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[ad_1] China's industrial profit growth tumbles as raw material prices fall [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Capital expenditure by large central public-sector entities — companies and undertakings — rose by 19% on year to Rs 3.1 lakh crore in the first eight months of the current financial year, official sources told FE. Capex by these state-run entities, each with annual investment budget of over Rs 500 crore, was 52% of their aggregate capital expenditure target of Rs 5.96 lakh crore for FY22 in April-November period. While these 40-odd large CPSEs and departmental undertakings are sure to miss the finance ministry’s directive of achieving 90% of their target by December, they have to accelerate their capex in the remaining four months of FY22 to achieve the 30% annual growth target. Investment expenditure as measured by gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) grew by 11% in Q2FY22 over its level in Q2FY21 and by 1.5% when compared to its level in 2QFY20. Continued momentum in capital expenditure by the Centre, CPSEs and states is necessary to push GFCF, as low capacity utilisation and continued uncertainties over the pandemic are deterring private investors from taking the plunge. In April-November of FY22, the railways was the largest investor by deploying capex of about Rs 93,000 crore or 48% of its annual target of Rs 1.95 lakh crore. Railways’ investment is largely in the laying of new lines, doubling of tracks, augmenting traffic facilities and construction of rail over bridges/road under bridges. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) was the second largest investor among state-run agencies with capex of Rs 87,000 crore or 71% of the full-year target of Rs 1.22 lakh crore. NHAI is currently developing several expressways including Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Katra, Bengaluru-Chennai and Delhi-Dehradun. Power producer NTPC — which is building 1,980 MW thermal plant in North Karanpura, 1,600 MW Telangana power project, 300 MW Nokhra solar power plant and 300 MW Shimbhoo Ka Burj solar project — invested about Rs 16,000 crore or 67% of its annual capex target in April-November 2021. Fuel retailer-cum-refiner Indian Oil Corporation invested about Rs 16,000 crore (56% of full-year target). It is expanding the capacity of Barauni refinery from 6 million tonne per annum (MTPA) to 9 MTPA, Panipat refinery from 15 MTPA to 25 MTPA and Gujarat refinery from 13.7 MTPA to 18 MTPA. During the period, upstream oil CPSE, ONGC reported capex of about Rs 14,500 crore or about 49% of its FY22 capex target of Rs 29,800 crore. The oil explorer’s capex deployment was mainly in KG 98/2 Cluster II, Mumbai High South Redevelopment Phase IV, Life Extension of well platforms and Heera Redevelopment Phase-III Project. In the last few years, capex by CPSEs and other agencies has remained robust. Capex by these entities was Rs 4.6 lakh crore or 92% of the annual target for FY21; this was 4.3% higher than the capital spending by these entities in FY20. Improved revenues have helped the states to maintain a robust capital expenditure pace in the first seven months of the current financial year. Data gathered by FE of 16 states showed that these states reported a combined capex of Rs 1.5 lakh crore in April-October of FY22, up 70% on year, compared with a decline of 34% in the corresponding period of FY21. The Centre’s capex in April-October of FY22 stood at Rs 2.53 lakh crore, an annual increase of 28%. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] Supported by rising economic activities after the lifting of the coronavirus–induced lockdowns, power generation in the country is set to achieve two-digit growth rate. According to government data, power generation in till December 22 this fiscal year stood at 1,075.3 billion units (BU), representing an annual growth of 9.6%. The country’s coal-based plants generated 732.8 BU of power in the period, 13.1% more than the same period last year. Thanks to a 15% annual growth in the country’s renewable energy base to 104 giga-watt, electricity production from environmentally benign sources increased 15.4% on year to 106.2 BU so far in the current fiscal year. Total electricity generation in April-December 22, 2021 was in fact 5.3% higher than the corresponding (pre-pandemic) period in FY20. Sources in the industry said that most of the load was borne by domestic coal-based power stations, as steep increase in imported coal prices led to imported-coal based electricity generation dropping 28% annually in April-November. Though around 145 GW of power plants import coal for blending with the local variant, nearly 18 GW are designed to run specifically on imported coal. The total coal-based power generation capacity in the country is about 209 GW. Electricity demand in April-November of 916.6 BU in FY22 was 10.3% higher than FY21 and 