing the surplus reserves with the RBI, estimated to be around a few lakh crore of rupees, to fund government’s social welfare schemes ahead of elections.

Jaitley said the global standard for economic capital framework for central banks was to have around 8 per cent of their assets as reserves with even the most conservative nations having it at 14 per cent.

“Does India need to have 27-28 per cent (as risk capital)… The money can be used for recapitalisation of banks or for poverty alleviation measures,” he said, adding the government only wanted to have a committee to review the matter.

The second Supplementary Demands for Grants for 2018-19 includes Rs 41,000 crore for recapitalisation of the public sector banks that have been hit hard by non-performing assets.

Jaitley said the government’s initiatives including the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) were bearing fruits and money stuck as NPA was now back into the banking system.

“The balance sheets of public sector banks are improving due to the IBC as money is coming back into the system. Rs 3 lakh crore has already been recovered through IBC. Banks’ ability to lend is also increasing,” he said.

Attacking the Congress, the Finance Minister said the asset quality review by the RBI initiated after this government took charge revealed the NPAs during the UPA regime were as high as Rs 8.5 lakh crore as opposed to the UPA’s claim of Rs 2.5 lakh crore.

Countering charges of a slowdown in the growth rate of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), he said: “India is growing at 7.5 per cent when the world is growing at 3 per cent. We are also growing faster than China.”

Jaitley also said that the government would continue to take all necessary steps to ensure that farmers get adequate minimum support price for their produce – 50 per cent higher than their input cost as promised.

The demands for grants contain proposals involving a net cash outgo aggregating to Rs 15,069.49 crore and gross additional expenditure, matched by savings of the ministries and departments or by enhanced receipts and recoveries, aggregating to Rs 70,882.21 crore.

Both treasury benches and the opposition members attacked each other during discussion over the supplementary demand.

Taking part in the debate, most opposition members raised farmer’s distress issue and took a dig at the government over implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation reforms.

Bhartruhari Mahtab of BJD sought to know from the government the steps being taken to improve the governance in the banks.

TMC MP Saugata Roy said the economy was in “doldrums” and asked the Centre about the resignation of RBI Governor Urjit Patel.

“The biggest blunder of the Modi government was to hurriedly implement GST and demonetisation. These were the cruel steps of the government. Many businessmen like Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya have fled after defrauding banks,” Roy said.

He said the government has not come out with the figures on the number of people who have lost jobs due to demonetisation and asked the Finance Minister to state the number of small businesses that had closed due to implementation of the GST. 

Opposing the supplementary demand, Samajwadi Party MP Dharmendra Yadav said: “I am against it because the problems are increasing day by day though five budgets have passed. Over 60,000 farmers have committed suicide in NDA regime. Potato is being thrown on roads and farmers are not getting proper cost of their sugarcane crops.”

BJP MP Anurag Thakur, however, supported the draft, saying “the fiscal deficit is now 3.8 per cent which never came below 6.8 per cent during UPA government”.

Labelling MGNREGA as the “mother” of corruption, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey said that it was due to MGNREGA that the fiscal management of the Central government was affected.

After the implementation of Aadhar and Biometric, around Rs 60,000-70,000 crore had been saved, he said.

Nasheman News : India and Bhutan on Friday reviewed the progress of hydroelectric projects in the Himalayan kingdom during a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bhutanese counterpart Lotay Tshering here.

“Development of hydrolectric projects is an important part of the long history of India’s aid to Bhutan,” Modi said in a joint address to the media with Tshering after the meeting.

“Today we reviewed our aid for all related projects in this important sector,” he said.

India is a leading development aid partner for Bhutan. There are a number of institutional mechanisms between India and Bhutan in areas like security, border management, trade, economy, hydroelectricity, development cooperation and water resources.

New Delhi has set up three hydroelectric projects in Bhutan with a total capacity of 1,416 MW, which are operational. About three-fourth of the power generated is exported to India and the rest is used for domestic consumption. 

Stating that space science is a new area of cooperation between the two countries, Modi said that a ground station will be soon be developed in Bhutan by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to the reap the benefits of the South Asian Satellite.

He also expressed happiness at Tshering conveying him the news that Bhutan will soon launch the RuPay cards.

Appreciating Tshering’s vision of “Narrowing the Gap” on ties between India and Bhutan, Modi said that it complements India’s Neighbourhood First Policy.

On his part, Tshering said that the main aim of his visit, taking place on the golden-jubilee year of India-Bhutan diplomatic ties, is to take the bilateral relationship to much greater heights.

He also said that there are “many, many miles to go” India’s aid for development of hydroelectric projects in Bhutan.

