Nifty, Sensex May Remain Weak – Weekly closing report-The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Contact Your Financial Adviser Money Making MC

http://moneymakingaimsee.blogspot.in
https://www.facebook.com/moneymakingmc

1 December  2017

I had mentioned in last week’s closing report that Nifty, Sensex were on an uptrend for now. The major indices of the Indian stock markets suffered a correction during the week and closed on Friday with significant losses over last Friday’s close. The trends of the major indices in the course of the week’s trading are given in the table below:

 

Weekly Indices (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)

The key Indian equity indices on Monday were trading lower on Monday, in line with the closing values of Asian indices. S&P maintained status quo on sovereign rating amid a likely rise in volatility ahead of expiry of November futures and options contracts, observed market analysts. On the NSE, there were 990 advances, 703 declines and 303 unchanged.

Hinduja flagship firm Ashok Leyland today said it has inked a pact with its long-standing Japanese partner Hino to jointly develop BS-VI compliant engines. The companies have entered into a mutual cooperation agreement (MCA) where Ashok Leyland will utilise Hino's engine technology for Euro-VI development and will support Hino’s engine parts' purchasing in India for global operation, the Chennai-based firm said in a statement.  Hino and Ashok Leyland have had a cooperative agreement for engine production in India since 1986. 

Shares of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries slipped nearly 2% in early trade on Monday after the pharma company on Friday announced that its US-based subsidiary is recalling two lots of diabetes drug Riomet due to microbial contamination.

Key Indian equity indices traded in the red on Tuesday as negative Asian indices as well as profit booking in oil and gas and consumer durables stocks kept investors' sentiments subdued. Index heavyweights like ONGC, Power Grid, NTPC, Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank traded lower on the BSE market breadth. Investor confidence in China was on a decline due to rising bond yields. On the NSE, there were 728 advances, 793 declines and 50 unchanged.

On Tuesday, global software major Infosys said it would hire 500 Americans in US' Rhode Island state in the next 5 years. "We will hire 500 American workers in Rhode Island over the next 5 years where a design and innovation hub will be set up in multi-year partnership with its state, a said the city-based $10 billion firm in a statement here. Welcoming the IT firm, Governor Raimondo said the people were equipped and prepared to compete for the Infosys jobs. "Infosys joins a growing local market of innovative, advanced industry firms that have chosen to plant a flag in Rhode Island where we have invested in higher education and job training," he said. The hiring in Rhode Island is part of the company's announcement on May 2 to recruit 10,000 Americans by setting up four such hubs across the US to focus on new technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, user experience, emerging digital technologies, cloud and big data. 

Jerome Powell, US President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, said he expected the central bank to continue monetary tightening and to ease regulatory burdens on financial system. 

Tracking broadly positive global cues, key Indian equity indices traded in the green -- with marginal gains -- on Wednesday. The gains were led by buying in consumer durables, capital goods, auto and healthcare stocks on the BSE market breadth. According to market observers, investors traded with caution ahead of GDP data announcement and derivatives expiry on November 30 (Thursday). However, the small gains were not sustained and the major indices closed with small losses. On the NSE, there were 655 advances, 793 declines and 41 unchanged.

Reliance Communications (RCOM) said it has entered into a binding "Share Purchase Agreement" with Pantel Technologies and Veecon Media & Television for the sale of its subsidiary Reliance BIG TV (RBTV). According to the company, pursuant to this transaction, the buyers would acquire the entire shareholding of its subsidiary engaged in the business of Direct-to-Home (DTH) services across India on an "as-is, where-is" basis. 

Key Indian equity indices on Thursday traded on a subdued note with selling pressure in banking, auto and metal stocks. According to market observers, investors traded with caution on futures and options (F&O) expiry day, as well as ahead of the second quarter GDP data announcement later in the day. On the NSE, there were 579 advances, 887 declines and 53 unchanged. Nifty breached the 10,300-mark which took the markets further down.

India's budgetary fiscal deficit for the first seven months of 2017-18 stood at 96.1% -- Rs5.25 lakh crore -- of the full year's target of Rs5.46 lakh crore, official data showed on Thursday. 

Ashok Leyland, one of the largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, plans to set up a bus plant in Andhra Pradesh, it was announced. The plant is proposed on 75 acres of land in Malavalli Industrial Park in Krishna district. It would have the capacity to produce 4,800 buses per year. 

