Muthoot Finance : Corrigendum to Draft Shelf Prospectus (Debt Offer Document Draft filed with SE)

KOCHI

businessline.

THURSDAY - MARCH 28 - 2024

news .bl. 5

QUICKLY.

Indiabulls Housing raises $350 m via social bonds

Mumbai: Indiabulls Housing Finance has raised $350 million via the issue of dollar-denominated, senior secured social bonds at 9.70 per cent interest.

The proceeds from this bond issue will be utilised for onward lending as may be permitted under the ECB Guidelines and in accordance with the Company's sustainable financing framework, the lender said in a notification to the exchanges. The over three-year bonds are set to mature in July 2027. They will be listed on the Global Securities Market of the India International Exchange. OUR BUREAU

Aye Finance bags €15-m debt funding

Mumbai: Aye Finance, a new-age non-banking financial company, has secured €15 million (about ₹137 crore) in debt funding through the external commercial borrowing route. The funding is from IIV Mikrofinanzfonds and another private fund managed by Invest in Visions, a German impact investment and portfolio management firm, with execution support from Agents For Impact (AFI), a sustainability connector of investors and social impact organisations. OUR BUREAU

Morgan Stanley raises India's GDP	Steel trade deficit
falls to ₹10,411 cr
growth forecast for FY25 to 6.8%	for April-Feb on
BULLISH OUTLOOK. Sees infra capex growing at double-digits in the next few years

Abhishek Law

KR Srivats

New Delhi

Painting a bullish picture on the growth momentum of the Indian economy, foreign brokerage Morgan Stanley has raised the country's GDP growth forecast for FY'24-25 to 6.8 per cent from 6.5 per cent estimated earlier.

The upward revision comes in the wake of contin-ued traction in industrial and capex activity.

For the current calendar year, India's economy will grow at 6.8 per cent as against 6.4 per cent estimated earlier, Morgan Stanley Research said in a new research report titled 'Building Stronger Recovery'.

"We expect growth to be broad-based and the gaps between rural-urban con-sumption and private-public capex to narrow in 2024-25", Upasana Chachra, Chief India Economist and Bani Gambhir, Economist wrote in this re-search report.

For the current fiscal, Mor-gan Stanley sees GDP growth at robust 7.9 percent, much higher than government es-timate of 7.6 per cent and closer to RBI expectation of around 8 per cent. For the on-going fourth quarter this fiscal, Morgan Stanley sees GDP growth at 7 per cent with gross value added Growth of 6.7 per cent.

Morgan Stanley expects CPI inflation to moderate to

KEY DRIVERS. The upward revision comes in the wake of continued traction in industrial and capex activity BLOOMBERG

4.5 per cent in 2024-25 and current account deficit will track around 1 per cent of GDP.

CAPEX-LED GROWTH

Noting that this cycle, like the 2003-07 one, has been marked by a pick up in capex, Morgan Stanley Research highlighted that the recovery in capex since the pandemic has been led by the government's thrust for capital spending.

While public capex spend-ing remains strong, private capex, which has been on a weak footing for most of last 10 years, is also showing signs of recovery as the govern-ment's push for infrastruc-ture spending is improving the business environment and crowding in private in-vestment. "We expect capex trend to pick up in a sustained manner creating a virtuous cycle of growth. In our view, infra capex will grow atdouble digit levels over the next few years, supported by public and private capex spending", the research re-port added.

Capex spending in the eco-nomy likely to grow above nominal GDP in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The nascent signs of capex revival will become more broad based and sustain the uptrend, it added.

RBI RATE CUT

As the Reserve Bank of India gets visibility on gradual mod-eration in inflation towards 5 per cent and below, the cent-ral bank is expected to embark on a shallow rate cut cycle, ac-cording to Morgan Stanley Research. "We pencil in two rate cuts of 25 basis points each. However, we push the first cut forward from our earlier expectation of June to August/October," the re-search report said.

The central bank will re-main cautious and focus on maintaining real rates in pos-itive territory for its domestic economy.

PRIVATE CONSUMPTION

Meanwhile, domestic de-mand growth has been stead-fast and is a key driver of Mor-gan Stanley's constructive outlook for the economy, they said, noting that consump-tion accounts for 60.3 per cent of GDP and is the mainstay of the domestic demand story.

