Odisha moots ‘Samrudha Sahara' to transform cities
The Housing and Urban Development department's Samrudha Sahara scheme will aim at promoting planned urbanisation and balanced regional development across the state, chief secretary Manoj Ahuja told mediapersons after the cabinet meeeting.
He said the scheme is a part of the Viksit Odisha-2036 vision and designed to transform cities into engines of economic progress.
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Time of India
20 minutes ago
- Time of India
Fewer use cases take toll on Fastag growth
ETtech Fastag, the modern electronic payment system for vehicle owners and the entire travel ecosystem, is stagnating, with almost negligible growth in the last financial year. Even the number of transactions and banks going live on the payment method remained sluggish during the of evolution of new use cases for Fastag, beyond toll payments, is one of the key factors hindering its growth, said people in the know.'Toll payments are undertaken by consumers only that many times in a month or a year, and even for commercial vehicles, almost the entire base has been already covered, and the sector is also not growing exponentially,' said a top executive at a digital payments firm which processes Fastag payments. 'Overall, the payment method has stagnated at a certain level.'Data shared by the National Payments Corporation of India , which powers settlements on Fastag, showed 350-380 million transactions are processed on Fastag every month, which has stayed constant since January 2024. In terms of fund settlement, it has hovered between Rs 6,000 and Rs 6,500 crore in the same period. Around 38 banks are currently active on Fastag, unchanged since May payment methods are not directly comparable, for context, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the most popular digital payment method, currently has 675 banks live on the platform. In May 2023, there were 445 Fastag was initiated with the aim of digitising highway tolls, its use cases were conceived to be eventually expanded to everything concerning a vehicle such as fuel purchases, and parking payments, among others.'While a limited number of large commercial properties like shopping malls have started using Fastag as a payment method for their parking fees, fuel has shown almost no adoption,' said the founder of a fintech startup offering this high cost of installing Fastag-capable gates and tag readers has discouraged smaller commercial estates from adopting them.'A large mall might be processing around Rs 30 to 40 lakh in parking payments per month, for that, the installation and maintenance might be a bit cumbersome,' the founder said the average cost of installing a single gate could be around Rs 1.5 to 2 lakh, in addition to maintenance cost.'There is no margin to be made on fuel payments, hence that use case is also not picking up,' said the executive of a digital payments firm cited parking, one of India's most popular ways of parking vehicles, has also shown no signs of adopting Fastag as a payment method, with transactions mostly through QR codes or insiders also pointed out that the overall disillusionment among fintech startups on generating revenue from digital payments is one of the major reasons behind private firms not taking any fresh initiative on payments. They added that UPI grew in popularity due to large marketing spends into the ecosystem which incentivised customers towards adoption.'No new-age fintech is pumping funds into digital payments right now. Fastag and such payment methods needed incentives to get more customers to use them readily, in the absence of incentives new use-cases are not building up,' said the founder of a digital payments is also plagued by inefficient bank-led customer service, especially during instances of blacklisted tags or recharge issues. While PhonePe, and Amazon Pay are among Fastag distributors, they rely on banks for customer service, where the experience is often subpar.'Banks make money on the float they get through these payments, otherwise there is hardly any incentive for others to offer superior customer experience,' said the founder cited above.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Corporate loan growth slows as firms prefer capital markets over banks
Indian lenders are finding it increasingly difficult to bring large corporates back into the traditional banking fold as overall credit growth slows and capital markets find favour instead. HDFC Bank reported a 1.7% year-on-year growth in corporate advances for the June quarter, a sharp decline from 18.8% growth in the same period last year. ICICI Bank 's domestic corporate loan book expanded by 7.5%, down from 10.3% previously. State-owned Union Bank of India reported a similar trend. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Select a Course Category Bankers attribute the deceleration in corporate lending to rising competition from funding sources such as the bond and equity markets. The shift has also been amplified by the central bank's ongoing rate cut cycle, which has compressed lending margins for banks. The Reserve Bank of India has reduced the policy repo rate by 100 basis points since February. 'Larger corporates are quite liquid, highly rated, and pretty strong on the balance sheet, which means the yield that one could get from that is lower,' said Srinivasan Vaidyanathan, chief financial officer at HDFC Bank. 'And we have seen competition from certain segments of the financial system where the rates are pretty low. It is something that we manage on a close relationship basis with corporates — to participate not just in lending, but as a value proposition.' Live Events Lending Margins Low Margins are a key factor too. 