Jet Airways entered into an agreement with Air France-KLM to enhance cooperation and combine their networks between Europe and India. The airline pointed out that for the 2017-18 winter season, Air France, KLM and Jet Airways operate 64 weekly flights between the Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam-Schiphol hubs and four destinations in India - Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai.

Reliance General Insurance Company Ltd on Thursday said securities market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has issued its final observation letter to the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) filed by it. In a statement Reliance General Insurance said the initial public offer (IPO) size aggregates to 25% of the post issue paid up capital of the company and comprises of a fresh issue of upto 1,67,69,995 equity shares by the company and an offer for sale by Reliance Capital Limited of upto 5,03,09,984 equity shares. The face value of the equity shares is Rs10 per share.

On Friday, the major indices of the Indian stock markets suffered a further correction of around 1% over Thursday’s close. Key Indian equity indices on Friday traded on a negative note in the mid-afternoon session as investors booked profits in metals, IT (information technology) and oil and gas stocks. On the NSE, there were 593 advances, 1,086 declines and 308 unchanged.

The output of India's eight major industries stood at a standstill in October, official data showed. On a sequential basis, the "Index of Eight Core Industries" (ECI) for October grew by 4.7% same as it did in September when the ECI growth was revised downwards to 4.7% from an earlier reported rise of 5.2%. However, on a year-on-year (YoY) level, it showed a downtrend, as ECI which represents the output of major sectors like coal, steel, cement and electricity had risen by 7.1% in the corresponding month of the previous year. According to the data furnished by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, the cumulative growth of the combined ECI during April to October 2017-18 was 3.5% from a rise of 5.6% during the same period of the last fiscal. The ECI index carries 40.27% weightage of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) which is the macro-gauge for India's factory output. With macro-economic data released this week weighing down on the stock markets, the major indices have suffered sequential corrections over Thursday’s trading and Friday’s trading.The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

India Biggest Importer Of US Oil Refinery Byproduct-The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Contact Your Financial Adviser Money Making MC

http://moneymakingaimsee.blogspot.in
https://www.facebook.com/moneymakingmc

1 December  2017

Exporting Pollution (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)

U.S. oil refineries that are unable to sell a dirty fuel waste product at home are exporting vast quantities of it to India instead.

Petroleum coke, the bottom-of-the-barrel leftover from refining Canadian tar sands crude and other heavy oils, is cheaper and burns hotter than coal. But it also contains more planet-warming carbon and far more heart- and lung-damaging sulfur — a key reason few American companies use it.

Refineries instead are sending it around the world, especially to energy-hungry India, which last year got almost a fourth of all the fuel-grade "petcoke" the U.S. shipped out, an Associated Press investigation found. In 2016, the U.S. sent more than 8 million metric tons of petcoke to India. That's about 20 times more than in 2010, and enough to fill the Empire State Building eight times.

The petcoke being burned in countless factories and plants is contributing to dangerously filthy air in India, which already has many of the world's most polluted cities.

Delhi resident Satye Bir does not know all the reasons Delhi's air is so dirty, but he says he feels both fury and resignation.

"My life is finished....My lungs are finished," said the 63-year-old Bir, wheezing as he pulls an asthma inhaler out of his pocket. "This is how I survive. Otherwise, I can't breathe."

Laboratory tests on imported petcoke used near New Delhi found it contained 17 times more sulfur than the limit set for coal, and a staggering 1,380 times more than for diesel, according to India's court-appointed Environmental Pollution Control Authority. India's own petcoke, produced domestically, adds to the pollution.

Industry officials say petcoke has been an important and valuable fuel for decades, and its use recycles a waste product. Health and environmental advocates, though, say the U.S. is simply exporting an environmental problem. The U.S. is the world's largest producer and exporter of petcoke, federal and international data show.

"We should not become the dust bin of the rest of the world," said Sunita Narain, a member of the pollution authority who also heads the Delhi-based Center for Science and the Environment. "We certainly can't afford it; we're choking to death already."

___

EMBRACING TAR SANDS

For more than a century, oil refining has served as a lifeline in America's industrial heartland, where thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost in recent decades.

In gritty northwest Indiana, a sprawling oil refinery and steel mills dominate the Lake Michigan shoreline. Freight trains chug through working-class neighborhoods. And smokestacks and distillation towers still symbolize opportunity.

Local officials and workers cheered when the BP Whiting refinery invested $4.2 billion so it could process crude extracted from tar sands in the boreal forest of Alberta, Canada.

