India and the European Union are preparing to grant each other Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status once their landmark free trade agreement comes into force. The move, embedded within the draft text of the agreement, will bind both sides to World Trade Organization (WTO) disciplines and ensure they do not impose new import or export…
MUMBAI: Gold loans are booming. Lending against the yellow metal is expanding at triple-digit rates of 128% year-on-year, propelling personal loans, which in turn underpin the 14.4% overall growth in bank credit as of Jan 31.Data from RBI on the sectoral deployment of bank credit shows personal loans outpacing all other segments. At 34.5%, they…
MUMBAI: Across the board selling pulled the sensex down by 961 points (1.2%) on Friday, and the 30-share index closed at 81,287 points with banks leading the slide. Tariff uncertainty, foreign fund selling and no visible progress in Iran-US talks left investors jittery and pressing the sell button ahead of the weekend.Foreign funds led the…
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman on Saturday announced that the company has reached an agreement with the US Department of War to deploy its AI models within the authority’s classified network. The development comes at a time when US President Donald Trump has banned every federal agency from using Anthropic.In a post on X, Altman…
NEW DELHI: Chief economic adviser V Anantha Nageswaran Friday raised the growth forecast for the next financial year to 7-7.4% as against 6.8-7.2% projected in last month’s Economic Survey, banking on improved policy certainty due to trade agreements and an improvement in capital flows, along with high-frequency data pointing to sustained momentum in consumption and…
NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi on Friday asked industry to innovate and come up with fresh investments. He also urged financial institutions to adopt innovative models to boost infrastructure funding, while strengthening project sanction and appraisal quality.At a post-budget webinar, after listing out the steps taken by govt over the last decade on infrastructure, PM…
Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic said on Friday (local time) that it will challenge Pentagon’s decision to classify the company as a supply-chain risk in court, according to a Reuters report. This comes hours after US President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to stop using the firm’s technology. Trump had ordered every federal department to “immediately”…
The ministry of statistics and programme implementation released a new series of national accounts with 2022–23 as the base year, replacing the 2011–12 series. The revision incorporates fresh data sources such as GST, PFMS and e-Vahan, introduces double deflation in key sectors, and relies on annual surveys for improved household estimates.■ What is a base…
NEW DELHI: India’s economy is estimated to grow at 7.6% in 2025-26, led by manufacturing and services as the country’s statistics office released revised data series with a new base year of 2022-23.The message from the revised numbers is that the economy has remained resilient against the backdrop of trade and geopolitical tensions, and India…
Game-Changer for Global Finance? UAE Unveils World’s First AI-Powered Sovereign Cloud to Guard Banks and Data In a bold leap that could redefine how modern financial systems operate, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) has announced the launch of what it calls the world’s first sovereign financial cloud services infrastructure, a secure…
