National Statistical Office (NSO) projects India’s GDP growth rate for 2019-20 at 5%. The decline has been mainly on account of deceleration in manufacturing sector growth, which is expected to come down to 2 per cent in 2019-20 from 6.2 per cent in the year-ago fiscal. The deceleration was also witnessed in sectors like agriculture, construction and electricity, gas and water supply.
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ), India’s largest private sector port operator, has agreed to buy a 75% stake in Krishnapatnam Port Co. Ltd (KPCL) at an enterprise value of Rs 13,572 crores.
The Krishnapatnam Port is located in southern Andhra Pradesh and is a multi-cargo facility. It handled 54 million tonnes (mt) of cargo in the year ended 31 March 2019. The purchase will accelerate Adani Ports’ plan to expand its cargo-handling capacity to 400mt by 2025.
To boost the digital payments, the government has stated that all businesses with a turnover of Rs 50 crore or more have to operationalise payments through Rupay and Bhim UPI, failing which they have to pay a hefty penalty of Rs 5,000 per day from February 1.
The value of UPI transactions had breached the Rs 2 lakh crore mark in December last year, witnessing a 100 per cent rise year-on-year. It is for the first time since UPI’s inception in 2016 that the value of transactions has reached Rs 2 lakh crore.
The surge has gone in favour of private sector players such as Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe, which dominate the UPI space as most of the transactions are done via these platforms. Government-run BHIM, which also uses UPI, still trails its private sector peers.
However, after this Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) notification comes into place, the market will tilt in favour of Rupay and Bhim, with both expected to see a major boost. The CBDT notification says that business establishments with an annual turnover of more than Rs 50 crore, shall offer low-cost digital modes of payment (such as BHIM UPI, UPI QR Code, Aadhaar Pay, Debit Cards, NEFT, RTGS etc.) to their customers, and no charge or Merchant Discount Rates (MDR) shall be imposed on customers and merchants.
Reliance is all set to venture into the e-commerce segment with the launch of Jio Mart. The company is currently live in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan. It is rolling out an offline-to-online commerce platform that will provide retail packaged consumer goods (PCG) and kitchen supplies to the customer in select locations.
Powered by kirana stores, that have signed up onto Jio using its internet-enabled point-of-sale (PoS) and inventory management device, the mart will offer a selection of over 50,000 grocery products, no-charge deliveries, low prices, and easy returns.
A dedicated mobile application for Jio Mart is expected to be launched in the coming weeks, which will also be integrated with My Jio and Jio Money applications.