Shareholders of Cairn Energy PLC asked the Indian government to honour the Tribunal Order and pay the Rs.10,247 crore as per the order. This is towards the income tax refunds and dividends belonging to Cairn Energy paid by Sterlite, which had been withheld by the government against the retrospective tax claim made. These investors include top bracket global investors like MFS Investments and Blackrock Investments. Other shareholders of Cairn Energy PLC including Templeton, Fidelity and Aberdeen have also asked the Indian government to abide by the order. India plans to contest the tribunal order.
As competition for the grocery retail space in India hots up, Redseer has put out a report estimating the online grocery market to grow 8-fold by 2024 to a level of $18 billion. According to RedSeer, the online grocery market is estimated to grow by nearly 49% in the first half of calendar year 2021. The survey has also observed that the demand for comfort foods like noodles and cookies as well as products that are known immunity boosters like lemon have seen a spurt in demand. Even hygiene products have been among the preferred picks in grocery racks. Redseer also noted that traditional brands that quickly moved into online were the ones to see the maximum growth. This could lead to Jio Mart taking the pole position in the online delivery of groceries, being the biggest online retail franchise in India.
The market capitalization of 4 out of the 10 most valuable companies on the Nifty saw their overall value jump by Rs.115,759 crore during the week ending on 22 January. Out of these gains, Reliance alone saw huge gains of Rs.71,033 crore on the back of strong result expectations. Other stocks that added value during the week included TCS Rs.26,196 crore, HUL Rs.13,357 crore and Bajaj Finance Rs.5176 crore. Among the value losers, the biggest was Bharti losing Rs.13,994 crore, HDFC Bank losing Rs.12,502 crore, HDFC Rs.7678 crore and Kotak Bank losing Rs.6417 crore. ICICI Bank also ended lower.
Tata Power Solar has just won an Rs.1200 crore order to set up a 320 MW power project. This project will be executed on behalf of NTPC and it will go into commercial operation from May 2022. With this latest order, the overall order pipeline for Tata Power Solar stands at a healthy Rs.12,000 crore. The broad scope of the order includes land acquisition, engineering, procurement, installation and also the commissioning of the grid-connected solar projected on turnkey basis. There will also be a 3-year O&M contract. Tata Power Solar has already executed projects at Ayana, Kasargod, Dholera and Lapanga.
In what could be a worry for inflation levels in the economy, the petrol and diesel prices touched a new high after rates were hiked for the fourth time during the week. Petrol prices stand at Rs.92.28/litre in Mumbai while diesel stands at Rs.82.66/litre. Prices have moved up by Rs.1/litre in the current week itself. With Saudi Arabia pledging further supply cuts, crude could be under greater pressure. In India, the government used the fall in crude prices to enhance revenues by raising excise on petrol and diesel to peak levels. Fuel prices are at a peak when Brent Crude is 50% below peak levels due to the duties.
IL&FS is all set to launch its Infrastructure Investment Trust or INVIT that will convert all the outstanding debt on 10 road projects into units of the INVIT. It has got all necessary approvals and has also got the registration certificate from SEBI. The INVIT will resolve nearly Rs.13,000 crore of debt out of the total Rs.100,000 crore that it owed at the time of its bankruptcy. The units of the INVIT will be distributed to lenders including SBI, PNB, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda and Indian Overseas Bank. This INVIT structure is part of the Rs.32,000 crore debts that the IL&FS board claimed it had successfully resolved. By Mar-22, the company plans to resolve loans to the tune of Rs.56,000 crore. INVITs are pass-through paper issued against the underlying infrastructure projects and revenues are used to generate fixed-income returns.