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The Indian Express Dated: June 08, 2020 While the damage to revenues and profits was limited in the March quarter, India Inc is bracing for a tough 2020-21. The commentary continues to be very cautious, even bordering on the pessimistic, given how the lockdown has crimped cash flows in the June quarter so far. Given how poor visibility on demand is, few firms are able to see where revenues are headed and analysts are trimming earnings estimates across the board. It’s not surprising the Larsen & Toubro management observed it doesn’t expect any revival of capital expenditure in the private sector this year. The company said the sales missed so far because of the disruption from  Covid-19  were around Rs 15,000-17,000 crore. At InterGlobe Aviation, the capacity utilisation is just about a fifth of that available and occupancies are expected to climb slowly since international travel is some time away; despite gains from lower fuel prices and lower expense...

The Indian Express Dated: June 08, 2020 By: Ashok Gulati Let us start with some good news on the economic front. During the first year (2019-20) of the second term of the  Narendra Modi  government, gross value added (GVA) in agriculture and allied sectors registered a growth of 4 per cent. This is commendable, especially when juxtaposed with the growth of overall GVA of the economy at 3.9 per cent, and overall GDP (including net taxes) at 4.2 per cent. And even in 2020-21, when the impact of  COVID-19  will be on full display, and when the GDP may register a negative growth of as high as -5 per cent, agriculture may still surprise with a positive growth of 2.5 per cent, as per CRISIL’s recent forecast. Agriculture matters not just for food security, but also for the good of the masses, since almost 44 per cent of the country’s labour force is engaged in agriculture. So, “sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas” will not be possible unless agricul...

Daily Hunt Dated: June 06, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic may be over in India around mid-September, claim two public health experts from the health ministry who used a mathematical model-based analysis to draw this projection. The analysis shows that when the number of infected becomes equal to those removed from circulation by recovery and death, the coefficient will reach the 100 per cent threshold and the epidemic will be "extinguished". The analysis, published in the online journal Epidemiology International, has been done by Dr Anil Kumar, Deputy director General (Public Health) in the DGHS, and Rupali Roy, Deputy Assistant Director (Leprosy) DGHS in the health ministry. They used the Bailey's mathematical model to draw the projection. This stochastic mathematical mode takes into consideration the distribution of the total size of an epidemic, involving both infection and removal. The model employed was of the 'continuous infection' type, accord...

The Indian Express Dated: June 10, 2020 By: Shama Mohamed On March 28, Prime Minister  Narendra Modi  announced the creation of a separate fund to deal with  COVID-19  — the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES). Observers were quick to question the need for a separate fund, when India already had an established Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF). The PMNRF is more representative of the concerns of Indians: Its committee includes, among others, the Prime Minister, the President of India and the president of the  Indian National Congress . Decision-makers for PM CARES include the Prime Minister, the finance minister, the Minister of Home Affairs and the Minister of Defence, all from one political party. The PMNRF had an unused corpus of Rs 3,800.44 crore as of 2019. Despite this, Modi established the PM CARES fund and solicited donations for it. Reportedly, the Indian Railway donated R...

The Indian Express Dated: June 10, 2020 By: Dinesh Bhattarai The inauguration of the “new road to Mansarovar” on May 8 in the midst of a global  pandemic  by India’s defence minister,  Rajnath Singh , has strained the relations between Nepal and India. A section of the road passes through the territory of Nepal and links with the Tibetan Autonomous Region of  China  through the Lipu Lekh pass in Nepal. The 1816 Sugauli Treaty between Nepal and British India placed all the territories east of the Kali (Mahakali) river, including Limpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lipu Lekh at the northwestern front of Nepal, on its side. The borders of Nepal, India and China intersect in this area. Given the situation in 1961, Nepal and China fixed pillar number one at Tinker pass with the understanding that pillar number zero (the tri-junction of Nepal, India, and China) would be fixed later. Lipu Lekh pass is 4 km northwest and Limpiyadhura 53 km west of Tinker pass. ...

