New Delhi, Dec 14 (IANS) India’s annual rate of inflation based on wholesale prices eased to 4.64 per cent in November from 5.28 per cent in October, official data showed here on Friday.

IANS

 After declining for nearly two months, petrol prices rose marginally on Thursday across three of the four metro cities in the country.

The increase comes after the prices of the fuel declined over 15 per cent in the last two months from the highs recorded in mid-October.

In Delhi, petrol was priced at Rs 70.29 per litre, up from Rs 70.20 recorded on Wednesday, according to data on the Indian Oil Corp’s website.

The cost of petrol increased by 11 paise and 13 paise in Mumbai and Chennai respectively from Wednesday’s levels, to Rs 75.91 and Rs 72.94 per litre.

However, in Kolkata, petrol price dropped 90 paise to Rs 72.38, from Rs 73.28 recorded on Wednesday.

Prices of diesel were unchanged for the second consecutive day in three out of the four metro cities.

In Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, diesel was sold at unchanged prices of Rs 64.66, Rs 67.66 and Rs 68.26, respectively. Meanwhile, in Kolkata the price of diesel fell by Re 1 to Rs 66.40 per litre.

Diesel prices too have declined nearly 15 per cent from the record high levels reached in mid-October.

The rate hike comes amidst stability in crude oil prices as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia last week decided to reduce supply by 1.2 million barrels per day after the continuous fall in oil prices for around two months.

On Thursday, the Brent crude oil futures were around $60.35 per barrel.

IANS

 Microsoft on Thursday announced that its enterprise social network app Kaizala is now helping over 1,000 government and private businesses in India improve workplace productivity and streamline growth.

The company also said it will expand the reach of Kaizala — launched in India last year and now available in 18 languages across 28 markets in Asia, Middle East, Africa and South America — to Office 365 commercial plans worldwide.

“Kaizala, with Cloud scale and enterprise security, is enabling organisations to achieve more by empowering employees, engaging customers and enhancing workplace productivity. We are delighted with the rapid adoption in just over a year,” said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India.

Developed by the Microsoft Garage team, Kaizala allows people to be connected in a group, create hierarchy-based access to a group and create groups within groups.

Microsoft also announced new features in Kaizala, like “Me Chat” and “Persistent Chat” along with video and voice calling and web app. 

“Kaizala is a chat-based communication and data management tool. It is an enterprise ready, compliant and secure chat app, offering organisations easy and simple way to share data for insightful decision making and gives employees an easy-to-use solution for efficient collaboration and improved productivity,” explained Rajiv Kumar, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft.

Backed by Microsoft’s Azure platform, organisations like YES Bank, UPL, Alembic Pharmaceuticals, Shopper’s Stop and Eureka Forbes are using the Kaizala app. 

“Microsoft Kaizala serves as an Electronic Medical Record, with no attendant cost, and the patient’s data is shared across the group of treating doctors and nurses,” said Dr Devi Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Narayana Health who is one of the early adopters of Microsoft Kaizala. 

“All group members monitor a patient’s treatment and make interventions in real time,” he added.

The customers are using Kaizala to bridge gap between employees, extended workforce and customers; share information among employees; collect data from the field through polls or surveys; track movement of first line workers; and get real-time analytics on integration with Office 365, said the company. 

Earlier this year, Microsoft enabled digital payments services on Kaizala in India. The UPI payment integration on Microsoft Kaizala works with all the banks that are already participating in UPI.

Microsoft Kaizala is available as a free mobile app on Android, iOS and Windows platforms for individual users.

IANS

 (19:48) 

 Positive global markets along with value buying and hopes of an ease in the monitory policy with the appointment of Shaktikanta Das as the RBI chief pushed the key equity indices 1.8 per cent higher on Wednesday.

Analysts said investors were optimistic over the swift appointment of Das as 
the 25th Governor of the Reserve Bank as it might lead to a more liberal monetary policy.

However, caution ahead of the release of industrial production and retail inflation data coupled with higher crude oil prices and outflow of foreign funds arrested the upward movement.

All sectoral indices rose, led by financial and auto counters, with the latter gaining 3 per cent the highest increase on BSE.

“A clear mandate in key states assuaged investor concerns and had a positive impact on volatility,” said Abhijeet Dey, Senior Fund Manager-Equities, BNP Paribas Mutual Fund.

According to Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services: “Market rallied and reclaimed the 10,700 mark as swift reaction from government with the appointment of new RBI governor supported the sentiment.

