NEW DELHI: Political parties may be promising a return to high growth rate over the next five years, but ratings agencyCrisil has said that it may not be easy to return to 9% growth during 2014-2019 and instead settle for an average 6.5% growth, provided there is a stable government at the Centre.
The forecast is lower than the average for previous five years (April 2009 to March 2014), estimated at 6.7%, although significantly higher than the 4.9% projected for 2013-14. The position is in contrast to what political parties are promising during the election campaign. Although the BJP has not provided any number in its manifesto, its leaders are talking about reversing the slow growth phase. Congress has said that it will take the economy back to 8% growth rate in three years.
"There is a 50% chance growth will average 6.5% over this period, provided we get a decisive mandate in the ensuing general elections, which will hopefully speed up decision making, and improve the investment climate and competitive efficiencies," the agency said in a report released on Sunday. At the same time, it warned of adverse impact of a fractured mandate as decision making will be hampered and said there is 30% chance of the economy expanding at the current pace of a little under 5%.
KFC, the Kentucky-based fast-food chain known for its "finger-lickin' good" range of chicken fillets and burgers, has finally given in to India's penchant for vegetarianism. In what appears to be a first across all KFC franchises globally, KFC India has unveiled a segregated vegetarian menu along with a strong message about its newfound bias for vegetarian offerings.
Paneer Zinger and Veg Twister, in addition to the hot-selling Potato Krisper Burger, Veg Strips, Veg Rockin' Burger and Veg Rice Bowl will now vie for consumer mind space along with their popular non-veg counterparts. The company has not only introduced new products under its veg range, it has also tweaked its global tagline "So good" to "So veg, so good" to show its commitment towards the category.
Executives at the company say the new menu will help them satiate high local demand for vegetarian options. "We recognized an opportunity to deliver a significant vegetarian range for the Indian consumer, and to reach out to a broader target audience," says Dhruv Kaul, director of marketing at KFC India.
Foreign investors poured in almost Rs 4,900 crore in the Indian stock market last week primarily on hopes of a strong reformist government after elections.The total investment by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in equities so far in 2014 has risen to Rs 27,088 crore ($ 4.46 billion).
Market analysts say FIIs are bullish on India on expectations a strong reformist government would come to power after the Lok Sabha elections, scheduled from April 7 to May 12. Analysts are of the view that a positive bias towards the Indian equity market would continue in the coming weeks.
FIIs were gross buyers of shares worth Rs 22,194 crore and sellers of stocks to the tune of Rs 17,302 crore in the week to April 4, resulting in a net inflow of Rs 4,892 crore ($ 815 million), according to data with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. FIIs invested Rs 258 crore in the debt market during the week. Last month, overseas investors had invested Rs 20,077 crore in Indian stocks compared with Rs 1,404 crore in February and Rs 714 crore in January.As of April 4, there were 1,714 registered FIIs in the country and 6,359 sub-accounts.
HONG KONG — Six bottles of 1990 Romanée-Conti Burgundy sold to an Asian buyer at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong last month for 980,000 Hong Kong dollars ($126,345). A case of wine from the Cros Parantoux vineyard in Burgundy, France, fetched $82,333 in a sale held by the American auction house Acker Merrall & Condit at a restaurant overlooking Hong Kong’s harbor.
Fine wine comes at a price in Asia, but there are plenty of buyers. Asian consumers have become a major factor in the global wine market, with China overtaking France and Italy last year as the biggest consumer of red wine. Now, customers in the region are getting more sophisticated, educated and diverse in their wine choices.
“There are a lot more wine lovers in Asia, and they are enjoying a lot more wines,” Simon Tam, head of wine at Christie’s China, said about the auction house’s recent sale. “The market is maturing very, very rapidly.”
Asians have traditionally been drinkers of whiskey, brandy and local spirits like baijiu, a liquor distilled from grain, rather than wine. But rising wealth, a penchant for giving gifts and a constant search for new types of investment have turned affluent Asians into avid buyers of top wines and other luxury items in recent years.
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Visitors from mainland China shopping for wine in Hong Kong, where taxes on wine were abolished in 2008.CreditDean C.K. Cox for The New York Times
Hong Kong, which was barely featured on the international wine scene a decade ago, has become a major hub for wine trading since taxes on wine were abolished here in 2008. Dozens of merchants have opened operations, including famous players like the British company Berry Brothers & Rudd, which traces its roots to 1698, and niche establishments like La Cabane, which sells natural wines from small vineyards in France.
