Today’s Latest Business News Transcript at 9:30 AM on 11 August 2023

Let’s begin. Air India (AI) unveiled its mega brand makeover and new logo, which, the airline said, signifies “limitless possibilities”. AI’s new logo — ‘The Vista’ — includes a modern design with golden, red and purple colours. The company said that the design is inspired by the peak of the gold window frame, signifying limitless possibilities, progressiveness, and the airline’s bold, confident outlook for the future. The iconic ‘Maharaja’, which has served as Air India’s mascot for decades, will live on and continue to be part of the airline’s journey into the future, the airline’s MD & CEO Campbell Wilson said, adding, quote, it has been with us for more than 75 years and is loved in India and amongst the Indian community overseas,” unquote.

Meanwhile, While the global economy is struggling, India is uniquely positioned to be optimistic and positive about its future growth, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday. Participating in the debate on the no-confidence motion in Lok Sabha, the minister said, quote, In 2013, Morgan Stanley called India a fragile economy. Same Morgan Stanley has upgraded India; just in nine years, the fragile economy came out because of our government’s policy,” unquote. The minister highlighted that India is the fastest-growing economy despite disruptions due to the pandemic. She said the global economy, which saw growth of just over 3% in 2022, is forecast by the World Bank to expand at an even lower rate of 2.1% in 2023.

In other news, the Reserve Bank of India‘s (RBI) move directing banks to maintain an incremental cash reserve ratio (I-CRR) of 10% will lead to a rise in short-term borrowing cost and marginally impact banks’ net interest margin (NIM), experts told FE. Madan Sabnavis, chief economist at Bank of Baroda, said, quote, “The introduction of an incremental CRR, though on a temporary basis, will impound resources of banks and have an upward impact on market rates. While there will still be surpluses in the market, the concept of impounding of resources will exert an upward pressure on the sentiment and hence interest rates,” unquote.

Moreover, technical teams of India and Peru have started negotiations on the modalities and scope of the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) which will lay down the basis of negotiations. India and Peru had first started negotiating an FTA in 2017 and five rounds of talks had been held till August 2019 before COVID pandemic disrupted the process. Vice Foreign Trade Minister of Peru Teresa Stella Mera Gomez said, quote, “We are going to talk again about that (the modalities). Due to the pandemic many things changed so we want to replan additional modalities and our technical teams will hold that conversation,” unquote. She said the technical teams would also be defining the timeframe, and formal negotiations would start in the next few months.

Moving on. the National Highways Authority of India is expected to raise a little over Rs 6000 crore in its first asset monetisation deal in the current financial year, when it completes the transaction for two bundles of highways in the next two to three weeks, a senior official said Thursday. These bundles are being monetised through Toll Operate Transfer model where the right to collect toll on an asset built with public funds is transferred to an outside investor in lieu of an upfront payment. This right is valid for 30 years and after that the asset would revert to its owner, NHAI. In this financial year, the NHAI is expecting to raise Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 15000 crore from asset monetisation through ToT.

Next Up. As the RBI has kept the repo rate unchanged at 6.5% for the third time in a row, this is a good time to lock fixed deposits (FD) into the best available rates. Also, while the pause by the central bank means that the EMIs may not increase immediately, borrowers, especially those with a long tenure home loan, should start repaying or increase their EMI or even look at balance transfer to reduce their interest burden.At the current deposit rates, individuals must lock in at the highest interest slab rate. In fact, the average interest rates on outstanding rupee deposits with banks has risen for 15 straight months now as is visible in bank FD rates. For special tenure deposits, banks are offering interest rates over 7% for and small finance banks even higher over 8%.

Lastly, the GIFT Nifty was flat during Friday’s early trading session, up by 0.09% at 19,557, indicating a tepid opening for domestic indices NSE Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex. On Thursday, the equity benchmarks closed lower after the RBI policy announcement. Nifty 50 declined 0.46% to close at 19,543.1. On the other hand, Sensex slipped over 300 points to end at 65,688.18. A few stocks to watch today are LIC, Hero MotoCorp, Grasim, Adani Enterprises, Torrent Pharma, ONGC, GCPL, Nykaa and Info Edge.

Click to listen to yesterday evening’s bulletin