Business News at 10:00 am on 16th April, 2024

Let’s begin – A team of Indian officials will be in the UK this week to resume negotiations on the free trade agreement, after a brief stalemate. The idea is to resolve a few pending issues and sew up the deal without any more delays, a senior official said Monday. The visit of the Indian delegation comes a month after both sides decided to take a pause in negotiations when Indian elections were announced on March 15. At that time the 14th round of negotiations were on. “Team is going this week. Some of them have already gone. Our deputy chief negotiator is also now in the UK. There are very few pending issues now in the FTA,” commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal said.

Up next – In what can be seen as a relief for Byju’s, the majority of shareholders of edtech firm, have approved the company’s resolution to increase its authorised share capital to absorb $200 million raised through the rights issue.The EGM held on March 29 was opposed by a group of investors in the company. “The extraordinary general meeting held on March 29, 2024, has been approved by a majority of 55% of the total votes polled. The voting process, which included both the EGM and a postal ballot that concluded on April 6, 2024, has been duly scrutinised by an independent third party,” the company said in a statement.

Moving on – India’s merchandise exports contracted 3.1% on year in 2023-24 and imports 5.3%, even though the later months of the year saw a pick-up in the two-way shipments. The contraction in goods trade with other countries came after two successive years of positive growth on the low base created by the pandemic-induced slump in FY20-FY21. This meant India’s foreign performance in the last year was in line with the global trend – as per the World Trade Organization, global demand for traded goods shrank 1.2% in 2023. Last week, the WTO revised its projection for merchandise trade volume growth in 2024 to 2.6% from 3.3% seen earlier. However, Delhi-based Global Trade Research Initiative’s forecasts a 1.2% drop in world merchandise trade values.

In other news – Vodafone Idea on Monday said the company plans to cover 40% of its existing revenue base with 5G within the next 2-2.5 years. Following an Rs 18,000 crore capital raise through a follow-on public offering, the company aims to roll out the service within six-nine months. From the FPO proceeds, Vodafone Idea will allocate Rs 5,720 crore for the 5G launch, establishing 22,000 5G sites across 17 priority circles – 10,000 in the current fiscal year and 12,000 in FY26. “We have been engaged with our vendors for 5G for quite sometime now…Once the funding is in place, we will expedite the ordering (for equipments) as quickly as possible,” Vodafone Idea chief executive officer Akshaya Moondra said.

Meanwhile – In a major relief to Reliance Infrastructure, the National Company Law Tribunal’s Mumbai bench has disposed of two separate insolvency cases filed against its subsidiary Mumbai Metro One. The petitions, filed by State Bank of India and IDBI Bank, were dismissed due to a debt settlement agreement reached between Mumbai Metro and the lenders, providing relief to RInfra. This decision holds importance as it paves the way for the Maharashtra government to expedite the acquisition of RInfra’s stake in MMOPL, which operates Mumbai city’s busiest metro. RInfra has been seeking to exit the project since 2020. The petitions were disposed of in view of a one-time debt settlement agreement signed between the parties, said in a regulatory update.

Moving ahead – The Narendra Modi government will launch the revamped rural and urban housing schemes in the first 100 days, if voted back to power for a third term. The revised schemes could offer enhanced financial assistance to help the middle-class and poor families build houses in the next five years, sources said. With the affordable rural housing schemes for rural and urban areas coming to an end in March, the Budget for 2024-25 unveiled a plan to build additional houses to meet the requirement arising from an increase in the number of families. Meanwhile, the government will build another two crore affordable houses in the next five years.
“Lastly – GIFT Nifty indicated that Indian equity indices BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 may see a weak opening. GIFT Nifty traded lower as the index was down 102.50 points or 0.46% at 22,250.00 indicating a muted start for domestic indices NSE Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex on Tuesday. Previously, on Monday, the NSE Nifty 50 lost 246.90 points or 1.10% to settle at 22,272.50, while the BSE Sensex nosedived 845.12 points or 1.06% to close at 73,399.78. The key stocks to watch in trade are SBI, TCS, Tata Power, Adani Power, JSW and JSW Infrastructure among others.