Even in Singapore, where taxes add considerably to the price of a bottle of wine, CWT, a logistics company, is spending 200 million Singapore dollars ($158 million) on a high-end wine storage facility that will be able to store 10 million bottles in air-conditioned and humidity- and light-controlled conditions.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan has said a"substantial" strengthening in the rupee to 45 or 50 per dollar could hit exports, although he added the central bank was fine with "a certain amount of leeway" in the currency.
In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Rajan also said the RBI does not want to declare victory on inflation yet, despite keeping interest rates on hold on Tuesday as widely expected.
RBI would rethink its stance if there is a "substantial" change of inflation, up or down, he said.
When listing the visionary media moguls of the digital age, Vince McMahon, the professional wrestling impresario, might not immediately come to mind.
Yet Mr. McMahon and his company,World Wrestling Entertainment, have positioned themselves on the cutting edge of Internet television with the WWE Network, a new subscription-only streaming video service. Introduced in February, the network broadcasts the pro wrestling extravaganzas that were once available only on cable and satellite television.
And on April 6, when the WWE hosts its 30th WrestleMania event at the Superdome in New Orleans — featuring the “Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal” — the entertainment industry and Wall Street will be watching as closely as wrestling fans.
Shares of the WWE, a publicly traded company based in Stamford, Conn., have more than tripled over the last year with the introduction of the subscription network and takeover rumors. Mr. McMahon, 68, controls the company, and his ambitious WWE Network could be his final act in charge, industry watchers say.
PhotoHulk Hogan, left, and Muhammad Ali as a guest referee in 1985. Pro wrestling’s stars have long influenced broadcasting.CreditWWE
“If he changed how pro wrestling and sports entertainment were broadcast forever, I don’t think there’s a better way to go out,” said Brandon Stroud, a wrestling commentator and editor at the sports site With Leather.
With viewers avoiding costly cable packages in favor of free television on YouTube or monthly subscription services like Netflix, Mr. McMahon decided to move where his customers are increasingly going.
His company has poured tens of millions of dollars into the WWE Network, which offers round-the-clock streaming of its programming for $10 a month. That package includes access to the WWE’s pay-per-view showcase events, which can cost up to $70.
“Owning and controlling your own platform is a sea change for us,” said George Barrios, chief strategy and financial officer at the WWE.
It was also a big change for some of the WWE’s longtime partners, who were not as excited about the new venture. Dish Network, which had sold WWE’s pay-per-view specials, decided not to offer the “Elimination Chamber” event in February. On its Facebook page, Dish criticized WWE, complaining that it was not willing to adjust its costs for satellite and cable companies, “which is unfair to their customers.”
In part to placate its traditional distributors, WWE will show WrestleMania 30 through cable, satellite and telecom providers like Comcast and Dish. But the vast majority of the wrestling company’s advertising for WrestleMania 30 heavily promotes the option of watching the event through its network.
“Realistically, the company needed to untether themselves from the pay-per-view business,” said Bradley Safalow, founder of PAA Research, an independent research firm.
Pro wrestling’s influence on broadcasting dates back to the 1950s, when DuMont, the pioneering television network, began airing matches to raise viewership, said David Shoemaker, author of “The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling.”
In the 1980s, Mr. McMahon formed relationships with cable networks, helping a nascent MTV gain popularity through its wrestling programming. Last year, USA Network was the most-watched prime-time cable network thanks to WWE’s live “Raw” program on Monday nights.
“I think any good entertainment product has to change with the times,” Mr. McMahon said. “You have to have your fingers on the pulse of the marketplace.”
The $10 monthly fee — higher than Netflix’s $8 monthly rate — should appeal to the WWE’s core fans, who now gain access to expensive pay-per-view events like WrestleMania.
Die-hard fans can watch classic matchups, like 1985’s main event from WrestleMania I, a tag-team battle featuring Hulk Hogan and Mr. T against Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff.
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Vince McMahon, chief executive of the WWE.CreditEthan Miller/Getty Images
Michelle Wilson, chief revenue and marketing officer at the WWE, said that in addition to those main selling points, the network plans to add programming like talk shows or animated features to entice nonwrestling audiences.
