India and New Zealand are set to sign their long-pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Monday at Bharat Mandapam, in the presence of Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal and New Zealand’s minister for trade and investment Todd McClay. The agreement, finalised in December 2025 after negotiations that began in March the same year,…
India is adopting a strategic approach in its trade relationship with China, aiming to expand exports and strengthen domestic manufacturing while gradually reducing its dependence on Chinese inputs. A senior government official told PTI that the focus is on maintaining balance rather than pursuing a complete break from Beijing.The executive said that India is boosting…
Dalal Street ended the week in red, dragging down the valuations of several heavyweight companies, erasing more than Rs 2 lakh crore from seven of India’s ten most-valued firms. Tata Consultancy Services and Reliance Industries accounted for the largest share of this decline as the broader market remained under pressure.The slide in stock prices mirrored…
Mumbai: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday signalled fresh Covid-era style policy support to cushion the impact of the West Asia conflict, while urging India Inc to step up investment and replace imports with domestic manufacturing.At the ET Awards for Corporate Excellence, Sitharaman said the govt is working on support measures for sectors hit by…
Mumbai: Salaried taxpayers claiming House Rent Allowance (HRA) under the Income-Tax (I-T) Act, face tighter disclosure norms from April 1, 2026, with the introduction of a new declaration format: Form 124 which replaces the earlier Form 12BB and requires additional details to curb misuse.Employees are required to submit this form to their employers for the…
MUMBAI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Saturday urged markets regulator Securities & Exchange Board of India to take the lead in implementing the govt-initiated ‘one nation, one KYC’ process.For long, the govt has been working on a unified know your client (KYC) system to eliminate repetition across services regulated by banks, mutual funds, stocks, bonds, insurance…
O2C Division Hit Hard By Rising Costs, Supply Chain Disruptions MUMBAI: Reliance Industries, India’s most valuable company by market capitalisation, posted a 9% fall in quarterly profit on Friday, as surging crude prices driven by the West Asia conflict weighed on its core oil-to-chemicals (O2C) division.Consolidated net profit fell to Rs 20,589 crore in the…
RBI cancels Paytm Payments Bank licence; to approach High Court MUMBAI: RBI on Friday cancelled the banking licence of Paytm Payments Bank with immediate effect, prohibiting it from carrying out any banking business and setting in motion the process for winding up, even as the entity had already been reduced to a runoff institution after…
US President Donald Trump’s second term has seen a striking trend: most major geopolitical moves, trade signals and domestic policy pushes appear to orbit a single strategic axis—oil.What once sounded like campaign rhetoric in the form of “drill, baby, drill” has now evolved into a structured economic doctrine, where energy dominance is not just a…
BENGALURU: Headcount is passé, outcomes are the new currency. India’s top five IT services firms witnessed net workforce contraction in FY26, reversing the modest hiring recovery a year earlier, as demand uncertainty, delayed decision-making and AI-led efficiency gains weighed on headcount.The traditional fresherheavy pyramid is being reshaped. A people-plus-AI model is upending its foundation, putting…