U.S. refineries embraced tar sands oil and other heavy crudes, when domestic oil production was stagnant before the hydraulic fracturing boom. Some of the biggest built expensive units called cokers to process the gunky crude into gasoline, diesel, ship fuel and asphalt, which leaves huge amounts of petroleum coke as waste. When BP Whiting's coker in Whiting, Indiana was finished in 2013, its petcoke output tripled, to 2.2 million tons a year.

Petcoke traditionally was used in the U.S. to make aluminum and steel after its impurities were removed. But when those mills closed or moved to other countries, the need for petcoke waned, although some power plants still use it. Other industries that had burned petcoke in the past did not want to invest in costly upgrades to control emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, so they shifted to cleaner natural gas.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a petroleum industry trade group, released a statement to the AP saying that cokers "allow the United States to export petroleum coke to more than 30 countries to meet growing market demand."

"Petroleum coke is used globally as a cost-effective fuel, as well as an integral component in manufacturing," AFPM said.

But experts say it's not market forces that are driving U.S. refiners to make this waste product from heavy oil refining. The refineries just need to get rid of it, and are willing to discount it steeply — or even take a loss — which helps drive the demand in developing countries, experts said.

"It's a commodity that defies explanation (because) there's not a financial market," said Stuart Ehrenreich, an oil industry analyst who once managed petcoke export terminals for Koch Industries. "But at the end of the day, the coke has got to move."

So it's usually priced cheaper than even coal, sold around the world through a network of businesses — from boat captains and stevedores to buyers, brokers and middlemen — and sent on an epic, weeks-long journey by rail, barge and ship.

There are fewer than a dozen big traders globally. Among the largest are Oxbow Energy Solutions and Koch Carbon, both led by members of the politically conservative and climate-skeptical Koch family. Neither they nor a dozen U.S. oil companies and traders contacted by the AP would talk about petcoke. They cited past controversies over the mountains of the waste stored at Midwest refineries, or said they wanted to avoid angering business partners.

In India, no factory managers would allow AP access, and federal officials did not respond to repeated requests for interviews.

With the petcoke market volatile and competitive, industry holds information close, hoping to maintain an edge and make a profit.

"It's like the Wild West," said Ehrenreich.

___

DIRTY AIR

Petcoke, critics say, is making a bad situation worse across India. About 1.1 million Indians die prematurely as a result of outdoor air pollution every year, according to the Health Effects Institute, a nonprofit funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and industry.

In the capital of New Delhi, pollution has sharply increased over the past decade with more cars, a construction boom, seasonal crop burning and small factories on the outskirts that burn dirty fossil fuels with little oversight. In October and November, for the second year in a row, city air pollution levels were so high they couldn't be measured by the city's monitoring equipment. People wore masks to venture out into gray air, and newspaper headlines warned of an "Airpocalypse."

"Fifty percent of children in Delhi have abnormalities in their lung function — asthma, bronchitis, a recurring spasmodic cough. That's 2.2 million children, just in Delhi," said Dr. Sai Kiran Chaudhuri, head of the pulmonary department at the Delhi Heart & Lung Institute.

The country has seen a dramatic increase in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions in recent years, concentrated in areas where power plants and steel factories are clustered. Those pollutants are converted into microscopic particles that lodge deep in the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing breathing and heart problems.

It's impossible to gauge precisely how much is from petcoke versus coal, fuel oil, vehicles and other sources. But experts say it certainly is contributing.

Indian purchases of U.S. fuel-grade petcoke skyrocketed two years ago after China threatened to ban the import of high-sulfur fuels. Although Indian factories and plants buy some petcoke from Saudi Arabia and other countries, 65 percent of imports in 2016 were from the U.S., according to trade data provider Export Genius.

"It is definitely alarming," Chaudhari said. "The government should know what they're getting, what they're using and what are its harmful effects."

In the north Indian industrial district of Moradabad, several hours' drive from the capital, villagers see the skies getting dingier but have little information about what happens behind factory gates.

Only four factories are on record as using petcoke. But dozens buy it from middlemen running open-air fuel depots, according to Sarvesh Bansal, a natural gas distributor in the north Indian city who leads the ad-hoc local environmental group called WatAir.

"We want the factories moved very far away from here," said a 25-year-old rice farmer named Mohammad Sarfaraz, who lives in nearby Farid Nagar. He and others aren't sure what pollutants are being spewed, but they nevertheless protested at nearby factories a few years ago until shooed away by guards. "Many illnesses occur because of the factories. Small kids and old people fall sick very easily. There is breathlessness, heart disease, pain in the hands and legs."