Fans will eventually also get to view matches never broadcast to a national audience. Since the 1990s, the WWE has been acquiring the libraries of wrestling events from smaller, regional companies, with designs on someday having its own network, said Jim Ross, a former senior adviser to the WWE.
Whether such exclusive content has enticed customers will become clearer on April 7, the day after WrestleMania 30, when the WWE will announce its first subscription numbers for its “over the top” streaming service. The company’s goal is to have one million subscribers within the next year, though Mr. McMahon said he expected to exceed that number. During that time, the network also plans to expand to 11 countries.
Wade Keller, the editor of Pro Wrestling Torch who has covered the sport for nearly three decades, said the first number of total subscribers could be 80,000 to 800,000. An initial number below 100,000 would be “a disaster,” Mr. Keller said.
Early returns show that fan interest has been high. Peter Rosenberg,who co-hosts a pro wrestling podcast with Mr. Shoemaker on the ESPN website Grantland, said he watched the network for approximately 15 hours a week.
“You start thinking about what other things in your life you would be willing to do that for,” he said.
While the WWE Network has shown early promise, Mr. McMahon has a mixed history with entrepreneurial ventures. The XFL, a professional football league marketed as an alternative to the N.F.L., was a notable failure. In 2012, the company invested $5 million in Tout, a social media platform that was once heavily promoted on the WWE’s shows, but has faded.
With the network, the WWE has a partner in Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media, an innovator in streaming services that built the streaming infrastructure for the WWE Network. The network servers for that infrastructure crashed last month on the first day of operation because of unexpected demand.
The WWE will be further put to the test next weekend with WrestleMania 30, which is expected to draw record traffic to its Internet channel.
The company’s executives said they were confident the network would hold up to the high demand.
“I don’t think it’s ever been our intention to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to be the first and we want to be the trailblazers and we are the future of television,’ ” Ms. Wilson said. “Our goal has always been about our fans.”
Among those fans is the rapper Wale, whose catalog includes a song called “Hacksaw Jim Duggan,” named after a popular wrestler from the 1980s who carried around an American flag and a two-by-four. For years, Wale said he stopped watching WWE events, until he subscribed to the new network. Earlier this month, Wale was in the front row at a WWE “Raw” show at the Barclays Center, watching a childhood favorite, Hulk Hogan, as well as new talent like the Wyatt family, a trio of cultlike figures in goat masks and Hawaiian shirts.
For Wale, who once rapped, “Y’all too old for this, y’all Hulk Hogan,” the WWE Network has brought him back to childhood. “If you’re a wrestling fan,” he said, “it’s just like heaven.”
Reliance Industries on Friday dubbed as a "canard" allegations that the near-doubling of natural gas prices will lead to a similar hike in domestic cooking gas (LPG) and inflation in food item rates.
In its second video to be uploaded on YouTube in as many days, RIL said gas from its eastern offshore KG-D6 field is not used to manufacture LPG and as such the increase in rates from next month will have no bearing on the price of the cooking fuel.
Also, goods carriers used for transporting food items do not run on natural gas and will not be impacted by the gas price increase.
The video, recorded in the format of a news broadcast, seeks to counter propaganda by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which had opposed the decision to almost double natural gas rates to $8 per million British thermal units, saying it would lead to a windfall for RIL and hit the common man hard.
"A fear psychosis is being created in that from April 1, gas prices shall be increased by the government thus stoking inflation. The canard is the handiwork of a minuscule section of polity to garner attention they otherwise won't deserve," RIL said.
Stating that the truth about natural gas pricing and its impact deserves to be understood, it said LPG is manufactured from compounds called propane and butane, which are not present in KG-D6 gas.
LPG is manufactured from crude oil in refineries and "there is no relation between LPG prices and natural gas rates," it said, adding that natural gas prices have not been revised during the past five years even though LPG rates have gone up to about Rs 450 per cylinder from Rs 280.
"If natural gas prices had any link with LPG, then why have LPG rates been increased in last five years when gas prices have not been touched," it asked.
RIL said it was also being alleged that the gas price hike would result in transportation costs going up and lead to a cascading effect on food item prices.
"Goods carriers like truck, tempo and tractor do not run on gas but on diesel," it said, adding that gas rates do not have any bearing on the cost of transporting goods.
Without naming anyone, the company said some people did not want to present facts and want to mislead people for their narrow political propaganda aimed at garnering votes in the election season.
"Fear psychosis was being created to instigate people in name of price rise," it added.
