(Asian News Hub) – A bill to increase foreign direct investment (FDI) in the insurance sector from 49 per cent to 74 per cent was approved by Parliament with the Lok Sabha giving green signal to the legislation by a voice vote on Monday.

Piloting the Bill, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that hiking the FDI limit in the insurance sector will help insurers to raise additional funds and tide over financial problems.

The Insurance (Amendment) Bill, 2021 was earlier passed by the Rajya Sabha last week.

The minister said that the government will provide funds to the public sector insurance companies but the private players will have to raise capital on their own.

Observing that insurance companies are facing solvency related issues, she said, “if growth capital is hard to come by, there will be a stress situation. In order that the stress situation is not left unattended, we need to raise the FDI limit.”

The Covid-19 pandemic, Sitharaman said, has further added to the woes of the insurance companies.

The minister further said that the FDI limit was being raised on the recommendations of the regulator IRDAI which had extensive consultations with stakeholders.

The FDI inflow in the insurance sector, the minister said, had increased significantly after the government decided to raise the cap from 26 per cent to 49 per cent in 2015.

As much as Rs 26,000 crore has come as FDI in the insurance sector since 2015, she said, adding the asset under management (AUM) in this sector has grown by 76 per cent during the last five years.

PTI

(Asian News Hub) – The prices of television sets are all set to rise from April 1 as all the Chinese panel manufacturers have increased rates by 30 percent. The TV prices may rise between 10-30 percent depending on the screen size of the television and brand.

This comes at a time when television makers have sought that TVs be made under the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme.

Currently, only segments like air conditioners, LED lights, tablets, and laptops have been made part of the PLI scheme.

Since the Coronavirus outbreak, TV prices have seen an increase almost every quarter. Initially, the price rise was on account of a manufacturing shutdown in China, but later the price-rise continued even as the demand-supply situation stabilised.

(Asian News Hub) – Despite a brutal week for markets, his Reliance Industries Ltd. was relatively unscathed as it said it would spin off its oil-to-chemicals business into an independent unit. With a net worth of about $80 billion, Ambani is again richer than Zhong Shanshan, whose bottled-water company tanked a record 20% this week. The Chinese tycoon is worth $76.6 billion, down more than $22 billion from a peak just last week, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Ambani spent most of the past two years leading the ranking of Asia’s richest people, taking over from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Jack Ma. Then the listing of two companies put Zhong on the map: He grabbed the title from Ambani at the end of December and by early 2021 was the sixth-wealthiest person on Earth, surpassing Warren Buffett. Zhong’s Nongfu Spring Co. more than tripled from its initial public offering to a peak in January as investors flocked to consumer shares, while his vaccine maker, Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise Co., surged as much as 3,757%.

But the rally faded as the Hong Kong and Chinese stock markets were among the world’s biggest decliners this week. Nongfu shares have erased their gains for the year, while Wantai’s posted a record monthly plunge.

Ambani has focused on pivoting his empire to tech and e-commerce, moving away from energy. Last year, he sold stakes in Reliance’s digital and retail units worth $27 billion to investors including Google and Facebook Inc., lifting his fortune by $18 billion. The spin off announced this week of the oil-to-chemicals unit – which accounted for more than 60% of the conglomerate’s revenue in the last fiscal year – will help the tycoon bring in more investors and expedite a proposed stake sale to Saudi Arabian Oil Co.

Zhong and Ambani are not the only two swapping titles lately. Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk became the world’s richest person at the start of January before Jeff Bezos regained the No. 1 spot earlier this month as shares of the electronic-car maker fell. Musk lost $15 billion on Monday alone after he tweeted that the prices of cryptocurrencies seemed high – just two weeks after Tesla said it invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.

Since then, Musk and Bezos have swapped places twice more. The Amazon.com Inc. founder topped Musk by a $7 billion margin as of Friday.

Bloomberg