Housing sales in India hit a record high in the April-June quarter of 2023, according to a report by ANAROCK Research. Over 1.15 lakh units were sold in Q2 across India’s top cities, which is nearly 36 percent higher than the 84,940 units sold in the same quarter last financial year. Among the top seven cities, Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Pune accounted for over 51 percent of the total sales, the researcher added. Housing sales in the second quarter of 2023 has far surpassed the previous peak of the first quarter in 2023 despite rising home loan rates. As many as 58,770 units we
Many Hong Kong businessmen are planning to sell their assets to cut debt. Swire Pacific, New World both announce plans to sell units, as firms are contending with rising borrowing costs. Swire Pacific Ltd. has become the second notable Hong Kong company to announce plans to offload assets to reduce debt. The conglomerate on June 28 announced to sell its US beverages business to its controlling shareholder run by the wealthy Swire family for $3.9 billion. The sale would lower the company’s indebtedness by more than one-third, it said in a statement. It also suggested a special dividend of
Inflation pushed in different directions in Europe last month, as it increased in Germany and fell again in Spain. German consumer prices jumped 6.8 percent in June from a year earlier, up from 6.3 percent in May, according to the state statistics office Destatis. The figure also partly increased due to a widely used offer of cheap transport tickets last summer, analysts said. However, in Spain, lower food and energy inflation raised the consumer price index only 1.6 percent in June from a year earlier, down from 2.9 percent in May. The increase in inflation in Germany – Europe’s la
InterGlobe Aviation Limited’s IndiGo has become India’s first airline with a combined market capitalisation (m-cap) of more than Rs 1 lakh crore. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs. 2,634.25 on the BSE earlier in the session 28 June 2023, with a market value of ₹1.01 trillion. The turnover of the company stood at Rs 9.20 crore on BSE, commanding a m-cap of Rs. 1,01,007.56 crore. The stock on June 28 climbed 3.55 percent to settle at Rs 2,619.85 over its previous close of Rs 2,529.95. The scrip has so far gained more than 28 percent this year. The market share of India’s largest
Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer David Solomon has said that India now has a very high growth trajectory, with a predicted growth of 6-7 percent over the next three years. In an interview on June 28, Solomon said that global CEOs are thinking about India as a big growth opportunity while recognising some of the challenges with investing in the country. Over the period of a year, the global economy, and the United States in particular, have been ‘more resilient’ than he would have expected, adding that there could be a period with 0-1 percent growth and 4 percent inflation. The
India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) infrastructure could be an inspiration for a global not-for-profit payment system for refugees, said United Nations International Computing Centre’s (UNICC) director in an exclusive interview to an Indian financial and business portal. The UNICC Director Sameer Chauhan said that during the war in Ukraine, UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) issued monthly payments to refugees using debit cards, but faced challenges such as lost cards and limited access to funds. So, in late 2022, it successfully piloted a crypto-based solution
Denmark, Ireland, and Switzerland claimed the top three positions in the latest World Competitiveness Ranking. The Netherlands, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sweden, the USA, and the UAE make the rest of the top 10 in the ranking published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD). India slipped three spots to secure the 40th position in the latest world competitiveness ranking published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD). The annual report by IMD’s World Competitiveness Centre (WCC) revealed that India, despite the drop, still held a better positi
Britain’s public sector net debt surpassed 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in May as borrowing was higher than expected, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on June 21. The country’s public sector net debt, excluding that of state-controlled banks, touched 2.567 trillion pounds, an amount equivalent to 100.1 percent of its GDP. This is the first time that debt stood above 100 percent of GDP since 1961 although it was temporarily recorded as surpassing that threshold during the COVID-19 pandemic before being revised lower later. The ONS said government borrowing
India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have agreed to increase non-petroleum trade from $48 billion to $100 billion by 2030, union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said on June 19. Speaking to media after the first joint committee meeting of the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), the union minister said that the nations have mutually agreed to become more ambitious and move on from their earlier target of an overall $100 billion bilateral trade by 2030 to non-petroleum bilateral trade of $100 billion by 2030, doubling their non-petroleum trade from
Bangladesh’s central bank will allow the country’s currency, taka, to float freely, in response to the demands from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to unlock more money from the $4.7 billion loan program. Bangladesh Bank will adopt a unified exchange rate regime between the taka and the dollar or any other foreign currency and from July 1, it will no longer sell any foreign exchange at a discounted rate. By the third quarter of 2023, all international transactions will be based on the new exchange rate structure, closing the gap between formal and informal markets. While Bangl