Tag: Nirmala Sitharaman

Mercedes-Benz hopes govt measures will help sales revive in H2 of 2019

The country’s largest luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz India hopes the measures announced by the government will bring about a pick-up in sales in the second half of calendar 2019.

“The (Friday) announcement of the Finance minister will definitely help change the mood a little bit. It will improve financial liquidity in the market. It will also create some confidence of the customers and that goes across the industry,” said Martin Schwenk, managing director and chief executive officer, Mercedes-Benz India.

“I think it isn’t the car industry only, (but) also the construction industry which needs some amount of positive momentum. I am personally thinking that now in the second half (of the year) you will see some of it. How fast and how quick we will see the growth coming back we don’t know. I am quite confident that the second half of the year, which is a festive season, could see the business picking up,” Schwenk added. Read Complete Article

Nirmala Sitharaman second woman Finance Minister after Indira Gandhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday surprised markets by naming Nirmala Sitharaman, formerly the country’s defence minister, as the next finance minister at a time when Asia’s third-largest economy is stuttering.

Sitharaman, 59, will become the senior most woman minister in Modi’s cabinet and the second woman to head the finance department after late former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Amit Shah, chief of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was appointed as the minister of home affairs, giving him responsibility for internal security with a control over the federal police.

Regarded as the architect of Modi’s landslide victory in the recently concluded general election, Shah replaces senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh, who will now be defence minister.

Shah had been tipped as a possible candidate for the finance ministry in recent days, but the job went to Sitharaman, who has an economics background and was briefly the junior finance minister in Modi’s first term.

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