“Bank Nifty outperformed with an expectation of ease in liquidity and relaxation in PCA framework. Global indices rallied on US-China trade hopes and the ripple effect was seen in other EMs as well.”

Index-wise, the S&P BSE Sensex settled higher by 1.79 per cent, or 629.06 points, at 35,779.07 points, from its previous close of 35,150.01 points. It touched an intra-day high of 35,826.58 points and a low of 35,167.47 points.

The NSE Nifty50 advanced 188.45 points or 1.79 per cent to close the session at 10,737.60 points.

The BSE market breadth was positive as the number of advancing stocks was thrice the declining ones. A total of 1,910 stocks advanced while 652 declined.

In the broader market, BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap registered strong gains, advancing 2.53 per cent and 2.46 per cent respectively.

On the currency front, the rupee settled at 72.01 per US dollar, weakened by 85 paise from the Tuesday’s close of 71.86.

“Technically, with the Nifty rallying sharply higher after the bounce back seen in the previous session, the bulls are gaining control. Further upsides are likely once the immediate resistances of 10,747 are taken out,” said HDFC Securities’ Retail Research Head Deepak Jasani.

“Crucial supports to watch for any weakness are at 10,640-10,567.” 

In terms of investment, provisional data from the BSE showed that foreign Institutional Investors (FII’s) sold stocks worth Rs 1,299.43 crore, whereas the Domestic Institutional Investors (DII’s) bought Rs 1,121.29 crore of shares. 

All the 30 stocks on Sensex advanced led by Hero MotoCorp, which gained 7.57 per cent at Rs 3,265.30, while Yes Bank, Bharti Airtel, Adani Ports and Tata Motors (DVR) advanced in a range of 4 to 

IANS

B

Disagreements between the government and the central bank are a common occurrence in any economy. It is an expected outcome, given their contrasting roles where one has to maintain the growth of the economy at a healthy pace while the other has to ensure price stability, which sometimes dampens growth prospects. However, this time it was different as weeks of animosity between North Block and Mint Street has culminated in the resignation of the RBI Governor, Urjit Patel.


To underscore the gravity of the situation, it should be pointed out that it is only the second instance in the history of independent India that an RBI governor had to resign. The previous case goes back to 1957 when the RBI Governor, Sir Benegal Rama Rau, resigned due to differences with the then Finance Minister, T.T. Krishnamachari (TTK). Rau had disliked the fact that TTK believed and publicly claimed that the RBI was a subordinate office of the Finance Ministry and treated it as such. He even openly hijacked the RBI’s monetary policy by announcing a stamp duty on bills. To Rau’s dismay, even Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sided with his Finance Minister.

The case of Urjit Patel somewhat closely resembles that of Rau in the sense that his disagreements with the government also seemingly arose from its intrusion into the RBI’s working. Over the last few weeks, it had become evident that there were at least three things that the government wants the RBI to do differently.

The first issue arose after the collapse of IL&FS, which sparked fears that banks might become wary of lending to non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) leading to a liquidity squeeze within the sector that might put India’s credit market at risk. Most significantly, the MSME sector was feared to take the worst hit, which would have brought the economy to a standstill. In order to avoid such an outcome, the government wanted the RBI to open a special liquidity window for the NBFC sector and avoid the risk of a credit freeze. In turn, the RBI was of the view that a liquidity window should be the measure of last resort. The situation was not as exigent in its view.

The second contentious issue was the RBI’s handling of the bad loan issue. In response to the NPA crisis, the RBI put 12 banks – 11 in the public sector and one in the private sector – under its Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework under which these institutions face lending restrictions until their proportion of bad loans are substantially reduced. Since this regulation has dampened lending activity in the economy, the government has been pushing the RBI to ease its implementation, which the central bank has firmly resisted.

The third point of contention was the central bank’s reserves. The government breached its full-year fiscal deficit target at the end of October, which was meant to happen by the end of March 2019. Nevertheless, the government has still maintained its commitment to not breach the fiscal deficit target of 3.3 per cent this year. So, it is looking for avenues to gain additional revenues. The RBI, which has way more than the required reserves at over 26 per cent of the total assets compared with a global mean of 16 per cent, seems like a viable source to tap into. But the RBI has maintained that it needs a strong balance sheet to function effectively.

The long-simmering tussle over these issues was even punctuated by finance ministry signalling the invocation of the never-used Section 7 of the RBI Act, which allows the government to give directions to the RBI that it may “consider necessary in the public interest.” As far as public knowledge goes, the Section has not yet been invoked. 

