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India’s economic activity showed early signs of cooling off in June as acute price pressures, rising interest rates, and a falling rupee dampened sentiment after a strong showing the previous month.

Softer increases in factory orders dragged the manufacturing sector, pushing the needle on a dial measuring so-called ‘Animal Spirits’ back to 5, from 6 earlier. The gauge, based on eight high-frequency indicators compiled by Bloomberg News, uses a three-month weighted average to smooth out volatility. A move to left signifies a loss of momentum.

Pent-up consumption had powered revival in Asia’s third-largest economy, but rising prices, due in part to the war in Ukraine and supply disruptions, thwarted the nascent recovery. The Reserve Bank of India raised rates by 90 basis points in two moves to temper price gains and is scheduled to hold its next review from Aug. 2-4.

India’s rupee fell past 80 to a dollar as foreign investors pulled out money amid monetary policy tightening by the Federal Reserve. A declining currency may also prevent a faster pass-through of commodity slump, thereby delaying revival.

Below are details of the dashboard. (For an alternative gauge of growth trends, follow Bloomberg Economics’ monthly GDP tracker -- a weighted index of 11 indicators.)

Business Activity

Purchasing managers’ surveys showed India’s services activity rising to the highest level in more than a decade. At the same time, expansion in manufacturing slowed, pulling down the S&P Global India Composite PMI Index a tad in June.

Demand in India’s dominant services sector strengthened after a wider reopening from the pandemic, but elevated input costs risk roiling sentiment and hurting demand. “Middle-to-high income households are likely to prioritize spending on contact intensive services that were avoided during the pandemic, at the cost of consumer durables,” according to ICRA Ltd. Chief Economist Aditi Nayar.

Exports

India’s trade deficit widened to a record $26.2 billion in June as imports rose faster than exports, raising concerns about a further slide in the rupee and a bigger current account deficit. Petroleum products, coal, and gold primarily contributed to the rise in inbound shipments, while exports took a hit amid fears of a global recession.

Besides the US and Europe, the risk of recession is rising in Asian economies too, as higher prices spur central banks to accelerate the pace of interest rate hikes, according to a Bloomberg survey.

Consumer Activity
After several months of decline, India’s automobile sector recovered amid an easing semiconductor crisis. Key segments, including passenger vehicles, two-wheelers, and utility vehicles, rose, driven by demand for personal mobility.

Other indicators of consumer demand also showed a pick up, with bank credit growing 13.16 per cent at the end of June, from 12.12 per cent in May. However, surplus liquidity in the banking system is dropping as the central bank mops up excess supply extended during the pandemic.

Industrial Activity

The industrial activity also showed momentum. Factory output rose to a one-year high of 19.6 per cent in May from a year ago, helped by manufacturing and electricity production. The output of eight key infrastructure industries climbed 18.1 per cent in May, the highest jump in more than a year. Both the data are published with a one-month lag.

Source: business standard

The Centre has no plans to subsidise the export of pulses, minister of consumer affairs, food, and public distribution Piyush Goyal has said.

"There is no proposal to offer export subsidies for pulse traders," Goyal said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha Day 3 of the monsoon session on July 20.

The comments come amid reports that exporters want a cash subsidy to boost trade.

The Economic Times reported in June that exporters and traders had asked for a 10 percent cash subsidy to boost channa exports at a time when prices had fallen below the minimum support price (MSP) on the back of record production.

"We are awaiting a reply from the government," The Economic Times quoted Bimal Kothari, chairman of Indian Pulses and Grains Association, as saying. Kothari added that India had a "huge" stock of channa.

In his response in the Lok Sabha, Goyal also said free import of tur and urad dal until the end of FY23 was decided "after carefully analysing production, availability, prices and market conditions to protect the interest of domestic farmers while ensuring adequate availability at reasonable prices for all the consumers across India".

