Care Ratings Debt Quality Index, which tracks credit metrics of 1,604 rated firms on a scale of 100, inched up 0.04 points to 88.02 in January, after eight straight months of decline. The prolonged downswing in credit ratings, triggered by liquidity stress in the shadow banking sector, had worsened earlier as companies struggled to raise funds and sell assets to pare debt, according to the rating firm

Coupled with global overall hardening of pricing environment the financial results for Q4 is expected to improve. Alongside, the corporation also pruned the portfolio based on more stringent profitability criteria. Given the steps taken by the corporation in revising premium rates for fire segment based on Insurance Information Bureau(IIB) statistics,the fire segment is now on a sound footing, said GIC Re.

The agency pegs passenger vehicle demand growing 2-4 per cent in 2020-21 over 2019-20, but commercial vehicles (CVs) will continue to see falling demand to the tune of 5-7 per cent and the two-wheeler segment will decline 0-5 per cent

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said as per Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise at the Independence Day speech this year, the government has identified infrastructure projects to the tune of Rs 105 lakh crore. The minister said that Rs 102 lakh crore worth of infrastructure projects have been identified for the next five years as part of the government’s spending push in the sector. The minister said that another Rs 3 lakh crore of projects are likely to be added in this pipeline by the states, taking the total to Rs 105 lakh crore of projects.

On investment in the debt segment, Himanshu Srivastava, senior analyst manager research at Morningstar Investment Adviser India said that it was “largely on the back of RBI maintaining an accommodative stance in its recent monetary policy review, which leaves room for further rate easing.”