Indian companies' profit margins 'still not showing' signs of improvement: IIM-A survey

By A Representative
The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad’s (IIM-A’s) Business Inflation Expectations Survey (BIES), released last week, has said the profit margins of 75% of the firms have been failing to show any signs of improvement, a trend which has has continued since June 2019. “Overall”, the BIES report says, “The profit margin scenario is still not showing any clear signs of improvement.”

BIES selects companies primarily from the manufacturing sector, and the survey results are based on the responses of over 1,200 companies. The survey report says, “The cost perceptions data shows that the signs of significant cost pressures building up have ebbed”, adding, “Nearly 47% of the firms believe that the current cost increase is 3.1% and above as compared to the same time last year. Over 1/4th of the firms perceive that the current cost increase is over 6%.”

As for the sales perception, the report says, “Data still does not show clear signs of recovery”, adding, “In January 2020, around 70% of the firms in the sample reported that sales are ‘somewhat or much less than normal’ as against 72% reporting in December 2019. This proportion has remained around 70% since June 2019.”

Comments

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo* A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.

Counterview

Search This Blog