- Monday, March 10, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Here are news in brief related to Indian economy and business on Monday, September 19, 2022:
India and Saudi Arabia have agreed to collaborate in 41 areas under four broad domains of agriculture & food security, energy, technology & information technology; and industry and infrastructure, Asian News International reported. This was agreed during a ministerial meeting co-chaired by India’s minister of commerce and industry Piyush Goyal and Saudi minister for energy Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud, according to an official statement released in New Delhi on Monday. Goyal visited Saudi Arabia on September 18 and 19 to attend the ministerial meeting of the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council. During the visit, Goyal co-chaired the ministerial meeting of the Committee on Economy and Investments of the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council. The Strategic Partnership Council was instituted in October 2019 during the visit of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to Saudi Arabia. The council has two main pillars i.e. Political, Security, Social and Cultural Committee, and the Committee on Economy and Investments.
Indian securities and commodity market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is looking to boost surveillance of social media and other platforms through a web intelligence tool using artificial intelligence and data analytics to probe violations of various securities laws by individuals, groups and other entities, Press Trust of India reported. In this regard, the capital markets regulator has invited Expression of Interest (EOI) from solution providers to implement, install and maintain a ‘Web Intelligence Tool’, according to a public notice. Noting that the internet usage has risen exponentially over the last few years which resulted in production of immense amounts of unstructured publicly available data on the web, SEBI said this unstructured data has the potential to provide deep investigation insights about various entities, individuals, groups and topics related to violations of various securities laws.
India’s lender State Bank of India (SBI) has asked exporters to avoid settling deals with Bangladesh in the dollar and other major currencies as it looks to curb exposure to Dhaka’s falling reserves, according to an internal document and a source, Reuters reported. Bangladesh’s $416-billion (£364.7 billion) economy is battling rising prices of energy and food as the Russia-Ukraine conflict widens its current account deficit, and dwindling foreign exchange forces it to turn to global lenders such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “The country is facing a shortage of foreign currency due to higher import bills and weaknesses of Bangladeshi taka against dollar in recent times,” the SBI said in an August 24 letter sent to its branches and seen by Reuters. The letter and its contents have not previously been reported. The SBI did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Alphabet Inc’s Google has been asked by the Indian government and the central bank to introduce more stringent checks to help curb the use of illegal digital lending applications in India, according to sources, Reuters reported. Even though Google doesn’t fall under the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) ambit, the US tech giant has been called several times in the last few months to meetings by the central bank and the Indian government and urged to introduce tougher checks and balances that can help in weeding out such apps, according to four sources. Indian regulators have already asked lenders to step up checks against illegal lending apps, which became popular during the pandemic. Regulators seek to control the proliferation of such apps that engage in unscrupulous activities such as charging excessive interest rates and fees or in recovery practices which are not authorised by the central bank or violate money laundering and other government guidelines.
The government of Maharashtra on Monday announced that the western state’s sugar mills will begin the 2022-23 sugarcane crushing season from October 15, the Hindu BusinessLine reported. According to an estimate of the state government, some 203 mills will start crushing and produce 13.8 million tonnes (mt) of sugar by the season’s end. Last season, the mills produced 13.74 mt of sugar to surpass Uttar Pradesh as the largest sugar-producing state. The cabinet committee under Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde on Monday announced that the sugarcane crushing season will start from October 15.
Days after completing a $6.5 billion acquisition of Ambuja Cements and ACC, India billionaire Gautam Adani said his group has planned to double cement-manufacturing capacity and become the most profitable manufacturer in the country, Press Trust of India reported. He saw a multifold rise in cement demand in India on the back of record-breaking economic growth and the government’s infrastructure creation push, which will give significant margin expansion. In a speech made at an event to mark the completion of the acquisition on September 17, the Adani Group founder and chairman said the ports-to-energy conglomerate has in a single stroke become the second-largest cement manufacturer in the country. Adani Group last week completed buyout of Swiss major Holcim’s stake in the two firms.
M3M India, one of the fastest growing real-estate developers in India, has launched another high-end retail project — ‘M3M Route65’ in Gurugram, next to the Worldmark in Sector 65, ANI/M3M India reported. Spread across four acres, with total saleable space of 4.87 lakh (0.48 million) square feet, the company is expecting a topline of Rs 1,000 crore (£110 million) from this project. Pankaj Bansal, director, M3M India said, “We are quite aggressive in our retail portfolio and have so far delivered over five million square feet of retail space in Gurugram itself. Our new retail project ‘M3M Route65’ in sector-65 is also a state-of-the-art retail project, spread across four acres with 4.87 lakh square feet of saleable space. We are expecting a top-line of Rs 1,000 crore from this project. ‘M3M Route65’ is spread across four floors with 727 units, ranging from 170 to 4,800 square feet in area, with ample parking space in the basement. Besides general retail, we have also kept more than one lakh (0.1 million) square feet space on the third floor for food-courts and entertainment zones.”
