Mumbai, July 27 (IANS) Indian stock market witnessed a stellar rally in the Budget week. Last week, Sensex and Nifty surged by 728 points or 0.90 per cent and 303 points or 1.24 per cent respectively. This was the eighth consecutive week when the market closed with gains.

This is the first time since January 22, 2018 that the market has continued to rise for such a long period.

On a weekly basis, Tata Motors (13 per cent), HDFC Life Insurance (10.6 per cent), Sun Pharma (9.3 per cent), NTPC (8.7 per cent), BPCL (8.2 per cent), Titan (7.2 per cent), SBI Life Insurance (6.3 per cent) and Cipla (6 per cent) were the top gainers in the Nifty pack.

During this period, no Nifty stock posted negative returns.

Among the sectoral indices, Nifty Pharma soared by 5.77 per cent, Nifty Media saw a gain of over 5.5 per cent, Nifty Auto surged by 5.16 per cent, Nifty Energy climbed by 2.79 per cent and Nifty FMCG posted 2.69 per cent weekly gains.

However, Nifty Bank (1.86 per cent), Nifty Realty (1.69 per cent), Nifty Finance (1.19 per cent) and Nifty PSU Bank (0.44 per cent) were the major laggards.

Nifty made a new all-time high of 24,861 and Sensex closed near its lifetime high on Friday. Sensex closed at 81,332, up 1,292 points or 1.62 per cent, and Nifty closed at 24,834, up 428 points or 1.76 per cent.

According to market experts, “The market has now recovered its losses from budget day, driven by positive US GDP data and expectations of improved global demand. Moving forward, the direction of the domestic market will likely be influenced by the progress of the earnings season.”

“DIIs continue to employ a ‘buy on dips’ strategy, which contributed to market gains on the week’s last trading day, particularly in the pharma, auto, metal, IT, and FMCG sectors,” they added.

–IANS

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Rio De Janeiro, July 27 (IANS) Finance ministers and central bank presidents of the Group of Twenty (G20) concluded their third meeting in Rio de Janeiro, adopting a joint communique that calls for a more just, stable, and efficient international tax system.

“We acknowledge the urgency and importance of realignment in quota shares to better reflect members’ relative positions in the world economy, while protecting the quota shares of the poorest members,” the communique states, also addressing the development needs and priorities of low- and middle-income countries.

On top of that, it urges reforms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the strengthening of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), Xinhua news agency reported.

The G20 Ministerial Declaration on International Tax Cooperation was issued at the meeting and calls for strengthening tax transparency, preventing base erosion and profit shifting, as well as applying progressive taxation to ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

Brazil’s Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, the coordinator of the meeting, said that the release of the joint communique is a victory for the international community after several years.

“The G20 needs to take advantage of the Financial Track to strengthen cooperation mechanisms,” Haddad added.

Brazil has held the rotating presidency of the G20 since last December. During its one-year term, the Brazilian government focuses on three priorities: combating hunger, poverty, and inequality; sustainable development; and global governance reform.

–IANS

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New Delhi, July 27 (IANS) India’s unique Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which has transformed millions of lives, is now being replicated in several countries, the Centre has informed.

Aadhaar, which is the world’s largest digital identity programme that provides biometric and demographic-based unique digital identity, has generated 138.04 crore IDs to date.

More than 30 crore users have been facilitated and 675 crore issued documents made available by DigiLocker, according to Jitin Prasada, Minister of State for Electronic and IT.

The minister said in the Rajya Sabha that more than 1,388 crore financial transactions were processed through unified payments interface (UPI) in June alone.

Moreover, India has signed MoUs on cooperation in the field of sharing successful digital solutions implemented at population scale with 10 countries.

These are Armenia, Sierra Leone, Suriname, Antigua and Barbuda, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania, Kenya, Cuba and Colombia.

DPI has been developed across various domains, aimed at enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and inclusivity.

“India Stack Global has been developed and rolled out with the aim to share the success of Indian DPIs with the global community and to facilitate replication in friendly countries,” informed the minister.

Under the Indian Presidency of G20 in 2023, Global DPI Repository (GDPIR) portal was designed, developed and rolled out.