While private consump-tion has recovered over the last four quarters, with growth tracking at 3.5 per cent in December 2023 quarter vs 1.8 per cent in December 2022 quarter, the trend in private consumption is just catching up to the pre-pandemic trend.

EXPORT OUTLOOK

With global growth expected to slow a tad to 2.8 per cent in 2024 and remain steady at 2.9 per cent in 2025 (from 3.2 per cent in 2023), Morgan Stanley expects the export trend to stabilise and not be a further drag on growth.

"In the medium term, we estimate an increase in export market share as India benefits from supply-chain diversific-ation and policy measures supporting manufacturing. As such, we expect that export market share (goods and ser-vices) will increase from 2.4 percent currently to 4.5 per cent by 2031," said the report.

better exports, stable imports

New Delhi

The country's India's steel trade deficit has come down to ₹10,411 crore ($1258 million) for the April-February period, down 10 per cent sequentially, on the back of improving ex-ports, and stable imports dur-ing February, a report of the Steel Ministry, accessed by businessline shows.

Trade deficit was ₹11,564 crore in the April-January period of the fiscal.

Import of finished steel stood at 7.6 million tonnes (mt), and was valued at ₹63,432 crore ($7663 million) while exports were at 6.6 mt and valued at ₹53,021 crore ($ 6405 million). India was a net importer, with shipments coming-in exceeding out-bound shipments by nearly 1 mt.

Imports increased 29 per cent YoY and remained at January levels (with no signi-ficant increase) for February at 0.8 mt. Exports, on the other hand, increased by 78 per cent YoY and by 21 per cent sequentially in February to over 1 mt, the Ministry re-port said.

Hot rolled coils and strips were the highest exported item accounting for 2.6 mt or nearly 39 per cent of the volumes. Flat product exports increased by 16 per cent YoY to 5.9 mt, while non-flat products saw a 7 per cent YoY decline to 0.7 mt.

Microfinance sector's portfolio outstanding rises 31% ₹40-lakh crore

Anshika Kayastha

Mumbai

Portfolio outstanding of the mi-crofinance sector grew 31 per cent on year and 6 per cent onquarter to ₹40-lakh crore as of December 2023. Active loans stood at ₹15.5 crore, higher by 23.2 per cent yoy and 4.1 per cent qoq.

During the quarter, 1.9 lakh microfinance loans were origin-ated worth ₹89,043 crore, ac-cording to CRIF Highmark's 'MicroLend' report for Q3 FY24. The volume of loans dis-bursed was 9.8 per cent higher on year and the value of loans was up 27.1 per cent.

NBFC MFIs continued to lead the market with a portfolio share of 38.3 per cent, followed by banks at 33.4 per cent, small finance banks at 17.4 per cent and NBFCs at 9.4 per cent share.

AVERAGE BALANCE

Average balance per loan ac-count stood at ₹2.6 lakh for Q3, up 6.1 per cent on year and 2.0 per cent on quarter. The average balance per borrower was ₹4.9 lakh, also higher by 4.3 per cent yoy and 1.6 per cent qoq, with 83.4 per cent borrowers having exposure to two or less lenders, 8.9 per cent to three lenders and 7.7 per cent to four or more lenders.

The average ticket size for MFI loans during the quarter, rose 15.8 per cent on year and 4.5 per cent on quarter to ₹4.8 lakh. Loans with a ticket size of ₹30,000-50,000 held the highest market share of 47.7 per cent,

Growth was broad-based with rural markets seeing growth of 31 per cent yoy

both in terms of value and volumes, growing from 46 per cent a year ago.

Demand for ₹50,000-70,000 loans grew 45 per cent on year and 10.4 per cent on quarter. On the other hand, loans of ₹30,000 or less declined by 15.2 per cent yoy and 6.1 per cent qoq, with their market share falling to 12.2 per cent from 13.8 per cent in the previous year as lenders become cautious in the wake of rising delinquencies in lower ticket segments.

RURAL MARKETS

Growth was broad-based with rural markets seeing growth of 31 per cent yoy and 6 per cent qoq to ₹24.5-lakh crore whereas urban markets grew 31 per cent yoy and 5 per cent qoq to ₹15.8-lakh crore as of December 2023.

Eastern and southern re-gions of the country continued to hold the lead with 31 per cent market share each. West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh saw the highest quarterly growth of 10.2 per cent and 9.6 per cent, re-spectively.

CM YK

................KI-X