'Large corporates always give you very thin margins, so we have been very conscious in terms of growing that book,' said Prashant Kumar, managing director at Yes Bank . 'In large corporates, wherever we see the opportunity to make revenue, we grow there.' In April-June, corporate bond issuances surged to a four-year high of Rs 3.27 lakh crore, according to a Bank of Baroda report. The borrowing cost in terms of the weighted average yield was in the range of 6.85-7.18% for AAA-rated borrowers and 8.28-9.36% for those rated AA. This compares with banks' weighted average lending rate of 9.23%. Raising funds through the capital markets, especially via private placements of corporate bonds, offers more competitive pricing and quicker access compared with the often lengthy and collateral-heavy bank loan process, experts said. However, the pricing advantage in the bond market is only for top-rated borrowers and hence bank funding remains crucial for the majority of borrowers. In FY25, AAA-rated firms dominated issuances with a 67.1% share, while those rated below AA accounted for 16%. Banks are also focused on making up for the lower margins through fee income. 'Our corporate portfolio is about 20% of our total portfolio — it is doing well,' said Sandeep Batra, executive director at ICICI Bank. 'We saw a decline, which was primarily driven by competitive pricing. We continue to look at these customers on a 360-degree basis and assess the ir total relationship value and the ecosystem's, including the payment solutions that we are able to offer. Accordingly, we take decisions on overall loan pricing.' Batra also said that corporates, especially the better-rated ones, have got multiple choices — with internal accruals as the primary source of funding, followed by the equity market, bonds and bank lending. Indian corporates are increasingly tapping capital markets for cheaper and faster access to funds, which led to a 32.9% surge in resource mobilisation, RBI data showed. Funds raised through the capital markets rose to `15.7 lakh crore at the end of March, compared with Rs 11.8 lakh crore a year earlier. Debt dominated the fundraising mix, with a 63.5% share, almost entirely through private placements, which accounted for 99.2%, while equity contributed 27.4%.
Economic Times
an hour ago
- Economic Times
FIIs' bearish derivatives bets on India surge to a 5-month high
Foreign investors are showing caution towards the Indian stock market. Derivative bets indicate a bearish outlook. Uncertainties surrounding global trade tariffs are a major concern. Muted quarterly results also contribute to the negative sentiment. The long-short ratio, a key market indicator, has fallen significantly. This reflects increased short positions by foreign institutional investors. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Mumbai: Overseas fund managers ' bearish derivative bets on India are at a five month-high as simmering uncertainties around tariffs and rich share valuations have made them wary about the market's near-term long-short ratio-a market sentiment indicator that compares the number of traders betting on a rise in prices (long positions) to those betting on a fall (short)-based on foreigners' derivative positions stood at 15% on Friday-lowest since February ratio reflects an aggressive build-up of short positions and a cautious near-term outlook from institutional investors, said Sudeep Shah, head, technical and derivative research at SBI ratio has sharply dropped from 36.7% at beginning of July, and from 20.2% at end of previous week, indicated data from SBI Securities. "Global trade tariff-related uncertainty amid fresh tariff threat by US to BRICS members and fresh tariff letters to many countries across the globe, along with muted quarterly numbers are the key reasons behind the recent fall in FIIs' long-short ratio ," said Vipin Kumar, assistant VP of derivatives and technical research at Globe Capital long-short ratio of foreign portfolio investors' bets was between 10% and 20% late last year and early in 2025, when the sentiment was a lot more bearish. Nifty and Sensex, which gained about 13% in over three months, declined nearly 1% each, marking their third straight weekly drop after a weak set of earnings by some banks and IT companies contributed to the ended at 24,968.4 levels on Friday, below the 25,000 mark for the first time since June 23. In July, FPIs have net sold Rs 17,000 crore after buying Rs 7,500 crore in June and Rs 11,770 crore in week, Citi downgraded India to 'neutral' from 'overweight', citing elevated valuations and a moderation in earnings growth forecasts. Jefferies' global equity strategist Chris Wood said markets are celebrating the 'AI capital expenditure trade' while ignoring risks from US President Donald Trump's renewed tariff technical charts are pointing to weakness in the stock market in the near-term, an extremely low reading of the long-short ratio is often taken as a signal that the worst is over.'It's worth noting that historically (6 times since January 2022), whenever the FII longshort ratio drops below the 15% mark, markets often witness a limited downside, as excessive pessimism tends to set the stage for short-covering rallies or a reversal in sentiment,' said will be important for the Nifty to stay above 24,800 for the sentiment to turn positive. 'Nifty's decisive close below 24,800 spot levels will be a negative development that might take it down towards 24,000 spot levels in near term, said Kumar. 'Although that will provide a fresh entry point for swing traders and value buyers,' he said.
