- Saturday, March 01, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Here are news related to Indian economy and business for Thursday, April 13, 2023:
Sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) constituted more than half of India’s record four million passenger vehicle sales in fiscal year 2022-23, data revealed on Thursday (13), signalling the growing popularity of the relatively costlier vehicles in a budget-conscious market, Reuters reported. Automakers have zeroed in more on producing SUVs, as consumers continue to pay more for feature-rich cars despite inflation trending higher. Meanwhile, the share of entry-level cars slumped to less than one per cent of total passenger vehicle sales as rising car prices affected affordability for low-income buyers.
The next round of India-UK Free Trade Agreement (FTA) talks is scheduled on April 24-28, India’s commerce ministry said, indicating normalcy in trade relations between the two nations amid some British media reports that the recent attack on the Indian high commission by Khalistan activists threatened their trade ties. “Bilateral interaction between the two trade ministers was held on March 1, 2023, to take stock of the progress in India-UK FTA negotiations. Eight rounds of negotiations have been completed till the end of March 2023,” the Hindu BusinessLine quoted an official as saying. India and the UK have been negotiating an FTA since January 13 last year and had set a target of doubling bilateral trade to $100 billion (£79.7 billion) by 2030.
Akshata Murty, the wife of prime minister Rishi Sunak, stands to earn Rs 68.17 crore (6.6 million) in dividend income from her shareholding in India’s second-largest IT firm Infosys, PTI reported. Murty, daughter of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, held 3.89 crore (£38.9 million) shares of Infosys at the end of December, according to company filings with the stock exchanges. Infosys declared a final dividend of Rs 17.50 (£0.17) per share for FY23 (April 2022 to March 2023). If she retains her shareholding till the record date, June 2, she would get Rs 68.17 crore.
Indian information technology (IT) minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday said that in the last nine years, the number of startups in the country rose to 90,000 due to promotion of the startup culture by the Narendra Modi government, PTI reported. He said the federal government is trying to make the western state of Rajasthan the first IT hub of the country but it is possible when the state government also cooperates on this front, according to a release. The minister was speaking at the inauguration of Software Technology Parks of India centre in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan.
Pointing to India having zero risk of recession compared to some major western countries and to its growth projections, Indian stock-brokerage company Zerodha’s founder Nikhil Kamath has said that Indians who have graduated from well-known colleges in the US and are considering starting a venture, all indications point to India being the place to be in this decade, ANI reported. He said from a relative standpoint as also for an entrepreneur, India presents enormous opportunities. “To my many friends who have graduated from fancy colleges in the #US, working there, considering moving back home to start something. All indications point to #India being ‘the place’ to be this decade; from a relative standpoint, for an #entrepreneur, the opportunity is here…,” Kamath said on Instagram.
