Business Standard
RBI surplus transfer to govt hits a new high of ~2.87 trn
The Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday decided to transfer a surplus of ~2.87 trillion for 2025-26 (FY26) — surpassing FY25’S record — to the Centre as income rose and balance sheet expanded. The central bank,...
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Sebi moots new price-discovery mechanism
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has proposed changes to the price-discovery mechanism for initial public offerings (IPOS) and relisted stocks during the preopen call auction session. Under the proposed revised framework for...
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Higher user fee puts Navi Mumbai airport on a costlier flight path
The Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India (Aera) has set the user development fee (UDF) for Navi Mumbai airport in the range of ~620-738 for each departing domestic passenger, about 3.5x higher than the UDF charged at Mumbai airport. Aera...
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SHANTI Act sets off new reaction in US nuclear commerce
The US nuclear power industry will closely follow the implementation of the SHANTI (Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India) Act in India as part of a broader, long-term effort to build a serious commercial...
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Vi closing ₹35K cr Sbi-led funding ‘very fast’: CEO
The top management of Vodafone Idea (Vi) is confident of closing the ongoing talks with a consortium of banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) following the promoters’ decision to infuse equity into the company. The board of India’s No. 3 carrier...
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Real-time risk scores on cards for digi payments
Bank deposits made digitally will soon be assigned ‘scores’ on a real time basis, K Satyanarayana Raju, MD & CEO of Indian Digital Payment Intelligence Corporation (IDPIC) said, in a move to check so-called mule accounts. Mule accounts are existing...
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Ai-hacking threat pushes $130 billion crypto sector to the brink
The crypto hacks came a little over two weeks apart in April, netting the attackers almost $600 million in total while triggering an investor exodus from one major platform and causing another to fail. But for all the damage the two exploits wrought,...
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Indian-flagged vessel sinks off Oman coast after attack
India on Thursday condemned an attack on one of its vessels in the Gulf of Oman that left it ablaze before it sank, calling the incident “unacceptable”. The incident took place even as New Delhi hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi for...
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MPC to look through West Asia shock if it’s transitory: RBI Guv
The Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra said the central bank will consider incoming data for policy actions and will be ready to look through the spike in oil prices. However, he warned that policy action will be needed if the shock from...
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IT firms paid record ₹1.3 trn to shareholders in FY26 despite AI headwinds
India’s top 16 information-technology (IT) services companies in FY26 paid its shareholders a record high amount of around ~1.3 trillion in dividend and share buyback even as the industry faced a threat to its traditional business configurations from...
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100 years on, Bajaj Group begins to build anew for India
Few Indian business families have remained as cohesive across generations as the Bajaj family, where continuity has been managed through a combination of governance structures and cultural discipline. The group that Bachhraj Bajaj founded in Wardha...
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CIL lines up ~1 trillion capex push over 5 yrs
State-owned miner Coal India Ltd (CIL) plans to spend ~1 trillion over five years through 2030-31 (FY31) as part of an ambitious capital expenditure-led overhaul of its mining and diversification strategy, Chairman-cum-managing Director B Sairam told...
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‘Claire has what it takes to lead Biocon forward’
Kiran Mazumdar-shaw has spent more than four decades building Biocon, taking it from a rented garage in Bengaluru to one of the world’s largest biosimilars companies. Now, at 73, the celebrated biotech entrepreneur is thinking about what comes next,...
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Top 3 airlines may get up to ~1.5K cr each: DFS secy
India’s three major airlines could each avail of up to ~1,500 crore under the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) 5.0 announced recently to help businesses hit by the West Asia conflict, Department of Financial Services (DFS) Secretary M...
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As global campuses land, a churn may sweep India’s academic talent pool
India’s higher education sector is likely to see heightened competition for faculty as foreign universities establish campuses in the country, a shift expected to place upward pressure on salaries, even as the system continues to face a structural...
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MSMES, airlines get ~2.55 trillion credit lifeline amid West Asia crisis
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Tuesday approved the fifth edition of the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS 5.0), with an outlay of ~18,100 crore, to support micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMES),...
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A vote for change, and continuity
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) breached the West Bengal fortress of the Trinamool Congress on Monday, securing a decisive and long-elusive victory, while retaining Assam for another term. In Tamil Nadu, actor-politician Chandrasekaran Joseph Vijay’s...
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Govt looks to tap deepwater oil amid Hormuz squeeze
“Adequate data is the first step in oil and gas exploration. Many of these blocks were earlier designated as ‘no-go’ areas, resulting in limited data availability. That gap is now being addressed,” said another person familiar with the matter. The...