Prices having been searing in India for several years now, with the headline retail inflation at 7.01 percent in June, the 33rd consecutive month it stayed above the Reserve Bank of India's medium-term target of 4 percent. It was also the sixth month in row that inflation was above the 6 percent upper-bound of the 2-6 percent tolerance range. The government and the central bank have been forced to take steps to ease the price pressure.

India has cut a windfall tax on diesel and aviation fuel shipments by 2 rupees a liter, according to a government notification.

New Delhi also cut the tax on domestically produced crude to 17,000 rupees a tonne, effective July 20.

Amid uproar in Parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday took to Twitter to clarify the decisions taken by the GST Council in its 47th meeting last month in Chandigarh. The Council recommended reconsidering the approach for the imposition of GST on specified food items like pulses, cereals, flour etc, said Sitharaman in a Twitter thread.

The FM tweeted that certain items including pulses/daal, wheat, rye, oats, maize, rice, aatta/flour, suji/rawa, besan, puffed rice, curd/lassi when sold loose and non pre-packed or pre-labeled, will not attract any GST.

Sitharaman pointed out that this is not the first time these food articles are being taxed and that states were collecting significant revenue from foodgrain in the pre-GST regime. "Punjab alone collected more Rs 2,000 cr on food grain by way of purchase tax. UP collected Rs 700 cr," she tweeted.

"All states were present in GST Council when this issue was presented by the Group of Ministers on Rate Rationalisation in the 47th meeting held in Chandigarh on Jun 28, 2022. All States, including non-BJP States (Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala) agreed with the decision. This decision of the GST Council is yet again by consensus," she said.

"Further, the GoM that recommended these changes was composed of members from West Bengal, Rajasthan, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Goa & Bihar and was headed by CM of Karnataka. It carefully considered this proposal, taking into account the tax leakage," added Sitharaman.

"This decision was a much-needed one to curb tax leakage. It was considered at various levels including by officers, the Group of Ministers, and was finally recommended by the GST Council with the complete consensus of all members," said FM in her concluding tweet.

Lok Sabha proceedings were adjourned on Tuesday amid protests by opposition members over imposition of GST on some new items and on price rise issue.

As soon as the House reassembled at 2 pm, opposition members belonging to the Congress, Trinamool Congress, DMK and others came to the well of the House carrying placards to protest against price rise and imposition of the GST on some new items.

After laying of papers by the members, Kirit Premjibhai Solanki, who was on the chair adjourned the House for the day.

Godrej Consumer Products will invest Rs 100 crore over the next three years to spread mass awareness about green lifestyles, a top official said on Tuesday.

The brand, which has launched a ready-to-mix body wash aimed at reducing plastic usage, will spend the money to promote better plastic consumption, its managing director and chief executive Sudhir Sitapati told reporters here.

Amid the widespread regulatory actions like the ban on single-use plastics, Sitapati said banning plastics is not the answer to the current challenges.

He said plastic has solved a lot of problems and democratised consumption by making it possible for people from different strata of society to use various products.

Activist Afroze Shah said corporates need to do more when it comes to sustainability, and also stressed that it is the management of plastic where we need to direct our efforts. Sitapati said the product launched on Tuesday – christened as "Godrej Magic Bodywash” – uses only 16 per cent of plastic by weight and the company aims to reduce it further to 8 per cent in a few years.

The Indian rupee touched another record low as foreign investors continued to sell the nation’s equities.

The rupee declined to 80.0125 per dollar on Tuesday. The currency has been buffeted by nearly $30 billion of foreign outflows from the nation’s equities so far this year -- a record sum -- and concerns over a deteriorating current-account deficit amid elevated oil and commodity prices.

India policymakers have sought to arrest the currency’s decline with a raft of measures -- from intervention to raising duties on gold imports -- with a weaker rupee adding to imported inflation pressures. Other emerging market currencies are also feeling the heat as a hawkish Federal Reserve lures capital toward the US.

The currency has declined 7% this year as a shortfall in India’s current account -- the broadest measure of external finances -- will

probably widen to 2.9% of gross domestic product in the fiscal year ending March 31, according to a Bloomberg survey in late June, nearly double the level seen in the previous year.

