- Sunday, March 02, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Here are news in brief related to Indian economy and business for Monday, April 3, 2023:
India’s auto major Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) on Monday said its total sales increased by 21 per cent year-on-year to 66,091 units in March, PTI reported. The company had dispatched 54,643 units to dealers in March 2022. In a statement, the Mumbai-based auto major said its utility vehicle wholesales rose by 31 per cent to 35,976 utility vehicles in March, as against 27,380 units in the year-ago period. It was the company’s highest-ever utility vehicle wholesales in a month. M&M said its exports last month stood at 2,115 units, as against 3,160 units in the year-ago period, a drop of 33 per cent.
Shaktikanta Das, governor of India’s Reserve Bank of India, has congratulated the central bank for its 88 years of dedicated service to the nation, ANI reported. He said in a tweet, “Congratulations Team RBI for 88 years of dedicated service to the nation. It’s an humbling moment. A day to rededicate ourselves to the responsibilities of this national institution.” The tweet was posted by the governor’s official handle on Saturday (1). The RBI has started its first bi-monthly review of the new financial year with its Monetary Policy Committee meeting on April 3, April 5 and April 6. The central bank has six bi-monthly reviews of its monetary policy in a year. And, there are out-of-cycle reviews in which the central bank conducts additional meetings in times of emergency.
India’s manufacturing sector expanded in March and registered the quickest in three months at 56.4 during the month against 55.3 in February, according to S and P Global, ANI reported. According to S and P Global, India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose from 55.3 in February to 56.4 in March, signalling the strongest improvement in operating conditions in 2023 so far. S and P Global said, “India’s manufacturing sector posted a remarkable performance at the end of the final fiscal quarter, as growth of factory orders and production quickened to the strongest in three months.” It added that with pressure on supply chains subsiding and availability of raw material improving, input cost inflation retreated to its second-lowest mark in two-and-a-half years.
The National Company Law Tribunal has approved the acquisition of Karaikal Port (KPPL) by the Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), the largest transport utility in India, the Adani Group firm said on Monday, ANI reported. Earlier, APSEZ was declared as the successful resolution applicant under the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) of KPPL. The amount considered for the acquisition is Rs 1,485 crore (£145.6 millon). According to the statement, Karaikal Port is an all-weather deep-water port on India’s eastern coast that was developed on the build, operate and transfer format under the public-private partnership by the government of Puducherry.
Assets worth more than Rs 4,800 crore (£470.9 million) were seized during searches conducted by the income-tax department against 2,841 groups in the last four financial years, the Indian government informed Lok Sabha or Lower House of the parliament on Monday, PTI reported. The country’s minister of state for finance Pankaj Chaudhary said these searches are undertaken to find “suspected or identified large-scale tax evasion”. He shared the figures in this regard as part of a written reply furnished in the Lok Sabha. The data pertains to financial years 2019-20, 2020-22, 2021-22 and 2022-23 (provisional figures till January 2023) and Chaudhary said a total of 2,841 groups were searched by the I-T department leading to seizure of assets worth Rs 4,863.12 crore (£477 million).
India’s Marico Ltd predicted stronger margins for the fourth quarter on Monday, as consumer goods firms witness some benefit from easing commodity costs and a possible recovery in rural demand, Reuters reported. According to Marico, which owns the popular Parachute and Saffola oil brands, gross margin was expected to expand and “drive reasonable growth” as raw material prices fell. In February, retail inflation eased to 6.44 per cent but has been above above the Reserve Bank of India’s upper tolerance band of 2-6 per cent for months, often affecting rural consumers more than others.
