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World food prices rose for a fourth straight month in November to remain at 10-year highs, led by strong demand for wheat and dairy products, the UN food agency said on Thursday.

The Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) food price index, which tracks international prices of the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 134.4 points last month compared with a revised 132.8 for October.

The October figure was previously given as 133.2.

The November reading was the highest for the index since June 2011. On a year-on-year basis, the index was up 27.3 percent last month.

Agricultural commodity prices have risen steeply in the past year, driven by harvest setbacks and strong demand.

The FAO's cereal price index rose by 3.1 percent in November from the previous month and was 23.2 percent higher than its year-ago level, with wheat prices hitting their highest level since May 2011.

FAO said wheat prices were supported by concerns about unseasonable rains in Australia and uncertainty over potential changes to export measures in Russia.

The dairy price index posted the largest monthly rise, up 3.4 percent from the previous month. "Strong global import demand persisted for butter and milk powders as buyers sought to secure spot supplies in anticipating of tightening markets," FAO said.

Also Read: Indian companies raise $1.34 billion from foreign markets in October; down 34% from last year, says RBI

Global sugar prices rose 1.4 percent on the month and was up nearly 40 percent year-on-year. "The increase was primarily driven by higher ethanol prices," FAO said.

The meat price index posted its fourth consecutive monthly decline, shedding 0.9 percent on the month, while world vegetable oil prices fell 0.3 percent on October levels, but international palm oil prices remained firm, FAO said.

Rome-based FAO cut its projection of global cereal production in 2021 to 2.791 billion tonnes from 2.793 billion estimated a month ago, according to its cereal supply and demand outlook.

However, the expected world cereal output would still represent a record, FAO said.

The month-to-month downgrade is primarily the result of an anticipated marginally smaller global coarse grains outturn, reflecting reduced forecasts for barley and sorghum production," FAO said World cereal utilization in 2021/22 was forecast to rise by 1.7 percent above the 2020/21 level, hitting 2.810 billion tonnes. FAO's forecast for world cereal stocks by the close of seasons in 2022 stood at 822 million tonnes, up 2.9 million tonnes since November but still down 0.7 percent from opening levels.

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Teams Essentials, a stand-along offering that is aimed at small businesses. The company calls it the, "most competitively priced online meetings and collaboration solution in the market."

The Redmond technology giant has priced Teams Essentials at Rs 100 per person, per month, giving small teams access to essential tools for hosting meetings and collaboration.

A party on teams can host meetings with up to 300 people and enjoy 10GB of cloud space per person in an organisation. The meetings that can be hosted are unlimited but are capped at a maximum of 30 hours.

“We know how difficult the past 20 months have been for small businesses. They’ve had to demonstrate extreme flexibility to adapt, often with limited access to tools and technology,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Modern Work at Microsoft.

“Teams Essentials is built specifically to meet the unique needs of small businesses, enabling them to thrive in this new era of work,” Spataro added.

Organisations using Teams Essentials will also have access to all the capabilities of the free version of Teams including email invites, Outlook calendar integration, meeting tools like lobbies and virtual backgrounds, always-available text chats and support for group projects and tasks.

Also Read: Indian companies raise $1.34 billion from foreign markets in October; down 34% from last year, says RBI

 to Mio Dispatch, The corporate messaging market has seen a lot of interest since the lockdown's hit in 2020. Microsoft is locked in fierce competition with Salesforce's Slack, which had 12 million active daily users in March 2020.

Teams is quickly catching up, with a total of 250 million active monthly users. Teams is also used by 91 of the Fortune 100 companies.

Indian companies raised nearly $1.34 billion from foreign markets in October this year, down 34 percent from the year-ago period, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed on December 1.

The domestic firms had raised over $2.03 billion from the overseas markets in October 2020.

In a break-up, the companies raised as much as $1.32 billion by way of external commercial borrowings (ECBs) from the automatic route.

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While, the rest of $14,749,994 was raised by a single firm — Fortum Solar Plus — by issuing rupee-denominated bonds (RDBs), popularly known as masala bonds.

The company is engaged in electricity, gas and steam air conditioning supply and the proceeds of the borrowings are to be used for refinancing of rupee loans, showed the RBI data on ECBs for October 2021.

Major borrowers in the ECB category include ONGC Videsh (OVL), which raised $600 million for refinancing of earlier ECB.

India’s manufacturing activity grew at the fastest pace in 10 months in November, buoyed by a strong pick-up in demand, but higher inflationary pressure left factories worried about their future prospects, a private survey showed on Wednesday.

An easing of COVID-19 restrictions drove demand and boosted sales, indicating the economy was on the path to normalization.

Compiled by IHS Markit, the Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to 57.6 in November from 55.9 in October. The reading was the highest since January and the fifth straight month above the 50-mark that separates growth from contraction.

"The Indian manufacturing industry continued to expand in November, with growth gathering pace and forward-looking indices generally pointing to further improvements in the months to come," said Pollyanna De Lima, economics associate director at IHS Markit.

"The fact that firms purchased additional inputs at a stronger rate amid efforts to restock, combined with recurring declines in inventories of finished goods and tentative signs of a pick-up in hiring activity, indicate that production volumes will likely expand further in the near-term."

New orders improved sharply – the strongest since February – mostly driven by domestic demand. That resulted in production rising for a fifth consecutive month and at the fastest pace in nine months.

Firms increased headcount to meet the elevated demand, ending a three-month sequence of reduction, although the pace of job creation was minimal.

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But the optimism was darkened to some extent by soaring input price inflation. Barring October, the input prices sub-index was at the highest in almost eight years owing to supply constraints and rising transportation costs.

"Should raw material scarcity and shipping issues continue to feed through to purchasing prices, substantial increases in output charges could be seen and demand resilience would be tested," De Lima said.

Output prices continued to rise moderately, indicating firms passed on some of their additional cost burden to clients.

The Reserve Bank of India is not expected to raise interest rates until at least the beginning of next financial year, according to a recent Reuters poll, but it might consider a rate hike earlier to curb inflation.India’s economy expanded by 8.4% in the July-September quarter from a year earlier, but economists said disruptions from the emerging Omicron coronavirus variant risked slowing the recovery, especially given the country’s low vaccination rates.