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India’s business and consumption activity showed conflicting signs of recovery in July as elevated inflation, rising borrowing costs and fears of a global slowdown weighed on Asia’s third-largest economy.

Demand for Indian goods and services softened, a cross-section of high-frequency indicators compiled by Bloomberg News showed. The needle on a dial measuring so-called animal spirits, however, remained steady at 5 last month as the gauge uses a three-month weighted average to smooth out volatility in the single month readings.

The Reserve Bank of India, which has raised interest rates by a total of 140 basis points in three moves this year, has signaled future tightening would be calibrated to ensure there isn’t a massive slowdown in the economy, and sees price pressures moderating from its recent peak. A pulse-check of the economy is due next week, with gross domestic product data for the April-June quarter likely to show a double-digit growth, reflecting demand thanks to a wider reopening from the pandemic.

Purchasing managers’ surveys showed India’s services activity in July falling to the lowest level in four months on weaker sales growth and elevated inflation. While domestic demand for Indian services remained steady, international demand worsened, offsetting gains in the manufacturing sector that expanded to the highest level in eight months.

Moderation in business outlook in services pulled down the S&P Global India Composite PMI Index to 56.6 in July, from 58.2 a month earlier.

Exports

Trade deficit widened to a fresh record of almost $30 billion as exports growth slowed to a 17-month low led by weak global demand and a levy on outbound shipments of fuel, which makes up more than 15% of India’s exports.

Imports stayed near the record-high levels due to a weaker rupee, which was one of the worst performing Asian currencies in the last three months. Crude, which comprises about one-third of India’s imports, and coal with an 8% share, primarily contributed to the rise in inbound shipments.

Consumer Activity

Passenger vehicle sales rose for a second-straight month helped by a broad-based recovery in all segments, including two-wheelers. While supply issues due to semiconductor shortage are easing, automakers cautioned that costlier loans could crimp demand for new vehicles.

Bank credit continued to grow despite higher interest rates, rising the most in more than three years to 14.5% at the end of July. Liquidity in the banking system continued to remain in surplus.ustrial Activity

Among signs of industrial activity, factory output as well as core sector signaled moderation in June as electricity consumption and coal production slowed down with the onset of monsoons. The year-on-year growth in Index of Industrial Production eased to 12.3% from a one-year high in May. The growth of eight key infrastructure industries also dropped to 12.8 from 19.3% in the previous month. Both the data are published with a one-month lag.

Indian companies not in financial services can now directly invest in financial-services firms abroad, such as brokerages, asset management funds, and credit cards under the automatic route. Banks and insurance firms have been kept out of this. Earlier, such investment was prohibited.

This is according to the new overseas direct investment (ODI) regulations notified by the finance ministry on Monday. They are aimed at easing rules for domestic firms that want to invest abroad. The move could open the door for many companies that want to do so.A company can now invest four times its profit if it has been profitable for three years. “Enabling Indian entities not engaged in financial activities to invest in financial services will improve the available avenues to deploy surplus funds. In addition to this it will also enable them to diversify in other jurisdictions,” said Moin Ladha, partner, Khaitan & Co.

An entity not in insurance can invest overseas in general and health insurance if such a business supports the core activity of the Indian outfit.

The same relaxation has been given for investment in GIFT City, where an entity not in financial services can invest in a foreign outfit registered with the International Financial Services Centres Authority.

“Opening up financial services for investment by non-financial entities and the relaxation provided for investment in GIFT City will create new opportunities for funds and fintech start-ups controlled from India,” said Bhavin Shah, partner, PwC.

The issue of control

The regime has defined “control”. Holding less than 10 per cent in an overseas entity is, inter alia, not considered “control” but has been put under portfolio investment and permitted.

Earlier, there was no threshold for investment in the unlisted space.

The rules also exempt entities from the mandatory reporting requirement except in the case of equity capital in a foreign unlisted company. The reporting requirement had earlier led to compliance challenges, particularly because financial investors did not have the right to seek information from the target firm overseas, Ladha pointed out.

In the case of equity capital, the foreign entity’s annual performance report, certified by a statutory auditor, has to be submitted every year by December 31. Additionally, overseas direct investment has been given more flexibility by expanding the scope of the automatic route.

Issuing corporate guarantees to or on behalf of a second or the next-level step-down subsidiary (SDS) of an Indian entity does not require the Reserve Bank of India’s approval. It is now under the automatic route.

Similarly, acquiring equity capital in a foreign entity on a deferred-payment basis or any disinvestment involving write-offs beyond specified limits does not require approval.

