Business News at 05:30 pm on 1st March, 2024

Let’s begin. The government has hiked windfall tax on domestically produced crude oil to Rs 4,600 per tonne from Rs 3,300 per tonne with effect from Friday. The tax is levied in the form of Special Additional Excise Duty. The SAED on export of diesel, however, has been cut to nil from Rs 1.50 a litre, according to an official notification. On petrol and jet fuel or ATF, the levy has been retained at nil. The new rates are effective from March 1. India first imposed windfall profit taxes on July 1, 2022, joining a host of nations that tax supernormal profits of energy companies. The tax rates are reviewed every fortnight based on average oil prices in the previous two weeks.

Meanwhile, State-run oil marketing companies have announced the increase in prices of 19 kg commercial LPG gas cylinders by Rs 25 with effect from 1 March 2024. With this, the retail price of a commercial gas cylinder of 19 kg stands at Rs 1795 in Delhi, while in Mumbai, it will be sold for Rs 1749 starting today. In Chennai and Kolkata, the price of the commercial LPG gas cylinder will be at Rs 1960 and Rs 1911 respectively. Before this, the state-run companies had increased the cost of commercial gas cylinders on 1 February when rates of a 19 kg gas cylinder were hiked by Rs 14. In February, a 19 kg LPG cylinder was priced at Rs 1769.50 in Delhi.

Moving on, India’s manufacturing sector growth climbed to a five-month high in February amid a sharper uptick in factory production and sales, supported by both domestic and external demand, a monthly survey said on Friday. The seasonally adjusted HSBC India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index rose from 56.5 in January to 56.9 in February, pointing to the strongest improvement in the health of the sector since September 2023. In Purchasing Managers’ Index parlance, a print above 50 means expansion while a score below 50 denotes contraction. According to the survey, production rose at the fastest pace in five months and fuelled the quickest increase in sales since last September and the strongest expansion in new export orders for 21 months.

Over to industry. Welspun Enterprises Limited, the infrastructure and energy arm of Welspun World, on Friday, announced that it has secured a significant contract to Design, Build and Operate a 2,000 million litres per day Water Treatment Plant at Bhandup Complex in Mumbai, from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. The contract, valued at Rs 4,123.88 crore, encompasses the design, construction, and operations & maintenance of the plant. The value includes an operations and maintenance (O&M) component of Rs 1,880.44 crore. The design‐build project is slated to be completed within a timeframe of 48 months, following which WEL will undertake O&M responsibilities for 15 years. The outstanding order book of the company as on December 31, 2023 was Rs 8,500 crore.

Over to tech sector. Google today said a clutch of companies including well-established ones continue to flout its billing norms, choosing not to pay Play Store service fee applicable on the sale of in-app digital goods, and warned that it will not hesitate to take necessary action to enforce policies including removal of such non-compliant apps from Google Play. Amid a warcry over Google Play billing policy by some prominent Indian startups and the recent launch of Indus Appstore, the Made-in-India app market challenger, Google in a blogpost said that allowing a small group of developers to get differential treatment from the vast majority of developers who are paying their fair share creates an uneven playing field.

On to market. Leading stock exchanges BSE and NSE will conduct a special trading session in the equity and equity derivative segments on Saturday to check their preparedness to handle major disruption or failure at the primary site. The special live trading session will have intra-day switch over from the Primary Site to Disaster Recovery site. The exchanges said there will be two sessions — the first from 9:15 am to 10 am on the PR, and the second from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm on the DR site. During the special session, all securities, including those on which derivative products are available, will have a maximum price band of 5 per cent.

Lastly, let’s see how the share market performed today. Indian benchmark indices ended higher for the second consecutive session on March 1 with Nifty around 22,300. Biggest gainers on the Nifty were Tata Steel, L&T, JSW Steel, Titan Company and IndusInd Bank, while losers were Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Sun Pharma, HCL Technologies, Infosys and SBI Life Insurance. Among sectors, Metal index up 3 percent, bank, capital good and oil & gas up 2 percent each. On the other hand, healthcare index down 1 percent and Information Technology index down 0.5 percent.