The Hindu Dated: June 09, 2020 By: G Chandrashekhar An agency report quoting unnamed government officials suggesting that India may hike customs duty on imported vegetable oils to fund its domestic oilseeds promotion programme is currently doing the rounds. If true, it is a bad idea. Over the years, tariff changes have made little difference to domestic oilseeds cultivation. Tariff hikes have hardly helped oilseed growers, but have surely enriched importers taking speculative position. Today, the fate of the Indian oilseed growers is as bad as it was, say 20 years ago. Often, changes in tariff from time to time have been either ill-timed or kneejerk or thoughtless or worse, the government succumbing to lobby pressure. The annual hike in minimum support price for key oilseeds is often nullified by either excessive import of vegetable oil or ill-timed tariff changes that depress domestic oilseed prices. Changes in import tariff are at best short-term fixes, and certainly n...

Live Mint Dated: June 08, 2020 By: Asit Ranjan Mishra The World Bank on Monday projected India’s economy to contract 3.2% in FY21 as stringent measures to restrict the spread of the coronavirus pandemic have heavily curtailed activity in Asia’s third largest economy. In its Global Economic Prospects report, World Bank said the contraction will largely materialize in the year to 31 March and the Indian economy will recover to grow at 3.1% in the following year. “Spillovers from contracting global growth and balance sheet stress in the financial sector will also adversely impact activity, despite some support from fiscal stimulus and continued monetary policy easing," it added. The multilateral lending institution took note of measures taken by the government, including spending on health care to bolster the covid-19 response, wage support, in-kind and cash transfers to lower-income households, deferral of tax payments, as well as loan and liquidity support for sm...

Hindustan Times Dated: June 08, 2020 By: Harshit Sabarwal Wipro Limited on Monday announced a collaboration with IBM through which the Bengaluru- headquartered company would develop hybrid cloud offerings to help businesses migrate, manage and transform mission-critical workloads and applications, with security across public or private cloud and on-premises IT environments. Wipro IBM Novus Lounge, located at Wipros Kodathi campus in Bengaluru, is a dedicated innovation centre, according to a Wipro statement. It will offer a comprehensive suite of solutions leveraging Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Internet of Things capabilities to foster innovation for enterprises, developers and start-ups, the statement said. “Customers will have remote access to IBM and Red Hat solutions, designed to help them scale their technology investments for improved experience and business agility with connected insights”, it said. Additionally, Wipro would leverage I...

Hindustan Times Dated: June 09, 2020 By: Kanishka Sarkar The head of the World Health Organization warned that the coronavirus pandemic is worsening globally, even as the situation in Europe is improving. At a press briefing on Monday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that about 75% of cases reported to the UN health agency on Sunday came from 10 countries in the Americas and South Asia. He noted that more than 100,000 cases have been reported on nine of the past 10 days — and that the 136,000 cases reported Sunday was the biggest number so far. Tedros said most countries in Africa are still seeing an increase in cases, including in new geographic areas even though most countries on the continent have fewer than 1,000 cases. “At the same time, we’re encouraged that several countries around the world are seeing positive signs,” Tedros said. “In these countries, the biggest threat now is complacency.” Reference: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/coronavirus-pande...

DAWN Dated: June 07, 2020 By: Sajjad Syed On 17 June, the General Assembly is scheduled to elect five states to two-year terms on the Security Council,” a diplomatic source said, adding this year elections would be held through a changed procedure because of Covid-19, which had forced postponement of all meetings at the UN till the end of the month. The election is normally held in the UNGA hall through secret balloting, but this time there could be multiple venues about which details would be issued by Monday. The member states would cast ballots during designated time slots and at a specified venue because of restrictions on large gatherings. The 10 seats for non-permanent members at the UNSC are divided into regional groups: African Group, Asia-Pacific Group, Latin American and Caribbean Group, Western European and Others Group. India is running for the seat from the Asia-Pacific group, which will be vacated by Indonesia. India’s victory is almost secured because the s...

The Telegraph Dated: June 09, 2020 India’s economy will shrink 3.2 per cent in the current fiscal, the World Bank said on Monday as it joined a chorus of international agencies that are forecasting a contraction in the growth rate because of the the coronavirus-induced lockdown halting economic activity. The Washington-based multilateral lender said that the Covid-19 pandemic and the multi-phased lockdown imposed to curb its spread has resulted in a devastating blow to the Indian economy.The global economy will shrink 5.2 per cent this year, the World Bank said. The Covid-19 recession is the first since 1870 to be triggered solely by a pandemic, World Bank president David Malpass said in his foreword to the latest edition of the Global Economic Prospect report. In April, the World Bank projected the economy to grow in the range of 1.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent in this fiscal. The economy is expected to bounce back in 2021, the World Bank said. “In India, growth is estimate...