Other than these, the new regime has introduced the concept of “strategic sector”, which gives the government the powers to permit overseas investment in excess of the limits prescribed under the rules.

“The strategic sector shall include energy, natural resources and such other sectors as may be decided by the government from time to time in view of the evolving business requirements,” it said. Besides, the new regulations have removed the cap for money remitted abroad. Earlier it was $1 billion per year or 400 per cent of the net worth. However, the percentage criterion remains unchanged.

Earlier, the RBI was of the view that money transferred overseas through the ODI route could be used only for bona fide purposes.

Easing investment route

• FinMin notification eases compliance, streamlines foreign investment structure
• Allows portfolio investment in unlisted companies
• Sets 10% threshold for investment in unlisted foreign companies
• Defines control, disinvestment to ease compliance
• Eases reporting requirement, except equity capital in unlisted foreign entity
• Introduces strategic sectors such as energy and natural resources
• Allows certain investments under automatic route, which were earlier through approval route

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s ports-to-power conglomerate is “deeply overleveraged,” with the group investing aggressively across existing as well as new businesses, predominantly funded with debt, CreditSights, a Fitch Group unit, said in a report.

The aggressive expansion pursued by the Adani Group, led by Asia’s richest person, has put pressure on its credit metrics and cash flow, CreditSights said in the report Tuesday, adding that “in the worst-case scenario” it may spiral into a debt trap and possibly a default.

“We see little evidence of promoter equity capital injections into the group companies, which we feel is needed to reduce leverage in their stretched balance sheets,” the agency said, referring to fund infusions from the Adani Group’s founders, known as “promoters” in India.

A representative for the Adani Group didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. All seven listed Adani firms declined by 2% to 7% in trading Tuesday.

CreditSights’ report comes after a big few years for Adani, who’s been on a rapid diversification spree, expanding an empire centered on ports and coal mining to include airports, data centers and cement as well as green energy. The group recently pledged to plow $70 billion into renewable projects. These moves have not only boosted Adani’s stature in India, but his fortune, with his net worth surging past $135 billion this year. He’s also increasingly moving into spheres dominated by the man he replaced as Asia’s richest man, compatriot Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd.

Also read: Adani Group gets Sebi approval for $3.8 billion open offer for Ambuja, ACC

The report puts a spotlight on the multiple fault lines that may impede Adani’s ambitions and the stratospheric surge in the shares of his firms. CreditSights’ analysts, however, said they draw “comfort” from the group’s strong relationships with banks as well as the administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Some other highlights from the report, authored by CreditSights Lakshmanan R, Rohan Kapur and Jonathan Tan:

• The Adani Group is entering new and unrelated businesses, which are highly capital intensive, raising concerns over execution oversight
• Potential strong competition between the group and Ambani’s Reliance to achieve market dominance could lead to “imprudent financial decisions”
• Adani Group is also exposed to moderate levels of governance and ESG risks
• The group has a “strong track record of churning out strong and stable companies” through its flagship, Adani Enterprises Ltd., and has built a portfolio of “stable infrastructure assets tied to the healthy functioning” of the Indian economy
• Its founder “enjoys a strong relationship” with the Modi government and has benefited from “policy tailwinds”

• CreditSights remain “cautiously watchful” of the group’s growing appetite for expansion, which is largely debt-funded

A self-made billionaire who started his business as an agri-trading firm in late 1980s, Adani has also been a busy dealmaker this year. Adani Group acquired the Haifa port in Israel in July for $1.2 billion and Swiss firm Holcim’s Indian cement units for $10.5 billion in May, besides almost three dozen big and small acquisitions. It’s also expanding into media, health care and digital services.

The group owns India’s largest private sector port operator, coal miner, city gas distributor and airport operator and is aiming to create the world’s largest renewable power generator.

‘Pull All Stops’

Investors have cheered the tycoon’s ability to rapidly scale up his businesses, spurring massive share rallies in Adani firms even during the pandemic, when most businesses suffered. Adani Enterprises and Adani Green Energy Ltd. have surged more than 1,300% since the beginning of 2020. Adani Total Gas Ltd. has rallied about 1,900% and Adani Transmission Ltd. over 900%, while the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex surged almost 42% over this period.

But it’s this breakneck growth that’s making credit watchers, including CreditSights, uneasy. The research firm acknowledges that the Adani founding family’s status as a majority shareholder in most of their listed group companies means they will go all out to support them.

The family’s “entire fortune and reputation is tied to the Adani Group companies,” it said. “Having such major ‘skin in the game’ could imply that the family would pull all stops to avoid default in any of the entities, since any material liquidity or solvency issue in one company would likely have a contagion effect on the valuation of the remaining companies too.”

