Citibank manager Shivraj Puri’s alleged fraud on wealthy clients has swivelled the spotlight on the growing number of high net-worth individuals whose money banks rush to manage for a fee. The wealth of high net-worth individuals (HNIs) — defined as those who have “investable assets of at least $1 million (around Rs 4.5 crore) — in India is estimated at a staggering $477 billion and is rising each day. According to the...

High cotton prices spun out enough problems for India’s $62 billion textiles industry, but weaved gains for growers and traders in 2010. Amid pulls and pressures from the conflicting interests, a ministers’ group under the guidance of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee kept reviewing the price and crop situation, with excessive winter rains playing spoilsport. The textiles industry pulled out all stops to lobby with the textiles, commerce and finance ministries seeking a...

On the National Conference on Oil Palm at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh (the largest producer in the country), Mr. M.C. Rao, palm oil farmer, Gajapati district, Orissa, stated, “Just like several Government agricultural departments, officials at the conference painted a false, bright, and positive picture about the prospects of the oil palm plantation for farmers taking up this cultivation.” “As usual the policy makers miserably failed to read the pulse of...

Speculative traders are making super-profits by fixing prices in the onion trade while the government is playing around with ad hoc fixes. On Tuesday alone, wholesale traders in Delhi bought onions at about Rs 34 per kg while it was sold in retail at Rs 80 per kg. That's a margin of Rs 46 per kg or 135%! About 11,445 quintals of onion were bought in the Delhi wholesale markets on...

It's not just onions that sting these days. A survey of Local Markets in the Capital on Wednesday showed that almost everything the neighbourhood greengrocer sells - except potatoes - has started pinching the pocket of the middle class Delhiite. Retail prices of vegetables, such as beans, brinjal, cauliflower, cabbage, tomato and carrot, have shot up by 25 to 60% compared to prices around this time last year. Although onion prices...