India's cement companies were first to bring in petcoke, and still import the most, though cement experts say some sulfur is absorbed during manufacturing.

As word spread of the cheap, high-heat fuel, other industries began using it in their furnaces — producing everything from paper and textiles to brakes, batteries and glass, according to import records compiled by Export Genius. The government was caught off guard by the shift, and there are scant records of how much petcoke is being burned.

Petcoke's use was further encouraged by low import tariffs and a lack of regulations on its most potent pollutants.

Industries also like that petcoke, which is around 90 percent carbon, burns hot. So they can use less of it to produce the same heat as coal — though coal still overshadows petcoke in factory furnaces.

Within a decade, India's petcoke appetite grew so voracious that it began producing and selling its own, and Indian refineries today are making about as much as the country is importing. One of the biggest refiners — Mumbai-based Reliance Industries Lts., owned by India's wealthiest businessman, Mukesh Ambani — has ramped up petcoke production.

Still, U.S. petcoke remains popular.

Indians typically buy petcoke with about 6-7 percent sulfur — more than double than with most coal — because it's the least expensive, said Vedanth Vasanth, director of Viva Carbon Pvt. Ltd., a supplier based in the southern city of Chennai that helps broker petcoke contracts between Indian buyers and sellers abroad.

J.P. Gupta, whose factory in Moradabad district makes acrylic fibers used in clothing, said his factory burns through some 4,000 metric tons of Indian-made petcoke every month.

The factory spent about $300,000 on equipment to control sulfur, he said, but would have spent 50 percent more on pollution control if it had opted for U.S. petcoke, which he says is dirtier.

"We rejected the imports...," he said. "But there are some who are not bothering about the pollution."

At an open-air brick kiln just 10 kilometers (six miles) down the road, workers shoveled a mix of petcoke and coal into a fiery furnace. Other than thick wooden sandals to protect their feet from the heat, they wore no safety gear or breathing masks. And there was no equipment to control the gases or soot billowing from the chimney.

Such small factories operating off the electricity grid in India's vast informal sector account for 25 to 30 percent of the country's total energy generation. Often crammed into city outskirts, these outfits manufacturing everything from plastic bangles to metal screws rely on fossil fuels to keep their furnaces afire — the cheaper, the better.

Few adhere to pollution standards, said Ajay Mathur, head of The Energy Research Institute, a nonprofit policy research organization in New Delhi. "This is an area where we need to have regulations sooner rather than later," he said

___

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Although petcoke has been an industrial resource since the 1930s, the high sulfur content and sheer petcoke volume — and growing concern about climate change, as well as particle pollution — could restrict or halt its production, experts said.

Governments could decide to tax high-carbon fuels such as petcoke. They could ban high-sulfur or high-carbon fuels. Or they could set pollution limits that make petcoke use impractical.

In India, judges of the National Green Tribunal demanded in May that the government investigate the environmental and health impacts of petcoke.

"The government was not doing anything," said the WatAir leader Bansal, whose environmental group launched the lawsuit. "There is no law in India, no control. So the whole world's petcoke is coming to India, and it's getting consumed here."

The government's environment ministry has dismissed the idea that petcoke threatens public health in the nation's capital. But the country's Supreme Court, which has consistently demanded or enacted tougher pollution control measures, recently banned petcoke use by some industries as of Nov. 1 in the three states surrounding pollution-choked New Delhi. It also demanded tighter pollution standards that — if enforced — could further limit its use nationwide.

"This is a completely disgusting state of affairs," the judges said in their (Oct. 24) ruling, "and this is hardly the way in which the Ministry ought to function if it is expected to perform its duties sincerely, honestly and with dedication."

The court last month also urged all states across India to pass similar bans.

The ministry refused months of requests for interviews, both before and after the court's ruling. But analysts say that, short of a nationwide ban, petcoke use could be mostly unaffected.

"The petcoke markets grew so fast across the country that a ban around New Delhi isn't going to put a huge dent in the overall demand for petcoke," said Jeffrey McDonald, an analyst at S&P Global Platts.

Refineries could choose to stop producing petcoke, by using more expensive refining methods that would essentially convert all the heavy oil to other products.

But it's more likely that if new pollution limits do affect its use, U.S. refiners will just find new petcoke customers in other developing nations, especially in Asia and Africa, experts and environmentalists said.