India’s central bank is for an orderly appreciation or depreciation in the currency and is intervening in all market segments to curb volatility, Governor Shaktikanta Das said earlier this month.

Strategists at Nomura Holdings Inc and Morgan Stanley continue to remain bearish on the rupee, forecasting the currency may decline to 82 to a dollar by September.

The Reserve Bank of India has foreign-exchange reserves of almost $600 billion, which it has been deploying to protect the rupee. Authorities have raised duties on gold import and raised levies on petroleum exports. The monetary authority has also announced measures to draw more forex inflows into the country and allowed rupee settlement of trade.

The government plans to introduce the ‘Press and Registration of Periodicals Bill, 2022’ during the monsoon session of Parliament beginning Monday.

“The Bill seeks to replace the Press and Registration of Books (PRB) Act, 1867 by decriminalization of the existing Act, keeping the procedures of the extant Act simple from the view point of medium/small publishers and uphold the values of Press Freedom,” a government communication to the Parliament read.

The government had first released the draft Press and Registration of Periodicals Bill in 2017 that sought to ease the process of registration of newspapers and dispense with the penal provisions under the PRB Act.

The PRB Act has provisions to impose a penalty on publishers for not printing the name of the printer in the newspaper or periodical or not making a declaration before the magistrate about operation of printing presses.

The proposed Bill has provisions to set up a press registrar general and bring the digital media in its ambit.

The 2019 draft bill had defined “news on digital media” as “news in digitised format that can be transmitted over the internet, computer, mobile networks and includes text, audio, video and graphics.” The Bill sought to enable the central government and the state government to frame appropriate rules to regulate the criteria or conditions for issuing government advertisements in newspapers, accreditation of newspapers, and suchlike facilities for newspapers.

The rupee closed at 79.88 against the dollar on Thursday to hit a new low, weakening 0.3 per cent against the greenback, as a sharper-than-expected rise in US inflation stoked speculation of the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates by 100 basis points (bps) at its meeting this month.

The domestic currency, which had closed at 79.64/$ at its previous close, slipped to a low of 79.92/$ intraday.

“Rupee delayed the level of eighties, but for the time being. We expect it to break sooner,” HDFC Securities Research Analyst Dilip Parmar told Business Standard. “With markets now considering 100-bp (hike) by the Fed in July, a decisive break of parity by EUR/USD and 6.90 in Chinese yuan will lead to sharp depreciation in the Indian Rupee,” he said.

The data released on Wednesday showed that US consumer prices rose a faster-than-forecast 9.1 per cent in the year through June to a fresh forty-year high. Investors bet that the Fed was now more likely to raise interest rates by 100 bps when it meets on July 26-27. A possible 100-bp hike would be the largest increase since the Fed started directly using overnight interest rates to conduct monetary policy in the early 1990s. The US central bank has already raised interest rates by 150 bps so far in 2022.

Also Read: As rupee falls, spread between India and US bond yields tightens

“Everything is in play,” Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told reporters in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Wednesday. Asked if that included raising rates by a full percentage point, Bostic replied, “it would mean everything.”

Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, speaking on Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television, declined to say if she favoured going bigger at the July meeting, noting there were important data releases between now and then. But she said there was “no reason” for raising rates by less than the 75 bps that policymakers delivered last month.

Speaking in a separate interview with the New York Times also on Wednesday, San Francisco Fed Chief Mary Daly said that “My most likely posture is 0.75, because of the data I’ve seen,” adding that she had expected the CPI number to be high.

The Fed has turned aggressively against inflation, after being blamed for its initially slow response, roiling financial markets and increasing the risk that its actions could tip the US economy into recession.

Given the acceleration in monthly inflation, economists at Nomura Securities International too expect a full percentage-point increase in the Fed’s benchmark rate at the upcoming policy meeting.

