New Delhi: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) plans to tweak its newly introduced project for monetizing public-funded national highways, also known as Toll-operate-Transfer (ToT) roads, to give Indian bidders a level playing field.

At present in the ToT model, a raft of toll roads would be auctioned for 30 years; potential buyers would have to make an upfront payment of around $1 billion, making it a challenge for Indian firms to bid.

New Delhi: Bharti Airtel Ltd will invest up to Rs20,000 crore this year in digital infrastructure, the company’s chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said on Wednesday.

Speaking at the India Mobile Congress, Mittal—who shared the dais with arch industry rival Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries chairman)—advocated a collaborative approach to overcome challenges and unleash the growth potential of the sector.

The next version of Microsoft Office — Office 2019 — will be released in the second half of 2018 and its previews will start shipping mid-year. The release will include perpetual versions of the Office apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook and servers including Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business, Microsoft said in statement late on Tuesday. Office 2019 will add new capabilities for customers, including improved inking features like pressure sensitivity, tilt effects and ink replay. “New formulas and charts will make data analysis for Excel more powerful.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) may allow mutual funds to trade in commodity derivatives, the capital markets regulator’s executive director SK Mohanty said on Tuesday. “The participation of mutual funds is in an advanced stage of examination,” Mohanty said, while interacting with reporters on the sidelines of a conference on commodities markets organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci).“We have taken the feedback. On the basis of that, we will finalise the regulatory mechanism,” he said. The executive director said that a decision on allowing mutual funds could be taken in the next six months.

Even as South Korea’s second-largest automobile manufacturer, Kia Motors is looking to foray into the Indian markets by rolling out its first car by the end of 2019, global research and brokerage firm CLSA says that India’s largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki will not be affected, given its competitive advantage. The Korean car-maker is looking to make a foray into the Indian markets, and has plans to roll out its first car by the end of 2019.

MUMBAI: L&T Finance Holdings, a Larsen & Toubro subsidiary, has invested around Rs 150 crore in Pune-based Saarthi Group's two residential projects, said two persons in the know.

The capital is being infused as debt for construction finance, while some of the money will be used to repay old loans. Both the projects entail around 1 million sq ft of residential projects.

The Sensex rose 198 points and the Nifty recaptured the 9,900 mark in the opening trade today after buying in realty, oil and gas and banking stocks took a high speed up.

The BSE 30-share barometer went up 197.70 points, or 0.62 per cent, to 31,797.46. The gauge had lost 824 points in the previous six sessions, in line with a general weakness across the globe fuelled by escalating worries related to North Korea.

Narendra Modi is walking a tightrope with his fight against “black money”. India’s prime minister has unleashed a wave of bold, and sometimes brazen, initiatives to root out income that has been illegally obtained or not declared to the taxman. But that has chilled the economy. Managing the short-term fallout is key to smoothing the path to his re-election.

Soon after Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party took over in 2014, businesses noted it was harder to win special favours from New Delhi. A new bankruptcy law has also started to shift the balance of power from tycoons to lenders.

The Trump administration will allow no more than 45,000 refugees into the United States next year, officials have said, in what would be the lowest admissions level in more than a decade.

President Donald Trump is expected to announce the cap on refugee admissions following a lengthy debate within his administration about whether to go higher or lower. The figure represents the maximum number of refugees the US would be willing to accept. The actual number of refugees who move to the United States could actually be much lower.

The merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular is on track and is expected to be completed in calender year 2018, a top Vodafone official said on Wednesday.

On the sidelines of the inaugural India Mobile Congress in New Delhi, when asked if the merger of the two telecom firms was on course, Vodafone India MD & CEO Sunil Sood said "Äbsolutely." Stating that the merger process goes through various stages, including approvals from the CCI, Sebi, the NCLT and the telecom department, Sood said: "We feel all of them are on track and in fact, we are going ahead on schedule."

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