Representatives from Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) have been called to brief a Parliamentary committee on citizens' data security and privacy.

As per a notice issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, IRCTC officials will brief members of the Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology on August 26.

The call for the briefing comes days after the Indian railway's ticketing arm floated a tender to generate Rs 1,000 crore from the monetisation of its data assets.

As per IRCTC's tender, it is looking for a consultant to identify ways in which customer data like name, age, mobile number, gender, address, email-id, class of journey, and payment mode, among others, can be monetised. The tender also spoke about the selection of an entity to design and roll out the data monetisation strategy.

IRCTC, a public sector undertaking that was listed on the bourses only in late 2019, is the dominant player in the railway ticketing space.

The plan to monetise customer data has raised an outcry over the past week and invited criticism from experts given the absence of rules regarding personal data protection. Lawyers have also pointed out that the personal data provided by customers to IRCTC at the time of booking their rail tickets "was not explicitly for the purpose of monetisation".

Since then, it has been reported that IRCTC will allow passengers to opt out of the data monetisation plan, with The Economic Times reporting on August 23 that the process was only at a preliminary stage and any decision would be strictly within "the confines of the law".

Before being briefed by IRCTC officials, the Parliamentary panel will hear the views of experts and stakeholders on issues related to digital platforms, technology, and the gig economy. The committee will again seek views on citizens' data security and privacy.

Apple Inc. plans to begin manufacturing the iPhone 14 in India about two months after the product’s initial release out of China, narrowing the gap between the two countries but not closing it completely as some had anticipated.

The company has been working with suppliers to ramp up manufacturing in India and shorten the lag in production of the new iPhone from the typical six to nine months for previous launches, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple, which long made most of its iPhones in China, is seeking alternatives as Xi Jinping’s administration clashes with the US government and imposes lockdowns across the country that have disrupted economic activity.

Analysts such as Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities Group have said they anticipate Apple will ship the next iPhone from both countries at roughly the same time, which would have been a significant benchmark in Apple’s efforts to diversify its supply chain and build redundancy.

Foxconn Technology Group, the primary manufacturer of iPhones, studied the process of shipping components from China and assembling the iPhone 14 device at its plant outside the southern Indian city of Chennai, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the efforts are confidential. That included looking at ways to maintain Apple’s high standards for confidentiality.

Apple and Foxconn ultimately determined a simultaneous start in India and China isn’t realistic this year, although it remains a long-term goal, said the people. The first iPhone 14s from India are likely to be finished in late October or November, following the initial September release, they said. An ambitious target would be the Diwali festival that begins Oct. 24, one person said.

A spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment. Foxconn did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Redington India Ltd., which distributes Apple products in the country, rose as much as 9.5 per cent after Bloomberg’s initial report.

Matching China’s pace of iPhone production would have marked a major milestone for India, which has been touting its attractiveness as an alternative at a time when rolling Covid lockdowns and US sanctions jeopardize China’s position as factory to the world. Assembling iPhones often entails coordination between hundreds of suppliers and meeting Apple’s infamously tight deadlines and quality controls.

Some people within Apple and Foxconn had hoped to begin simultaneous production in India this year, but that was never an official plan. To ensure a smooth launch, Apple wanted to focus on getting the China operations up to speed first and then work out the India production, one of the people said.

Apple’s partners began making iPhones in India in 2017, the start of a yearslong effort to build manufacturing capabilities in the country. Besides offering backup to its existing operations, the country of 1.4 billion people is a promising consumer market and the Modi administration has offered financial incentives for tech production under its Make in India program.

One challenge in narrowing the cap of India production is secrecy. Apple goes to extreme lengths to keep new product details confidential, and imposing the same rigorous controls in a second country would prove difficult.

Local executives in India examined entirely cornering off a section of one of Foxconn’s multiple assembly lines, sequestering workers and scrutinizing all possible ways in which the security around the device could be compromised, according to two of the people. Thus far, the drastic security controls and stringent seclusion of its China facilities would be challenging to replicate, one of the people said.

Apple has also been concerned about Indian customs officials, who typically open up packages to check whether imported materials match their declarations, another potential vulnerability for product secrecy.

Even if Apple and Foxconn intended a simultaneous launch, supply-chain challenges would have stymied the goal. China, the source of many iPhone components, has gone through successive waves of lockdowns, complicating the process of shipping components through the country.

India’s workforce and factories haven’t easily adopted the highly controlled practices that Apple requires from suppliers. Since Apple began assembling iPhones in India through contract manufacturers Foxconn and Wistron Corp. five years ago, workers have revolted over salaries and the quality of food in two prominent incidents.