He invited Modi to visit Bhutan at the earliest. 

Earlier, Tshering was accorded a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here. 

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also called on the visiting dignitary.

Tshering arrived here on Friday on a three-day visit to India, his first official trip abroad after assuming office in October.

Tshering’s Druk Nyamrup Tshogpa (DNT) party, formed in 2013, won 30 of the 47 National Assembly seats in the elections in the Himalayan kingdom held in October.

The country of 800,000 people, located between India and China, has chosen a different party to rule at each election since the end of absolute monarchy in 2008.

Nasheman News : Amid speculations that the Narendra Modi government could announce a major relief plan for farmers ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, former Union Minister and Congress veteran P. Chidambaram on Thursday asked how the government will fund the new plan.

On a day when Modi accused the Congress of “deceiving farmers” with promises of loan waivers, Chidambaram took to Twitter to ridicule the Prime Minister’s mega relief plan for farmers. 

“Prime Minister says that Congress governments’ loan waivers are only to win elections. So, shall we assume that PM’s ‘Farmers’ Relief Plan’ is intended to lose elections?

“Eight months’ revenue collection is less than 50 per cent of target, fiscal deficit is 115 per cent of estimate. Where is the money for the new plan,” asked the former Finance Minister. 

“BJP government’s plan will imitate the previous Madhya Pradesh government’s plan of paying the farmer the difference between MSP and market price. Remember, the MP Govt plan brought no relief to the indebted farmers.

“The ‘pay the difference’ plan will help only the farmer who has a marketable surplus. What about the farmer who has no marketable surplus? He is also in debt,” he added.

Chidambaram’s remarks come a day after Modi held consultations with top BJP leaders, including party chief Amit Shah, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh on issues concerning farmers amid indications that agrarian problems could be a factor in the BJP’s ouster from three Hindi heartland states in the recently concluded Assembly elections.

Nasheman News :  Samsung’s Galaxy M series smartphones, set to make their global debut in India in January 2019, will sport a 6.4-inch Infinity V display and a large battery, probably the largest ever on any Samsung smartphone, according to industry sources.

The South Korean tech giant is likely to launch up to four smartphones in the Galaxy M series,M10, M20, M30 and M40, the sources told IANS.

The launch of the M series in India, following months of R&D carried out by Samsung India, would be in line with the company’s strategy to consolidate its position among the country’s millennials.

This new series comes on the heel of Galaxy A7 and A9 — Samsung’s first triple and quad-rear camera devices.

In 2018, Samsung’s flagship devices — Galaxy S9, S9+ and Galaxy Note9 — became bestsellers, while Galaxy ‘J’ series continue to rule the mid-price segment, according to industry experts.

Samsung India is also set to launch other interesting products across domains early in 2019 to maintain its leading position in the country.

Nasheman News : The moderators at Facebook who carry out the critical task of removing dangerous content from its platform rely on material based on incorrect interpretation of certain Indian laws, The New York Times has reported.

The documents that are used to guide Facebook’s more than 7,500 moderators span more than 1,400 pages which often contain inaccuracies and outdated information, said the report on Thursday. 

One of these documents tells moderators that any post degrading an entire religion violates Indian law and should be flagged for removal.

But the law prohibits such posts only in certain conditions, such as when the intention of the users is to inflame violence, Chinmayi Arun, a legal scholar, told NYT.

Another document for moderators instructs them to “look out for” the phrase “Free Kashmir” – though the slogan, common among activists, is completely legal, the report said.

The moderators are even warned that ignoring posts that use the phrase could get Facebook blocked in India.

According to data compiled by Statista, India has the highest number of Facebook users – 294 million (as of October 2018) – 90 million more than the number of Facebook users in the US which has the second-biggest users-base for the social network.

As Facebook faces severe criticism for allowing extremist content in some countries, and censoring legitimate posts in some other places, the job of moderators who need to monitor billions of posts every day in over 100 languages is very critical.

Those moderators, at times relying on Google Translate, have mere seconds to recall countless rules and apply them to the hundreds of posts that dash across their screens each day, the NYT report said.

An examination of the documents for moderators by the paper revealed numerous gaps, biases and errors, which are limited not only to interpretation of Indian laws. 

For example, the moderators were once told to remove fund-raising appeals for volcano victims in Indonesia just because a co-sponsor of the drive was on the social network’s internal list of banned groups. 

Similarly, in Myanmar, a paperwork error allowed a prominent extremist group, accused of fomenting genocide, to stay on the platform for months, the report said.

While admitting that perfection was not possible, Facebook’s Head of Global Policy Management, Monika Bickert said that the company had been successful to a great extent in achieving its primary goal of preventing harm.