4.7% more than the same period in FY20. Owing to higher prices of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is not adequately available in the country, power production from gas-based plants fell 28.1% annually to 28.7 BU in April-December 22. Plant load factor (PLF) of gas-based power stations in April-November fell from 25.6% in FY21 to 18.5% in FY22. At the same time, PLF of coal-based plants improved from 50.8% in FY21 to 56.9% in the ongoing fiscal. The FY22 coal-based PLF was in fact one percentage point higher than FY20. Given the high dependency of coal on the country’s electricity generation, state-run power distribution companies (discoms) remain exposed to an upward pressure on power purchase cost as the main fuel supplier is deliberating on raising coal prices. The company had last revised the rates back in January, 2018. Analysts at Icra had pointed out in October that “delays in tariff determination process by state regulators continues to remain an area of concern given that tariff orders have been issued for utilities in only 19 out of the 28 states for FY22 so far and the tariff hikes remain modest”. As on November-end, discoms’ overdues — pending receivables of 45 days or more — owed to private power producers increasing 25.2% on year to 52,299 crore. To be sure, total overdues of discoms stood atRs 98,259 crore at that time — down 4.9% from a year ago — as the receivables of central government power stations fell 50.4% annually to Rs 22,978 crore. The losses of discoms had increased from Rs 48,619 crore in FY16 to Rs 61,079 crore in FY19. The losses were down 37.6% on year at around Rs 38,093 crore in FY20. With revenue of discoms falling in FY21, due to disruptions amid the lockdowns to contain the coronavirus, discom losses are seen to have surged to Rs 90,000 crore by some agencies. However, the power ministry has termed such estimates as “grossly inflated”. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] Israeli hospital to give fourth COVID-19 vaccine shot in trial [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] By Srinath Srinivasan Images and videos are deal breakers in achieving best possible user experience and customer journey on e-commerce and content platforms which translate directly to the topline of the businesses. Enabling image management and distribution for better experience is ImageKit, which has worked with e-commerce firm Nykaa that had a blockbuster IPO debut recently. “We found out early in our journey that images are going to take the front seat in enhancing customer experience with newer technologies and ways of building digital applications,” says Rahul Nanwani, co-founder and CEO, ImageKit. “Image files as they are at source are large and not customised for various platforms. It becomes difficult to store, process, manage and swiftly deliver them as a business scales. Any business whose core activity is not image processing need not worry about this and need not spend on resources doing it. We take up this workload,” says Nanwani. Currently, there are only a handful of players in the market in this space and some of the solutions come as an add-on to large cloud hosting services. Being a cloud native business with strong automation, ImageKit is able to offer scalable image management to several customers irrespective of the state of their network infrastructure. “What we are trying to do is simplify the work of a developer. We offer them APIs to integrate in their code. We do the processing on the images on cloud and send it swiftly to the end application,” he says. Currently there are over 700 companies and over 60,000 developers using ImageKit, according to him. Utilising AWS infrastructure, the company is able to offer the lowest prices in the market for large-scale applications. It promises reduced overall web page load time by a huge margin, say, by 30%, improved SEO and high reliability without downtime. “In order to stay differentiated, we focus on how we integrate with several platforms and technologies while moving further into real time image processing with an aim to give deeper analytics, AI and ML features. Currently, we do the processing below 50 milliseconds even at peak traffic and we aim to bring that down further,” says Nanwani. The profitable bootstrapped startup is also expanding into the video delivery space aiming to offer YouTube or Netflix- like delivery for its customers with deep processing capabilities. “We are also looking into making ourselves a digital asset management service. We want to ease the workflow and processes of photographers, graphic designers, marketing, legal and social teams. Today it is all done through general communication and collaboration channels which have limited features with other conversations happening in parallel,” says Nanwani. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] Omicron grounds hundreds more U.S. flights over Christmas weekend [ad_2] Source link