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India Inc’s big foreign buys yield no more than tepid returns
Big-ticket acquisition by India Inc in the past two decades has not translated into good returns to shareholders. In eight of 10 occasions, the share prices of firms that spent billions buying marquee assets have underperformed the broader market...
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Alphabet, Amazon outpace Meta in AI during earnings bonanza
A frenzied day of earnings reports offered a glimpse at how some of the world’s biggest tech companies are doing in artificial intelligence. The upshot: Alphabet Google is seeing a clear payoff from its AI spending, while Meta Platforms Inc is lagging...
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‘Expedite reforms instead of salvaging near-term growth’
Citing the axiom that crises should not be wasted, the Economic Division in the Finance Ministry on Wednesday made a strong pitch for India to push through long-pending reforms in response to the West Asia crisis and flagged the risks of an ‘excessive...
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Google kicks off $15 bn project in ‘Ai-patnam’
Around 30 kilometres from Visakhapatnam, the village of Tarluvada sits quietly amid the green stretches of the Eastern Ghats, flanked by paddy fields and mango orchards. On Tuesday, this agrarian landscape became the site of one of India’s most...
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‘Media must uphold India’s dialogue-driven DNA’
“If the DNA of India is inherently argumentative, pluralistic and dialogue-driven, then the media as the modern public square must be the true reflection of that DNA,” former foreign secretary Shyam Saran said in his keynote address at the 26th...
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Q4 hit but pvt capex lifts FY26 investments 32%
The private sector firmly reassumed the driver’s seat in new capital investments in 2025-26 (FY26), with its share of new projects topping 70 per cent after several years, thanks to a sharp 51.5 per cent rise in new investment commitments that nearly...
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RBI cancels Paytm PB’S banking licence
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has cancelled the banking licence of Paytm Payments Bank (PB), citing that the conduct of founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and the entity owned by One97 Communications was detrimental to depositors’ interests. The action...
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Supply woes could trigger demand shock: RBI article
Supply dislocations arising out of the West Asia conflict, which is close to two months now, can turn into demand shock that needs careful assessment, said an article on the State of the Economy in the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’S) monthly bulletin...
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Hormuz tensions mount as IRGC captures two vessels
Iran seized two ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, tightening its grip on the strategic waterway after US President Donald Trump called off fresh attacks with no sign of peace talks restarting. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said the...
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Apple turns page to Ternus as next CEO
Apple Inc Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook will hand leadership to hardware chief John Ternus on September 1, ending a 15-year run that built a $4 trillion behemoth. Cook, 65, will become executive chairman. Ternus, 50, faces a slow progress in...
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~1.68 trn in less than 4 mths: War, oil rally drive record FPI outflows
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIS) may have turned net equity buyers in recent sessions, but their cumulative outflows in 2026, so far, have already exceeded those seen in any full year previously. Their net selloff this year so far stands at about...
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US team in Pak today; no word from Iran yet
United States (US) President Donald Trump said negotiators will head to Pakistan on Monday for another round of talks with Iran, raising hopes of extending a fragile ceasefire set to expire by Wednesday even as Washington and Tehran remain in a...
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Iran opens Hormuz; Trump signals lasting deal to end war
Iran said it would open the Strait of Hormuz for the duration of a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, increasing the prospect of an agreement to end the wider war in West Asia. Further boosting hopes for an end to the war,...
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US waiver ends, India to keep Russia oil tap open
The United States (US) will not renew a one-month sanctions waiver that allowed purchases of Russian and Iranian crude oil, said American Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a move that carries implications for India after refiners stepped up buying to...
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FY26 exports grew despite tariffs but war impact looms
India’s goods trade emerged relatively unscathed through the first month of the Us-iran conflict, with exports hitting a one-year high of $39 billion to help close 2025-26 (FY26) with a 0.9 per cent uptick, and the import bill shrinking 6.5 per cent...
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Stocks, ~ slip as US moves to block Strait of Hormuz
Indian equities retreated from last week’s sharp rally after peace talks between Washington and Tehran collapsed over the weekend and the US Navy prepared to block ships to and from Iran via the Strait of Hormuz, denting investor sentiment and pushing...
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Mkts slip, crude spikes as Us-iran truce hopes fade
A day after benchmark indices jumped nearly 4 per cent and the Sensex posted its best session in over five years, domestic equity markets pulled back on Thursday as global risk appetite weakened and optimism over the Us-iran ceasefire faded. The...