Click Here:- Indian Stock Market trading view

The Monetary Policy Committee's (MPC) "key policy goal" is to reduce inflation expectations closer to 4 percent, said Shashanka Bhide, one of the three external members on the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) rate-setting panel.

"Headline inflation rate has remained above 6 percent for several months now. Bringing down the expectations of inflation closer to the target of 4 percent is the key policy goal," Bhide told Moneycontrol in an e-mail interview.

Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation eased to 6.71 percent in July from 7.01 percent in June, although it was still above the RBI's medium-term target of 4 percent for the 34th consecutive month. Inflation has stayed above the 6 percent upper limit of the central bank's 2-6 percent tolerance range for seven straight months.

The MPC has so far only warned that inflation expectations could get destabilised. On August 5, when it raised the repo rate by 50 basis points to 5.4 percent, it said that "further calibrated monetary policy action is needed to… keep inflation expectations anchored."

Indians' three-months-ahead inflation expectations declined by 50 basis points in July to 10.3 percent, while one-year-ahead expectations fell by 60 basis points to 10.5 percent, according to the RBI's latest household survey.

The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad's Business Inflation Expectations Survey showed one-year-ahead expectations of producers fell by 41 basis points in June to 5.17 percent.

Policymakers keenly eye the directional movement of inflation expectations and not the level itself because it is crucial to ensuring price stability.

Actual inflation

While inflation remains high, Bhide said July's CPI inflation data – released after the MPC'50-basis-point repo rate hike on August 5 – suggested overall price levels seemed to have stabilised, with the general index of the CPI up only 0.5 percent from June.

"The impact of the government's measures in terms of taxes and tariffs have a significant impact in the short term," Bhide said. "The other steps take longer to show the impact. The steps in the case of edible oils, for example, were effective. The broader measures relating to energy and fuels have an impact on sectors including food commodities."

However, fresh pressures keep appearing. Last week, Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. and Mother Dairy increased milk prices by Rs 2 per litre, citing rising input costs. According to economists, the milk price hike could raise the August inflation number by about 20 basis points, with milk and related products making up 6.61 percent of the CPI basket.

For Bhide, more than one-time price increases, the subsequent spill overs make inflation broad-based.

Given the price pressures, it is no surprise the RBI's forecast of 7.1 percent for July-September is looking par for the course. A third consecutive quarter of CPI inflation staying outside the 2-6 percent tolerance range would result in the RBI failing its mandate.

Asked whether the MPC had discussed the possibility of failure, Bhide said projections for July-September "clearly imply the likelihood of failure to meet the mandate."

The RBI must submit a report to the central government spelling out the reasons for failure, the remedial actions it proposes to take, and an estimate of when inflation will return to target.

Bhide said he wasn't sure what procedure would be followed in writing the report, but he expected the external members of the MPC to provide inputs.

Growth challenge

According to Bhide, the Indian economy appears to have sustained the projected growth momentum in April-June, data for which will be released at the end of August. The RBI expects India's GDP to grow 16.2 percent in the first quarter of FY23 due to a favourable base effect.

"While external environment is a concern, improving capacity utilisation in manufacturing and resolution of some of the supply bottlenecks are positives for sustaining growth momentum. About 7.2 percent growth in FY23 is a realistic projection," Bhide said.

However, weakening demand from overseas would adversely impact India's export performance and improvement in domestic demand may not make up for the absence of this export push.

Even when it comes to growth, the answer lies in lowering inflation expectations.

Asked about fellow-external member Jayanth Varma terming the MPC's decision to remain focused on withdrawal of accommodation as confusing, Bhide said that, to him, the stance essentially implied the committee was still focused on the need to cool down inflation pressures as inflation is "well above" the 6 percent upper bound of the tolerance band.

"Anchoring inflation expectations close to the target is necessary to achieve this target and also the goal of economic growth," Bhide said.

LIC Housing Finance increased its Prime Lending Rate by 50 basis points on Monday. With this the new interest rates on home loans will now start from 8 per cent as against 7.50 per cent earlier.

The new rates will be effective from Monday.

The move was inline with the central bank, which hiked repo rate by 50 basis points in the recent monetary policy to tame inflation that is hovering above the upper tolerance band for consecutive months.

"As expected, the RBI's decision to hike the repo rate by 50 basis points on 5th August was well measured and abreast with the global economic trend. The hike in repo rate has caused some minimum fluctuation in the EMIs or the tenure on the home loans but demand for housing will remain robust. Hence, the interest rate hike of LIC HFL is in line with the market scenario," said Y. Viswanatha Gowd, MD & CEO.