"It's a classic case of environmental dumping," said Lorne Stockman, director of the environmental group Oil Change International. "They need to get rid of it, so it's dumped into a poor, developing country."The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Money never meant much to me, always have somebody around who pays for me: Mukesh Ambani-The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Contact Your Financial Adviser Money Making MC

http://moneymakingaimsee.blogspot.in
https://www.facebook.com/moneymakingmc

1 December  2017

Mukesh Ambaniril (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Friday said money never meant much to him and that as a resource, money enables the company to take risks.

"Money has never meant much to me.. I abhor the labels and the titles that all of you refer to me," Ambani said at the HT Leadership Summit.

"To me, resources enable you to take risks from a company point of view. It gives you a little bit of flexibilty," the richest man in India said.

Ambani added that he never carries cash or credit cards in his pocket, and always has somebody around who pays his bills.

"On a personal level, very few people know this from childhood, in school and now, I have never carried money. I don`t have a credit card, I don`t carry cash in my pocket. I always have somebody around me who pays for me. So that works," said Ambani.The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Japan Inflation Ticks Up, Household Spending Flat In October-The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Contact Your Financial Adviser Money Making MC

http://moneymakingaimsee.blogspot.in
https://www.facebook.com/moneymakingmc

1 December  2017

Japan's Economy (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)

Japan's core inflation rate rose 0.8 percent in October, a slight increase from the month before, while the jobless rate remained steady at a very low 2.8 percent. But lackluster household spending pointed to persisting weakness in the recovery of the world's third-largest economy.

Inflation excluding volatile food prices and energy was only 0.2 percent, suggesting much of the increase in prices was related to energy costs. Electricity rates jumped 8 percent and the price of kerosene, used to heat many homes, climbed 21 percent.

Overall, inflation remains well below the 2 percent official target set when Japan's central bank launched an unprecedented barrage of monetary easing seeking to spur growth by pushing prices higher.

Household incomes rose nearly 3 percent in October from a year earlier while spending was flat. Overall wage growth has lagged, and families generally have chosen to hold onto extra cash, while businesses have socked windfall profits away in massive cash piles, or stepped up investments overseas in faster-growing markets.

While the U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to follow through with a long anticipated interest rate increase next week, the Bank of Japan has kept its key policy rate at minus 0.1 percent, and its governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, has said stimulus will continue until inflation reaches about 2 percent.

The pickup in growth in recent months has largely been thanks to revived demand for exports across the region.

Japan is due to announce revised economic growth figures for July-September next week. Earlier it reported the economy expanded at a 1.4 percent annualized rate in the last quarter, the seventh straight quarter of growth.

A survey of manufacturers released Friday showed output gained momentum in November, helped by rising demand from China. The Nikkei Japan Manufacturing Purchasing Managers index, or PMI, rose to 53.6 from 52.8 in October, the largest monthly increase since March 2014.

The PMI measures a range of indicators on a scale up to 100 where levels above 50 signal expansion.The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Global Stocks Weighed Down By US Tax Uncertainty-The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Contact Your Financial Adviser Money Making MC

http://moneymakingaimsee.blogspot.in
https://www.facebook.com/moneymakingmc

1 December  2017

South korea financial markets (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)

Global stocks fell Friday as investors awaited U.S. Senate developments over a big tax reform package. Oil prices surged, meanwhile, after the OPEC oil cartel extended productions cuts.

KEEPING SCORE: In Europe, Germany's DAX was down 0.9 percent at 12,906 while France's CAC 40 fell 0.8 percent to 5,330. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was 0.2 percent lower at 7,311. U.S. stocks were poised for losses at the open too with Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures down 0.3 percent.

US TAX CUTS: There's some uncertainty in markets as to the progress of a big overhaul of the U.S. tax system and whether there will be a vote later Friday. On Thursday, Senate Republicans rewrote the bill behind closed doors and weighed scaling back the tax cuts in the legislation to secure crucial support.

ANALYST TAKE: "The ability to resume a bullish theme will come down to whether the Senate is able to overcome objections from three Republican senators, with a host of talks scheduled for this afternoon," said Joshua Mahony, market analyst at IG.

OIL SPIKE: Oil prices rose further, a day after the OPEC cartel and a group of allied oil-producing nations agreed to extend crude output cuts until the end of next year, continuing a policy that led to a significant rise in the price of oil over the past year. At the same time, the 24-nation alliance led by OPEC member Saudi Arabia and Russia gave notice that it stands ready to revisit the move if price increases bring U.S. shale operators — who suspended operations while crude was cheap — rushing back into the market. The benchmark New York rate was up 47 cents at $57.87 a barrel while Brent, the international standard, rose 63 cents to $63.30 a barrel.

