NEW DELHI / AFP Indian business leaders on Thursday hailed the passage of a landmark tax reform bill that paves the way for a new national sales tax and the creation of a common market across the country for the first time. Lawmakers voted late on Wednesday in favour of introducing the long-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST), which …

  Bloomberg Toyota Motor Corp. reported Thursday a 14.5 percent drop in profit for the fiscal first quarter as sales fell and a strong yen slashed earnings for the Japanese automaker. Two powerful quakes in southwestern Kumamoto in April that had disrupted production also hurt results. Toyota’s April-June profit totaled 552.4 billion yen ($5.4 billion), down from 646.3 billion yen …

  Bloomberg India’s biggest electricity producer plans to fuel a proposed power project on the country’s southern coast with domestic coal, switching from its original plan to use overseas supplies equivalent to almost 9 percent of this year’s forecast imports. The state-owned company NTPC Ltd. made the decision after the federal power ministry and the state government of Andhra Pradesh, …