Daily Financial News Analysis – 18th Jan’20 – Free PDF Download

COMMERCE MINISTER CLARIFIES

• Piyush Goyal: all companies have to comply with the rules.
• Small traders needed to be protected from unfair competition.
• Small traders work hard and don’t get facilities such as zero-interest loans
• “Wherever one invests, it is done within the legal framework of that country.”
•  If a billion dollars is indeed only for funding losses, and this is debatable, it’s still a billion dollars flowing into the economy.
• Despite its current size, India’s e-commerce is still a tiny portion of its retail trade. So, talk of Amazon or Flipkart killing organised retail is hard to square with basic facts.

 IRDAI

• Insurance Regulatory and development authority of India (IRDAI) chairman SC Khuntia has warned insurers against predatory pricing.
• Khuntia said the insurance industry is different from other businesses and that if an insurer fails, it has bearing on customers as well.
•  Khuntia warned that the loss ratio in group health insurance was “very high and probably not sustainable”.

 GST Collection Target

•  The government has increased the target for GST collections for the second time in two months to
• ₹1.15 lakh crore for February
• ₹1.25 lakh crore for March
• The government had last month raised the collection target to ₹1.1 lakh crore for January and February from the earlier target of ₹1 lakh crore per month.
• The decision to raise the target again for the last two months of the fiscal was taken at a high-level meeting of officials from the revenue department, the Central Board of Direct Taxes and Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs.
• A weekly high-level review of revenue augmentation measures and efforts made or actions taken against these targeted gamers, fraudulent ITC seekers and identified default taxpayers would be done by the revenue secretary himself.

UN on India’s Growth

•  UN forecast: India’s 2019-20 growth to 5%
• It also cut the estimate for FY21 to 5.8%-5.9% from 6.6% in the report.
• World Economic Situation and Prospects(WESP) 2020 report projected the country’s economy to expand by 5.7%.
• WESP forecast had not taken into account the latest growth numbers released by the government’s National Statistical Office (NSO).
• Other agencies such as the World Bank have also slashed growth forecasts for India to 5% for FY20 from the previous forecast of 6%.

China’s weakest growth

• China’s economic growth cooled to its weakest in nearly 30 years in 2019.
• REASON: the trade war with the US
• China’s growth slowed to 6.1% last year, from 6.6% in 2018, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
• Though still strong by global standards,and within the government’s target range, it was the weakest expansion since 1990.
•  This year is crucial for the ruling Communist Party to fulfill its goal of doubling gross domestic product (GDP) and incomes in the decade to 2020 and turning China into a “moderately prosperous” nation.
•  Analysts reckon that long-term target would need growth this year to remain around 6%, though top officials have warned the economy may face even greater pressure than in 2019.
•  More recent data, along with optimism over a Phase 1 US-China trade deal signed on Wednesday, have raised hopes that the economy may be bottoming out.
• Key targets are due to be announced inMarch.

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