Good rains to help tractor sales bounce back: Crisil Manual checking to hurt production: Auto bodies

Vodafone Idea lost 34.67 lakh mobile subscribers in February, even as Reliance Jio added

62.57 lakh users, according to latest Trai data. Jio had a base of 38.28 crore mobile users in February. Bharti Airtel added

9.2 lakh users and its total mobile subscriber base stood at

32.90 crore. BSNL garnered

4.39 lakh subscribers. In subscri-ber market share, Jio held

32.9 per cent, Airtel 28.35 and Voda Idea at 28 per cent.

Tata Starbucks said it will resume dine-in services in seven cities across India, with elevated cleaning and sanitising protocols. Stores will operate with 50 per cent seating capacity to allow for social distancing between customers and employees, said Tata Starbucks in a statement. The selected Starbucks stores are in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara.

A well-distributed and normal monsoon as forecast by the Indian Meteorological Department or IMD recently is likely to limit the impact of the Covid pandemic on tractor sales volume this fiscal.

“Despite a 37 per cent onyear decline in April and May combined, tractor volumes will likely be barely 1 per cent below last fiscal year’s level, in sharp contrast to a double-digit decline expected for the rest of the automobile industry,” rating agency Crisil said on Monday.

That, and lower raw material costs and strong balance sheets, bode stable credit outlook for tractor makers this financial year.

The IMD recently forecast a normal monsoon this year at 102 per cent of the long period average (LPA) this year. Crucially, it sees rains well-distributed at 96-107 per cent of the LPA in all the four regions. “The monsoon’s approach so far has been timely, with rains 21 per cent above normal in June to date,” Manish Gupta, senior director at Crisil Ratings, said.

The forecast for July and August–crucial months for the kharif crops–is also encouraging at 103 per cent and 97 per cent, respectively, over LPA.

“Apart from overall adequacy, monsoon needs to be spatially well-distributed–by geography and timeliness (June-September)–to propel farm incomes and stoke demand for tractors. The IMD’s forecast is very encouraging for tractor volumes this fiscal,” Gupta said.

Additionally, agriculture will be supported by high reservoir levels, seen at a massive 94 per cent higher than last year and 71 per cent above the average of the past decade.

The recent hike in minimum support prices for major crops by 3-8 per cent this kharif season also augurs well for rural incomes–more so as this follows a bumper rabi crop, he said.

Stating that 100 per cent manual inspection of imports from China were resulting in inordinate delays in clearance, the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India, or Acma, and the Society of Indian Automobile Manu-facturers, or Siam, on Monday urged the Centre speed up clearance to prevent further disruptions in the production of vehicles in the post-lockdown period.

Several auto component and vehicle makers have complained of ‘very high’ congestion at the Mumbai port after their shipments that sailed from China got stuck.

June 29: Coty Inc said on Monday it would buy a 20 per cent stake in reality TV star Kim Kardashian West's makeup brand KKW, as the cosmetics maker looks to cash in on the demand for celebrityowned products.

Shares of the CoverGirl cosmetics maker, jumped in pre-market trading.

The deal values West's cosmetics line at $1 billion, slightly lower than the $1.2 billion valuation Coty put on West's halfsister Kylie Jenner's business when it bought a majority stake in her namesake cosmetics line in January.

Coty, which has been

The Acma has received multiple concerns from its members about the blockade. Explaining the complexity of the automotive value chain and the need for permitting clearance of imports, Deepak Jain, president at Acma, said some of the items imported from China are critical components such as parts of engines and electronics items for which India is yet to develop competence. saddled with billions of dollars in debt, is partnering with brands endorsed by celebrities with a huge social media following to make its products resonate better with millennial customers who prefer more niche brands.

Bengaluru, June 29: The Indian unit of Amazon.com Inc has eliminated all single-use plastic in its packaging across fulfilment centres in the country, in line with its target to weed out the packaging material by June, the e-commerce giant said on Monday.

The company said in addition to replacing packaging materials

“The automotive value chain is a highly complex, integrated and interdependent one; non availability of even a single component can, in fact, lead to stoppage of the vehicle manufacturing lines,” he said.

“Inordinate delays in clearance due to congestions at port could eventually impact manufacturing of vehicles in India,” Rajan Wadhera, president at Siam, said. He said the auto industry is piecing itself together as growth is limping back, and any further disruption at this juncture is best avoided.

While most automakers do not directly import components, their parts manufacturing partners do import components and often modifies them. such as bubble wraps and air pillows with "paper cushions", it had also swapped out packaging tapes with other bio-degradable options.

"We have successfully eliminated single-use plastic in all our fulfilment centres a 100 per cent," Akhil Saxena, vice-president of customer fulfillment for the Apac, Latam and Middle East

With the South-West monsoon covering the entire country on June 26, that is

12 days in advance, the kharif crops sowing has picked up speed covering

315.6 lakh hectors, which is 104 per cent higher than the comparable period a year ago, spurring farm output and boosting rural spending on items ranging from gold to cars, motorcycles and refrigerators.

Also, the monsoon progress in the ongoing season has been at a fiveyear best, which is 22 per cent higher than the long period average as on June

24, Care Ratings said on Monday.

All the major agricultural and North Africa regions, said in an interview.

Amazon, often criticised for using too much plastic and thermocol to wrap its billions of packages of shipments, had said last September that its India unit would replace single-use plastic in its packaging by June 2020.

Saxena said on Monday the Covid-19 pandemic had slowed states have received normal or higher showers during June 1-27 facilitating sowing and planting of kharif crops.

Out of 36 sub-divisions in the country, nearly 82 per cent of the sub-divisions have received excess to normal rainfalls from June 1 to June 24, with 15 sub-divisions experiencing normal rainfalls.

Sowing of paddy, the kharif season’s main crop, across the country was at 37.70 lakh hectare as on June 26, up by 35 per cent over the same period last year.

The sowing area under cotton and groundnut, two main kharif crops in Gujarat more than doubled to 11.60 lakh hectare and 12.40 lakh hectare respectively. down some of their work, but Amazon India managed to meet its target as the unit had started on the elimination project even before the national lockdown was imposed.

Last October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called on citizens to help end the usage of single-use plastic-- seen as a pollutant—by 2022.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc said it would spend $500 million on one-time bonuses to its frontline employees and partners working through the coronavirus crisis. Employees and partners who have been with the company through June will receive bonuses ranging from $150 to $3,000, the company said in a blog post.