“Incoming data suggests the Fed’s inflation problem has worsened, and we expect policymakers to react by scaling up the pace of rate hikes to reinforce their credibility,” Nomura said in a note.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell had told reporters last month after the central bank raised rates by 75 bps, to a range of 1.5 per cent to 1.75 per cent, that either a 50- or 75-bp increase was likely in July. A majority of his colleagues since then have either echoed his line or endorsed the bigger move.

While likely dollar sales by the Reserve Bank of India around 79.90-79.91 per dollar level had kept the rupee from breaching the psychologically significant 80/$ mark, currency traders see the local unit breaking past that level in the coming days.

Providing technical analysis, Parmar from HDFC Securities said that the breach of the 80 per dollar mark could open the path for the rupee to head to 80.90/$.

In the current week, the Indian currency has given up 0.8 per cent versus the dollar, taking the depreciation for 2022 as a whole, so far, to 6.9 per cent.

Higher US interest rates typically lead to global capital flowing out of emerging markets such as India, as investors prefer higher returns from the world’s largest economy.

So far in 2022, foreign portfolio investors have sold a net of $30.83 billion worth of Indian assets, the highest outflow on record and more than three times the net overseas sales in 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, the NSDL data showed.

Investors have flocked to the safety of the US dollar as the protracted war in Ukraine and the Fed’s aggressive rate hike plans have sparked fears of a global economic downturn.

The US dollar index, which measures the currency against six rival currencies, was last at 108.56, a twenty-year high, the Bloomberg data showed. The previous close for the index was 107.96.

While the RBI has recently announced a slew of measures to attract overseas flows and ease pressure on India’s current deficit, traders said that it would take time for foreign inflows to materialise, given the sheer scale of the global flight to the US dollar.

The Indian advertising market is forecast to grow by 16 per cent in 2022 to reach USD 11.1 billion (Rs 88,639 crore), becoming the fastest growing market globally, a report said.

This would lead to over 14.5 per cent growth by TV and 31.6 per cent on the digital side, said Dentsu Global Ad Spend Forecasts July 2022.

The easing of lockdown restrictions has opened up categories such as travel and hospitality, which were not spending during the pandemic. Besides, categories like edtech, fintech, gaming and cryptocurrency have shown growth on Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms.

"Digital, at a 33.4 per cent share of spend, will be the key medium for digital-first brands and consumer tech companies in 2022. TV continues to garner a 41.8 per cent share in 2022 and has recovered fully, boosted by the airing of new content and sports events such as the Indian Premier League," it said. The digital ad space is estimated to grow twice as fast as ad spending through television.

In 2022, the US will be both the top ad spending region at USD 329.6 billion and the most dynamic region with spending increasing by 13.1 per cent.

In terms of growth, however, India (+16.0 per cent YOY growth) will stay ahead of the United States (+12.8 per cent) and Brazil (+9.0 per cent) as the fastest growing market," said Dentsu Global Ad Spend Forecasts.

According to the report, looking ahead, "significant growth" is forecast in OTT, connected TV, online gaming and e-commerce. "The India advertising market is forecast to grow by 16 per cent in 2022 to reach USD 11.1 billion led by TV (+14.5 per cent) and digital (+31.6 per cent)," it said.

In 2021, the Indian advertising market was around USD 9.6 billion. It is projected to grow by 15.2 per cent in 2023 to USD 12.8 billion and by 15.7 per cent to USD 14.8 billion in 2024. While globally, advertising spending would increase by 8.7 per cent in 2022 to USD 738.5 billion.

Ad spending in the Asia Pacific is anticipated to reach USD 250 billion, with digital accounting for much of this amount. In the region, China advertising market is forecast to grow by a further 5.6 per cent in 2022 to reach USD 130.2 billion.

Dentsu international CEO Media APAC Prerna Mehrotra said the latest Dentsu Ad Spend July 2022 points to a continued recovery despite another year of economic uncertainty, with APAC 2022 ad spend of USD 250 billion, based on a growth forecast at 5.1 per cent.

"However, continued lockdowns in key markets, geopolitical tension and ongoing supply logistics issues could add pressure on businesses with a cascading impact on marketing spends," she said.