Weekly News Roundup at 10:00 am on 3rd December 2023

Let’s begin. Banks’ non-food credit grew nearly 20% year-on-year in October, compared with an 18.3% growth during the same period last year, Reserve Bank of India’s sectoral credit deployment data showed on Thursday. Excluding the impact of the HDFC merger, banks’ non-food credit grew 15.3%. In absolute terms, banks’ outstanding credit stood at Rs 154.05 trillion as of October 20. While loans to the agriculture sector grew 18% YoY to Rs 19.13 trillion, loans to small, medium and large industries grew 6% YoY to Rs 35.72 trillion. On the services side, loans to non-banking finance companies grew 22% YoY to Rs 14.76 trillion, while credit to housing finance companies rose 2% YoY to Rs 3.22 trillion.

Meanwhile, thanks to festive-season boost, the growth rate of eight-core sector industries rose to 12.1% in October from 9.2% in September, mainly due to sharp expansions recorded in production of electricity, steel, and coal during the month. These three industries constitute 48% of the overall core sector industries. The coal sector’s output jumped 18.4% year-on-year in October, and steel’s rose 11%. Electricity sector’s production surged 20.3% during the month. The October print was also aided by the statistical effect of a low base. In October 2022, the core sector had grown only 0.7% year-on-year. Sequentially, the output of core sector industries increased 2.8% month-on-month. This is sharply higher than the 0.1% sequential growth recorded in October 2022.

Moving on. The Digital India Bill is not expected to be put in the public domain for consultation before the general elections in 2024, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday. At the FE.com Digifraud & Safety Summit, Chandrasekhar said that we need a lot of consultation and debate and discussion around it. The government, however, has readied a roadmap on the Bill, the policy goals and principles for safety and trust, the Minister added. The Bill, which seeks to replace the 22-year old IT Act, will define the regulations on emerging technologies, big tech companies, separate rules for different intermediaries such as e-commerce, search engines, gaming, etc, accountability of platforms like social media companies, misinformation, among other key things.

In some more industry news, The government is likely to reserve half of the 20 gigawatt hours cell manufacturing capacity under the Production Linked Incentive scheme for Advanced Chemistry Cell battery storage systems for the general grid, a senior official said Wednesday. Battery energy storage systems enable energy from renewables like solar and wind – which is unstable and its output fluctuates – to be stored and released when the power is needed the most. The cells used in battery storage for the grid are different from those used in mobility and devices. The batteries needed for the grid tend to be less dense because they have to sit at one place, unlike those used in electric vehicles.

On to India’s leading eight residential markets which have demonstrated robust growth, with a 22% increase in sales and a 17% rise in new supply during the third quarter of the calendar year (July-September 2023), as per the latest data by PropTiger.com. The report, titled ‘Real Insight Residential – July-September 2023’, highlights that sales of residential units have climbed to 1,01,220 units in the third quarter from 83,220 units in the same period last year. All cities, except Chennai, registered a growth in sales, with Mumbai Metropolitan Region and Pune accounting for nearly half of the total volume. The quarterly report by PropTiger.com tracks eight major housing markets, including Delhi-NCR, MMR, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Ahmedabad.

In other news, Capital markets regulator Sebi has barred nine entities from the securities market for at least two years and directed them to refund Rs 8 crore collected from investors, through unregistered investment advisory services, within three months. Additionally, the regulator has imposed a penalty totalling Rs 18 lakh on them and asked them to pay the amount within 45 days. The nine entities that have been prohibited are — Yogesh Kukadia, Rajesh R Kallidumbil, Nithin Raj, Signal2Noise Capital Partners, Investo Investment Advisers, SS Info Sales, SI Digi Sales, CT Web Sales and ML Tele Sales. Further, three individuals — Yogesh Kukadia, Rajesh Kallidumbil and Nithin Raj — have been restrained from associating as directors with any listed public company for two years.

Lastly, Padget Electronics, a subsidiary of Dixon Technologies this week said it has set up a new facility with an investment of Rs 256 crore in Noida to manufacture Xiaomi smartphones. The new plant is built across 270,000 sq feet, and has an annual capacity to manufacture 25 million phones. The company is also working to come up with another facility in the next one year to manufacture smartphones and IT hardwares, which will be spread over an area of 1 million sq ft. Dixon has already commenced the production of Xiaomi smartphones in the October-December quarter.