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Markets soar on shaky Iran-us ceasefire
Domestic equity markets rallied sharply on Wednesday, buoyed by a wave of optimism across global markets after the United States (US), and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire and Tehran pledged to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, in a last-ditch deal that...
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Multi-pronged strategy in works to tide over West Asia war impact
Comprehensive measures are underway to help the economy tide over the ongoing impact of the West Asia crisis, cutting across a wide range of sectors including micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMES) that are taking the hit of the geopolitical...
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West Asia war has evolved into ‘systemic tremor’: FM
The ongoing conflict in West Asia has evolved from a regional security concern into a “systemic tremor”, threatening the vital arteries of global energy and hardening the lines of a new, multipolar world order, said Union Finance Minister Nirmala...
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RBI may maintain status quo on repo rate, stance
Even as the war in West Asia rages and international oil prices spike, the sixmember rate-setting panel of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 5.25 per cent, according to a Business Standard poll of...
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Plastic factories stare at uncertainty as machines fall silent
“A month ago, we didn’t even get time to sit and relax. Now machines are idle, mostly,’’ laments Ratan Singh, a contractual worker at a plastic products manufacturing unit in Balasore, nearly 205 km from Bhubaneswar. There’s no raw material and...
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City of Glass cracks under Iran war’s distant heat
Starting with Firozabad, where cooled furnaces and scattered shards of glass mirror fragile livelihoods, this six-part series traces the ripple effects of the West Asia conflict across India — as supply chains wobble, factories slow, and communities...
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Gross GST growth in FY26 least since Covid, net up 7.1%
Gross and net goods and services tax (GST) collections rose 8.3 per cent and 7.1 per cent, respectively, in 2025-26, a year that witnessed a major rate rationalisation in September. Annual gross revenue growth was the slowest since the Covid-hit...
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~ may slip further to 97/$ if West Asia war prolongs
Having already depreciated by 5.20 per cent against the greenback so far in 2026, the rupee could slide to 97 per dollar if the war in West Asia prolongs, before recovering modestly to around 96 by the end of June, according to the median estimate of a...
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CEOS upbeat on FY27 capex amid war cloud
Geopolitical uncertainty — amplified by the conflict in West Asia — is weighing on corporate India’s outlook for FY27. According to a Business Standard survey of 34 CEOS across sectors, the war could weigh on GDP growth, fuel inflation, and impact job...
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Sensex P/E valuations lowest since May ’20 amid FPI selloff
There has been a sharp decline in equity valuation in India since the war in West Asia started at the end of last month. The benchmark BSE Sensex’s trailing 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple on Friday declined to over a year’s low of 20.2x...
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Govt steps in to shield OMCS via big duty cuts
Move to cost exchequer ~1.3 trn in FY27; export duty reimposed Amid the war in West Asia and impending Assembly elections, the government on Friday announced heavy relief for oil companies, cutting special additional excise duty on petrol and diesel...
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Bankers suggest Covid-like moratorium for MSMES
With the West Asia conflict nearing a month, bankers have suggested to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Centre that a time-bound moratorium on debt repayments for MSMES and mid-corporates be considered to help them manage cash-flow disruptions...
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Markets rebound further as easing crude lifts sentiment
Indian equities extended gains on Wednesday as crude oil prices softened amid US efforts to broker an end to the Iran conflict, although persistent geopolitical risks kept investors cautious. The Sensex, after surging as much as 1,781 points (2.4 per...
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Indices rebound as US pauses Iran strikes
Indian equities staged a relief rally on Tuesday after US President Donald Trump postponed a planned strike on Iran’s energy infrastructure by five days, citing productive conversations with Tehran. However, gains remained capped as oil prices stayed...
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Trump pauses strikes on Iran’s energy infra
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he had given orders to postpone any military strikes against Iranian power plants for five days, hours ahead of a deadline that threatened further escalation in the conflict now in its fourth week. Trump added...
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~ set for worst year since FY14, hits fresh low of 93.72 per $
The rupee plunged to a fresh low of 93.72 against the dollar on Friday, falling 1.15 per cent in a single session — its sharpest one-day decline since February 24, 2022 — as elevated crude oil prices and strong dollar demand from oil-marketing...
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Indices see worst fall in 21 mths as crude shock triggers selloff
Indian equities plunged alongside global peers on Thursday, with benchmark indices posting their steepest falls in nearly two years, as a renewed surge in oil prices fuelled fears that the escalating Iran war could stoke inflation and undermine...