It is not yet clear what specifically led to Patel’s resignation, but a combination of these factors surely has had a role to play. A former RBI governor painted the move as “a statement of protest”.

When the BJP government had come into power, it had established a lot of goodwill by infusing independence in the RBI’s functioning. The establishment of the monetary policy committee that was tasked with inflation targeting was the perfect model that ensured the operational independence of the central bank to attain its objectives. The mechanism gave India a state-of-the-art monetary policy framework that was sorely missing in the economy. It was one of the most important economic reforms of the BJP government that is now at risk of being dismantled. 

Patel’s resignation, irrespective of the reasons that caused it, puts a significant dent on the public trust in the autonomy of the functioning of the central bank; something which this government itself has tried hard to build.

Trust is a currency that holds the entire modern economic system together and significantly reduces transaction costs. It will be extremely costly for the economy in the long-run if that trust is weakened in any sense. So, the government should be wary of taking any actions that affect the public trust in the country’s institutions as short-terms gains of kickstarting lending activities or meeting the fiscal deficit targets cannot compensate for the repercussions that will emerge from the means adopted in achieving them. 

The way forward for the government should be to adopt a more collaborative approach with the RBI, instead of a combative one, to achieve the intended economic goals.

IANS

 Former Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday assumed charge as RBI Governor after Urjit Patel abruptly resigned from the post amidst a tiff with the government on the central bank’s autonomy.

“Assumed charge as Governor, Reserve Bank of India. Thank you each and everyone for your good wishes,” the new incumbent said in a Tweet.

Das, who as Economic Affairs Secretary steered the monetary situation post-demonetisation, was appointed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor on Tuesday.

His appointment came at a time when the government and the RBI are engaged in a tussle over several issues including transfer of the central bank’s reserves, over which Patel had reservations after the government hinted at forcing him using provisions of the RBI Act.

Das, a retired 1980-batch IAS officer from the Tamil Nadu cadre, was a member of the 15th Finance Commission of India and India’s Sherpa to G20. Having a master’s degree from St. Stephen’s College, he earlier served as Joint Secretary in the Expenditure Department of the Finance Ministry.

In a development that came as an embarrassment for the government, Patel resigned on Monday citing “personal reasons” even as his various predecessors hinted that the decision was rooted in the recent controversy involving the government and the central bank.

His resignation came against the backdrop of the tiff between the government and the central bank over the liquidity and credit crunch in the economy that provoked an extraordinary meeting of the RBI board on November 19. 

IANS

 Indian stock indices bounced back into the green as election trends on Tuesday noon showed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took a narrow lead in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections after trailing to the Congress earlier.

The S&P BSE Sensex, which had fallen over 500 points during the morning session, traded at 34,988.62 points around noon, higher by 28.29 points or 0.08 per cent from the previous close.

The Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange traded at 10,503.30 points, higher by 14.85 points or 0.14 per cent from the previous close.

According to analysts, market indices pared losses due to short covering and buying at lower levels.

“Markets would swing till around noon based on leads positions in Madhya Pradesh as the other four states are showing clear winners,” HDFC Securities’ Retail Research Head Deepak Jasani told IANS.

On the currency front, the Indian rupee weakened to 72 against the US dollar from its previous close of 71.34.

“Election results are not going the BJP way. But the rupee has recovered from the opening losses as central bank intervention may be occurring,” said Anindya Banerjee, Deputy Vice President for Currency and Interest Rates with Kotak Securities.

“We could see more volatility and USDINR can trade within a wide range of 71.70 and 72.50 on spot.”

IANS

A Bengaluru firm has developed a vehicle that can be used to carry out rescue operations in water, such as take the first rope across a stream during floods. Two such units have already been purchased by the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF).The vehicle, termed unmanned multi-purpose craft, has been developed by AlphaMERS Ltd, a firm engaged in providing solutions in disaster response.

The craft costs just under `1 lakh and, looks like a small aircraft and is double the size of a drone. It can move on water, and is propelled by an electric motor, which is powered by a battery. Currently, the craft is manoevered manually by a person on land via two ropes attached to the craft. The material used is aluminium, making the device very light.

Executive Director of AlphaMERS D Chandrasekhar, said the device can be used to rescue people before they drown. “We are working on building a separate device, similar to a lifebuoy, to be attached in front of the craft. So a drowning person can grab it and be pulled ashore by the rope attached to the craft,” Chandrasekhar said.