Business Today 16-May-21

April-June 2021 was supposed to be the quarter of redemption. A quarter of ‘Hope’ that was to herald India’s great economic recovery after Budget 2021 finally acted on reviving consumption in the economy with an unprecedented infrastructure push. Centre pumped in `4.39 lakh crore into infrastructure in FY21 to trigger a public investment-led push to perk up demand, racking up a fiscal deficit of 9.5 per cent in the last fiscal. Despite that, right at the beginning of this fiscal, it is amply clear that FY22 cannot bank on this quarter for better times ahead. In fact, April-June, 2021 could well go down in history as the quarter that stalled the recovery. As unsuspecting Central and state governments wound up the massive emergency Covid-care hospitals across the country in January…

↘ December-quarter numbers show normalisation of trade after lifting of the lockdown. The earlier surpluses were driven by a sharp dip in imports ↘ The current account deficit in Q3 2020 was also mainly due to a rise in trade deficit to $34.5 billion, from $14.8 billion in the preceding quarter Source: RBI India’s current account slipped back into deficit ($1.7 billion) in October-December 2020 after a gap of three quarters $584.4 MILLION Current account surplus in the March 2020 quarter. It rose further to a record high of $19 billion in the June 2020 quarter, before pulling back a little to $15.1 billion in the September 2020 quarter…

GM, a leading switches and home electrical company in India has introduced revolutionary products like new generation Switches, Home automations, LED lights, Fans, Bluetooth music players and much more with the aim to provide the best of design and comfort in every home. As market leaders in switches and other home accessories, GM is at the forefront of innovation. G-Bus - a one-of-a-kind home automation system transforms living spaces with internet-connected devices to enable the remote monitoring and management of appliances and systems, such as lighting, blinds and shutters, temperature, security, music and more. It provides home owners security, comfort, convenience and energy efficiency by allowing them to control smart devices, with an app. GM product suite ranges from wires and cables to LED lights, switches and complete home automation…

At 8:05 PM on April 20, the Twitter handle of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) announced that PM Narendra Modi will address the nation on the Covid-19 situation in the next 40 minutes. The PMO tweet put the entire country on listening mode since Modi has made disruptive announcements at short notice — demonetisation was declared overnight and national lockdown against Covid-19 last year happened within four hours of the announcement. Thankfully, a hard lockdown was not even an option this time round. The one emphatic message the Prime Minister conveyed was, “Lockdowns should be used as a last resort. States should focus on micro-containment zones. We have to save the country from lockdown”. There was a reason why he urged state governments to instil confidence among migrants that their…

When Mumbai-based homemaker Van-dana Mathur called her neighbourhood grocer to order essentials such as rice, oil and atta last week, she was told they were out of stock. Though the grocer assured her he would deliver the products at her doorstep by afternoon, Gupta was worried. “I started to wonder whether we were in for another round of lockdown-related supply crunch,” she says. Later in the afternoon, Mathur’s grocer did deliver her order as promised, but also warned her to be prepared for delays since supplies were taking longer than usual ever since Maharashtra announced a lockdown to break the chain of Covid-19 infections. The second wave of Covid-19 is spreading like wildfire, forcing state governments to impose mini lockdowns. Like last year, retail (barring essentials) has already come to…

Malls, high-street stores and restaurants see the second wave wiping out gains made in the brief recovery period from December to February 40-45 per cent dip in footfalls in locations where weekend curfews, early closures and other restrictions are in place While it's a given that Q1FY22 would be a wash-out, the F&B sector is not too hopeful about Q2 either 30 per cent of restaurants folded up during last year's lockdown, closures likely this time too Industry relying on cutting fixed costs such as utilities, rents and payroll to help ride out the next few months Not allowing home delivery of nonessentials a huge blow…