Meanwhile, an RBI report on Friday stated that digital payments in the country have registered a 12.6 per cent increase year-on-year with the RBI’s Digital Payments Index (RBI-DPI).

It rose to 445.5 at the end of March 2024 compared to 418.77 in September 2023 and 395.57 in March 2023, informed the Central Bank.

–IANS

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New Delhi, July 26 (IANS) As part of the Centre’s campaign to empower women in rural areas, 810 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) have been registered with 100 per cent women members, while out of the overall registration of 19,82,835, farmers in FPOs, as many as 6,86,665 are women farmers, according to the information tabled in Parliament on Friday.

Members of FPOs are eligible for support for end-to-end services covering almost all aspects of cultivation from inputs, technical services to processing and marketing, in order to enhance their earnings.

Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan stated in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha that a total of 8,780 FPOs have already been registered across the country as part of the Centre’s scheme to create 10,000 such entities.

The minister stated that provisions have been made in the operational guidelines of the FPOs scheme to increase women’s participation.

The scheme has a clause to provide special focus to include small, marginal and women farmers/women SHGs, SC/ST farmers and other economically weaker categories as members to make FPOs more effective and inclusive.

Besides, adequate representation has to be given to women on the Board of Directors and Governing Body as the case may be, he added.

–IANS

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New Delhi, July 26 (IANS) At the company’s 113th AGM address, Sanjiv Puri, Chairman and Managing Director, ITC Ltd, shared his vision on ‘ITC: Stakeholder Value through Purposeful Performance’.

In his address, Puri said ITC’s digital investments power mainstreaming of the digital-first culture, transforming all facets of operations – from insighting to product development, smart sourcing to on-time efficient delivery, superior brand engagement, and marketing through real-time content, connect, and commerce.

“ITC’s Trade Marketing & Distribution infrastructure has transformed into a smart omni-channel network, with a 2x growth in market coverage with three out of four retailers carrying our FMCG products,” Puri said.

ITC has also launched six exclusive D2C platforms. The e-B2B platform of ITC, UNNATI, continues to be rapidly scaled up, covering nearly seven lakh outlets.

ITCMAARS — the ‘phygital’ eco-system that enables wider agri-tech adoption — enhances efficiencies and access to markets as well as financial services. Leveraging the power of collectives, the ITCMAARS ecosystem now constitutes over 1,650 FPOs covering more than 1.5 million farmers.

“By 2030, we aspire to connect over 10 million farmers. The predictive, hyperlocal and dynamic advisories coupled with an input marketplace have enhanced net farmer returns up to 30 per cent in a short span of time.

“Over 10,000 plus soil tests, with personalised crop nutrition recommendations based on sophisticated AI-based algorithms, have been facilitated resulting in 10-15 per cent reduction in fertiliser usage and 15-20 per cent improvement in crop yields,” Puri said.

He added that agri-tech solutions are also being progressed across multiple value chains including drone usage, which focuses on nano nutrients and crop protection.

Through remote sensing, ITCMAARS has digitised 6 million acres covering 1,000 FPOs to help deliver contextual and crop stage-specific personalised advisories.

Recently, ITCMAARS launched the world’s first GenAI-based regional voice chatbot for farmers called ‘KrishiMitra’ which has been co-developed with Microsoft.

ITCMAARS also harnesses the collective knowledge garnered over decades to provide the farmers best-in-class services. This includes the experience gained from ITC’s Baareh Mahine Hariyali programme, which enabled a substantial increase in farmer incomes.

“The expertise gained has also enabled us to implement such best practices in 45 aspirational districts. Exclusive PPPs with NITI Aayog in 27 such districts have improved yields up to 30 per cent, and reduced cultivation costs by nearly 15 per cent, thereby boosting farmer income by up to 60 per cent. In addition, over five lakh farmers are trained annually in best practices through the Farmer Field Schools and demonstration farms organised by ITC,” Puri said.

ITC’s wholly-owned subsidiary, ITC Infotech, sustained its growth momentum and global expansion through capability-led strategic partnerships, he added.

In line with its ‘Orbit Next’ strategy, ITC Infotech also augmented its portfolio of solutions. During the year, the company acquired Blazeclan Technologies to strengthen its capabilities in the Cloud services space and to make scalable progress in digital transformation solutions.

–IANS

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