India’s direct tax collections for FY24 till date is up 24% on yoy basis at Rs4.75 trillion. That is more than quarter of the budget estimates for the full fiscal year FY24. This amount is net of refunds. The budget estimates are to collect nearly Rs18.2 trillion from direct tax in this fiscal year. The growth in direct tax collections in FY24 is largely attributed to better compliance. In the last few years, the government has not only made taxes simpler and incentivized compliance but has also punished any tax evasion tactics.
Foxconn has decided to walk out of the chip joint venture with Vedanta group. The JV was supposed to set up a Rs1.54 trillion chip plant in Gujarat and would have been India’s first semiconductor plant. Taiwan still dominates the advance chip industry and accounts for over 90% of the global chips made. It is not yet clear if Foxconn has plans to independently approach the chip business in India. However, the government officials were quite emphatic that withdrawal of Foxconn would not impact India’s chip plans any ways.
L&T and Navantia of Spain will jointly bid for the $5 billion India submarine tender. L&T has the expertise, having built over 65 such defence vessels for the Navy and also for the coast guard. L&T and Navantia have already signed a JV to bid for the Navy’s Project 75 that calls for 6 conventional submarines with air independent propulsion. The submarines will be designed by Navantia on its S80 model while L&T will manufacture it in India. ThyssenKrupp of Germany and Mazagon have also tied up to bid for the tender.
Deals are still happening in the digital space. In a recent deal, CarTrade Tech will acquire Sobek Auto from OLX India for a consideration of Rs537 crore. Sobek is in the business of running an automotive digital platform and a classifieds internet business. The deal is subject to both the parties meeting certain terms and conditions ahead of the deal being implemented. CarTrade is one of the listed agnostic auto buying and selling platforms in India and Sobek will be a natural extension to its core business platform model.
Lenders have called for Jet Airways to be wound up since the resolution plan was not viable. Its operator certificate has already expired in May and lenders do not want that renewed. Also, the Jalan Kalrock had not infused any funds into Jet as committed earlier. However, it is not clear how much dues can be even recovered since most of its assets would have been already sweated. Lenders complained that they were spending nearly Rs23 crore each month but there was little traction in terms of funds recovery from Jet.
ESAF Small Finance Bank has refiled its draft prospectus with SEBI to raise Rs629 crore via IPO route. This will include a fresh issue of Rs510 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of Rs119 crore. The bank is also planning a Rs97.33 crore pre-IPO placement and in that case the IPO size would be reduced accordingly. Proceeds from the fresh issue will be used to augment the Tier-1 capital of the bank to meet its future capital and growth requirements. Between FY21 and FY23, the AUM of ESAF SFB has growth at a CAGR of 39.22%.
Trading in the GIFT Nifty is yet to pick up steam, although these are still early days. In the recent week, the average number of GIFT Nifty contracts stood at 32,934 while in the last 3 months it stood at around 60,884 contracts on the SGX. The CEO of NSE IX admitted that there may be some initial apprehensions but a week was too short a time to judge the product. Also, the bourse is now processing membership applications from a number of brokers, which will give them access to trade in dollar denominated Nifty.
Just a week after Meta’s answer to Twitter was launched in the form of Threads, it has clocked 100 million users. Zuckerberg confirmed that the sign-ups were purely organic from the existing ecosystem consisting of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Threads is expected to add $8 billion to the revenues of Meta by year 2025. For now, Threads appears to be making the best of the recent blunders committed by Elon Musk after he took over Twitter in a $44 billion deal. Musk has described Threads as a copycat product.