ASIA'S DAY: Asian stocks mostly finished with modest gains. Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.4 percent to 22,819.03 while South Korea's Kospi fell less than 0.1 percent to 2,475.41. But Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slipped 0.4 percent to 29,074.24 and China's Shanghai Composite Index finished flat at 3,317.62. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.3 percent to 5,989.80. S

CURRENCIES: The euro was down 0.2 percent at $1.1884 while the dollar was steady at 112.50 yen.The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Nifty, Sensex on a downtrend – Thursday closing report-The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Contact Your Financial Adviser Money Making MC

http://moneymakingaimsee.blogspot.in
https://www.facebook.com/moneymakingmc

30 November  2017

I had mentioned in Wednesday’s closing report that Nifty, Sensex were directionless. The major indices of the Indian stock markets suffered a sharp correction on Thursday and closed with significant losses over Wednesday’s close. The trends of the major indices in the course of Thursday’s trading are given in the table below: The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

 

Major Indices (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)

Key Indian equity indices on Thursday traded on a subdued note in the mid-afternoon session with selling pressure in banking, auto and metal stocks. According to market observers, investors traded with caution on futures and options (F&O) expiry day, as well as ahead of the second quarter GDP data announcement later in the day. On the NSE, there were 579 advances, 887 declines and 53 unchanged. Nifty breached the 10,300-mark to take the markets further down. The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

India's budgetary fiscal deficit for the first seven months of 2017-18 stood at 96.1% -- Rs5.25 lakh crore -- of the full year's target of Rs5.46 lakh crore, official data showed on Thursday. The data furnished by the Comptroller General of Accounts (CGA) showed that April-October fiscal deficit was 79.3% of the budget in the like period of the last fiscal. According to the CGA data, net of tax revenue during the period under review was Rs6.33 lakh crore, or 51.6% of the estimates. The total receipts -- from revenue and non-debt capital -- during the fiscal's first seven months were Rs7.67 lakh crore, or 48% of the estimates for the current year. The data revealed that total expenditure -- incurred on revenue and capital -- during the April-October period was Rs12.92 lakh crore, or at 60.2% of the entire fiscal's estimate.  The 2017-18 deficit -- the difference between revenue and expenditure -- has been pegged at Rs5.46 lakh crore for 2017-18, as compared to the deficit of Rs5.34 lakh crore for the last fiscal. The high fiscal deficit is likely to stoke inflationary pressures and raise interest rates. This in turn would pull back the bulls in the Indian stock markets.

Reliance General Insurance Company Ltd on Thursday said securities market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has issued its final observation letter to the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) filed by it. The DRHP was dated October 9, 2017. In a statement issued here, Reliance General Insurance said the initial public offer (IPO) size aggregates to 25% of the post issue paid up capital of the company and comprises of a fresh issue of upto 1,67,69,995 equity shares by the company and an offer for sale by Reliance Capital Limited of upto 5,03,09,984 equity shares. The face value of the equity shares is Rs10 per share. The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Ashok Leyland, one of the largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, plans to set up a bus plant in Andhra Pradesh, it was announced. The plant is proposed on 75 acres of land in Malavalli Industrial Park in Krishna district near here. It will have the capacity to produce 4,800 buses per year. Ashok Leyland CEO & MD Vinod K. Dasari met Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu here and informed him about the proposal. The facility will have the potential of directly and indirectly employing over 5,000 people, said a statement from the Chief Minister's office. The facility will also contain an electric vehicle development centre comprising of a futuristic conveyor line, pilot assembly line and prototype development. The plant will be a green facility, with roof top solar panels, LED lighting, battery operated vehicles for in-plant movement, positive water balance and zero discharge, it added. The company’s shares closed at Rs117.95, down 2.44% on the BSE.

Jet Airways entered into an agreement with Air France-KLM to enhance cooperation and combine their networks between Europe and India. The airline pointed out that for the 2017-18 winter season, Air France, KLM and Jet Airways operate 64 weekly flights between the Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam-Schiphol hubs and four destinations in India - Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai. Jet Airways shares closed at Rs679.25 up 1.52% on the BSE.

The top gainers and top losers of the major indices are given in the table below: The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

 

Top Gainer (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)

The closing values of the major Asian indices are given in the table below: The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions

Asian Indices (The Total Investment & Insurance Solutions)