- Wednesday, March 05, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Here are news in brief related to Indian economy and business for Thursday, January 5, 2023:
India’s state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) will launch high-speed 5G services by April 2024, the country’s telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said, PTI reported. At a press conference after the launch of Jio 5G services by private telecom operators in Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack in the eastern state of Odisha, Vaishnaw said that BSNL does not have a legacy network. “So there was a big advantage for BSNL as the entire network we are designing is in a way that it can be rapidly upgraded from 4G to 5G. That cycle will be very fast,” the minister said. “Entire Odisha will be covered by 5G services in 2 years. Today, 5G services have been launched in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack,” the telecom minister, who is a member of the Rajya Sabha or Upper House of the Indian parliament from Odisha, said. Vaishnaw said the Modi government has allocated Rs 5,600 crore (£569.1 million) for strengthening the telecom connectivity in the state.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has called upon several banking and financial sector leaders in Mumbai, and invited them to become partners in the development of his state – which happens to be India’s most populous state, ANI reported. The chief minister met these industry leaders as part of his two-day visit to Mumbai ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Investors Summit. Uttar Pradesh is set to organize the summit in state capital Lucknow from February 10 to 12, 2023. “When our government was formed in 2017, the financial condition of the state was extremely poor. We made some plans and called up the banks, but the credit was so poor that the banks didn’t respond. Today I am delighted to inform you that everything has changed in UP. Today, we are a revenue-surplus state. We’ve more than doubled our annual budget,” he told the industry leaders.
Walmart Inc late on Wednesday said it had already paid the Indian government most of the nearly $1 billion (£839.1 million) in tax owed after digital payments firm PhonePe, which the American retailer owns through Flipkart, shifted its headquarters from Singapore to the South Asian nation, Reuters reported. Walmart bought a controlling stake in Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart in 2018, giving it ownership of PhonePe. Last month, the company said it had completed the separation of PhonePe from Flipkart, adding that it would remain a majority stakeholder in both the companies.
L&T Realty Developers Ltd, a subsidiary of L&T, has agreed to sell its complete stake in Think Tower Developers Pvt Ltd, the engineering and construction conglomerate said on Thursday, PTI reported. The agreement is expected to complete on January 30, which is subject to the completion of closing conditions. “L&T Realty Developers Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Ltd, has entered into an agreement to sell its entire stake of 99 per cent in Think Tower Developers Private Ltd, a subsidiary company (TTDPL), on January 5,” Larsen and Toubro (L&T) said in a regulatory filing. TTDPL will cease to be a subsidiary company, the filing added.
India’s market regulator SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) has allowed the government’s shareholding in IDBI Bank to be reclassified as “public” after its stake sale on condition that its voting rights do not exceed 15 per cent, the lender said on Thursday, according to a Reuters report. The government, with a more than 45 per cent stake in IDBI Bank, is currently classified as a co-promoter of the lender. The government is looking to sell its 30.48 per cent stake in the bank, while state-backed LIC will offload its 30.24 per cent share in the lender.
Delhi has created history by achieving the highest ever state-Union Territory (UT)-wise monthly electric vehicle sales in the country, ANI reported. In December, Delhi registered 7,046 electric vehicles with a year-on-year growth of 86 per cent. Since the launch of the EV policy, the UT registered 93,239 electric vehicles, of which two-wheelers contribute nearly 55 per cent of the total EV sales in the year 2022. Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot, in a media address, said, Delhi has always led from the front making it the EV capital of the country and it is ready with the required private and public charging infrastructure with a total of 2300+ charging points and 200+ batteries swapping stations in operation across the city. Delhi EV Policy was launched on August 7, 2020, with 2-wheelers (2W) and 3-wheelers (3W) identified as the priority vehicle segment.