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Centre offers extra 10% LPG to states committing to PNG shift
India will prioritise domestic fuel demand over exports as supply fears mount. Iran threatens Gulf energy strikes after attack on its gas field, lifting Brent prices by over 5%. US eases Venezuela oil sanctions for global sales The government has...
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Ramping up domestic LPG output: FM
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the domestic production of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) was being ramped up to ensure cooking-gas supply to households during turbulent times amid the West Asia crisis, while officials and...
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OIS curve surges as crude oil rally fuels repo-rate hike bets
New Delhi denies bilateral talks with Washington over vessel transit via Hormuz, while US allies rebuff Trump’s call for military support to reopen the key waterway. Iran again strikes the UAE’S Fujairah terminal and Dubai airport, keeping global...
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War-driven selloff erodes $447 bn off India mcap, close to Covid crash
India’s market capitalisation has declined by about $447 billion to $4.7 trillion since the start of the war in West Asia, mirroring in absolute terms the erosion seen during the Covid-19 market meltdown in March 2020. The selloff has been compounded...
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Stocks suffer worst week in years, echoing Covid chaos
Benchmark indices tumbled about 2 per cent on Friday, capping one of the most turbulent weeks for domestic equities as investors fretted that the West Asian conflict could drag on for weeks or even months. For the week, the Sensex dropped 5.5 per...
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India dials Iran for safe transit of its vessels through Hormuz
Amid concerns over India’s energy security due to the conflict in West Asia, Indian government sources said on Thursday that New Delhi was in talks with Tehran to provide safe passage for Indian-flagged merchant vessels — especially the 28 of them...
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Don’t panic, fuel cargoes on the way: Govt
India will soon receive two cargoes each of crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) that have bypassed the nowblocked Strait of Hormuz, a senior government official said on Wednesday. The country is facing energy supply shortages amid the continuing...
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FDI curbs relaxed for China, others under Press Note 3
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Tuesday eased the restrictions on investments from countries sharing land borders with India, including China, by allowing investments through the automatic route for non-controlling stakes...
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Hike in pump prices unlikely for now even as Brent tests $120/bbl
Retail prices of petrol and diesel in India are unlikely to be raised in the “foreseeable future” despite crude oil prices surpassing $100 per barrel on Monday, a senior government official said. Brent crude briefly jumped to an intraday high of $119...
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US waiver unlocks Lukoil, Rosneft crude oil for India
The 30-day waiver granted by the US allowing India to import Russian oil applies to stranded crude oil directly sourced from the sanctioned Russian state-owned companies Rosneft and Lukoil, government officials have clarified. New Delhi is...
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India bulks up Russia oil; US allows 30-day waiver
The United States has issued a temporary 30-day waiver allowing Indian oil refiners to purchase Russian crude currently stranded at sea, as a short-term measure to keep supplies flowing amid disruptions caused by the ongoing Iran war. The American...
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Indian gas firms may cut industrial supply if Qatar halt persists
India’s gas firms may consider reviewing allocations to industrial users if the production halt by Qatarenergy is prolonged amid the deepening crisis in West Asia, said three senior government officials familiar with the development. However, gas...
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Govt moves to shield trade as Iran war chokes sea routes
As the Iran war intensified, disrupting Gulf shipping lanes and unsettling energy and equity markets, the Union government activated a multi-ministry war room to stabilise trade and ease port congestions. Alongside, India stepped up efforts to protect...
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India faces oil shock as Iran war intensifies
India faces mounting energy risks after US and Israeli strikes on Iran killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the gravest escalation of tensions in West Asia in decades, sending shockwaves through shipping, aviation and global oil...
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FY26 growth outlook raised to 7.6% after GDP series reset
India’s new national accounts series, rebased to 2022-23, has lifted the economy’s estimated real growth for FY26 to at least a threeyear high of 7.6 per cent, even as it unexpectedly lowered the nominal gross domestic product (GDP) base that underpins...
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Lutnick meets Goyal, holds ‘highly productive’ trade talks
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Thursday made a surprise visit to Delhi and held “highly productive” discussions with India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, days after the US Supreme Court overturned the sweeping tariffs imposed...
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Sitharaman: Cannot rush to say ‘BITS with everyone’, nor can say ‘no BIT at all’
India is moving beyond its 2016 Model Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) template, marking what Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, called “a lot more progressive” approach to investment protection. Though India still...
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AI, trade currents reshape policy discourse
Artificial intelligence (AI) emerged as the meeting point of conversations on day one of Manthan — the annual thought leaders’ summit hosted by Business Standard at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. Coming soon after the India AI Impact Summit, the theme...
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