Air India justifies leave without pay, says it's in very challenging financial situation

United Nations, Jul 10: India is a "good example" as solar auctions have seen popularity amidst the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, UN chief Antonio Guterres said on Thursday, underlining that renewable energy is the only energy source expected to grow in 2020 and offers more jobs than the fossil fuel industry.

In his remarks to the International Energy Agency "Clean Energy Transition Summit'', UN Secretary-General Guterres urged the international community to commit to further usage of coal and to end all external financing of coal in the developing world.

"Coal has no place in COVID-19 recovery plans. Nations must commit to net-zero emissions by 2050 and submit more ambitious national climate plans before COP-26 next year," he said.

"The seeds of change are there. Renewable energy is the only energy source expected to grow in 2020. Solar auctions have seen popularity amidst the height of the pandemic. India serves as a good example. Renewables offer three times more jobs than the fossil fuel industry," Mr Guterres said.

Last month, Adani Green Energy said it has bagged the first of its kind manufacturing-linked solar contract worth Rs 45,000 crore from the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) to develop 8 GW electricity generation capacity and 2 GW equipment manufacturing facility in the country.

Mr Guterres said he has asked all countries to consider six climate positive actions as they rescue, rebuild and reset their economies.

"We need to make our societies more resilient. We need green jobs and sustainable growth," he said, adding that bailout support to sectors such as industry, aviation and shipping should be conditioned on alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Countries also need to stop wasting money on fossil fuel subsidies and place a price on carbon, he said, noting that countries need to consider climate risk in their decision making.

"Every financial decision must take account of environmental and social impacts. Overall, we need to work together," he said.

New Delhi, May 17: With the highest-ever spike of close to 5,000 cases in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 count in India has crossed 90,000 on Sunday.

With an increase of 4,987 COVID-19 cases being reported in the last 24 hours, the count has reached 90,927, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The total number of active cases in the country stands at 53,946 today, while 2,872 deaths have been recorded due to the infection so far, with one patient having migrated. 120 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.

However, on the positive side, close to 4,000 patients have also been cured and discharged in the past 24 hours, taking the tally of cured patients to 34,108.

With 30,706 confirmed cases, Maharashtra remains the worst-affected by the infection in the country.

It is followed by Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, with 10,988 and 10,585 cases, respectively.
The national capital, with 9,333 cases, is also one of the regions which is badly affected by the infection.

Feb 2: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second budget in seven months disappointed investors who were hoping for big-bang stimulus to revive growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.

The fiscal plan -- delivered by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday -- proposed tax cuts for individuals and wider deficit targets but failed to provide specific steps to fix a struggling financial sector, improve infrastructure and create jobs. Stocks slumped as a proposal to scrap the dividend distribution tax for companies failed to impress investors.

"Far from being a game changer, the budget provides little in terms of short-term growth stimulus,” said Priyanka Kishore, head of India and South East Asia economics at Oxford Economics Ltd. in Singapore. “While income tax cuts will provide some relief on the consumption front, the multiplier effect is low and the overall stance of the budget is not expansionary."

India has gone from being the world’s fastest-growing major economy three years ago, expanding at 8%, to posting its weakest performance in more than a decade this fiscal year, estimated at 5%.

While the government has taken a number of steps in recent months to spur growth, they’ve fallen short of spurring demand in the consumption-driven economy. Saturday’s budget just added to the glum sentiment.

Okay Budget

“It’s an okay budget but not firing on all cylinders that the market was hoping for,” said Andrew Holland, chief executive officer at Avendus Capital Alternate Strategies in Mumbai.

The government had limited scope for a large stimulus given a huge shortfall in revenues in the current year. The slippage induced Sitharaman to invoke a never-used provision in fiscal laws, allowing the government to exceed the budget gap by 0.5 percentage points. The result: the deficit for the year ending March was widened to 3.8% of gross domestic product from a planned 3.3%.

On Friday, India’s chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian said reviving economic growth was an “urgent priority” and deficit goals could be relaxed to achieve that. The adviser’s Economic Survey estimated growth will rebound to 6%-6.5% in the year starting April.

The fiscal gap will narrow to 3.5% next year, as the government budgeted for gross market borrowing to rise marginally to 7.8 trillion rupees from 7.1 trillion rupees in the current year. A plan to earn 2.1 trillion rupees by selling state-owned assets in the year starting April will also help plug the deficit.

Total spending in the coming fiscal year will increase to 30.4 trillion rupees, representing a 13% increase from the current year’s budget, according to latest data.

Key highlights from the budget:

* Tax on annual income up to 1.25 million rupees pared, with riders

* Dividend distribution tax to be levied on investors, instead of companies

* Farm sector budget raised 28%, transport infrastructure gets 7% more

* Spending on education raised 5%

* Fertilizer subsidy cut 10%

Analysts said the muted spending plan to keep the deficit in check will lead to more downside risks to growth in the coming months.

“It is very doubtful that the increase in expenditure will push demand much,” Chakravarthy Rangarajan, former governor at the Reserve Bank of India told BloombergQuint, adding that achieving next year’s budget deficit goal of 3.5% of GDP was doubtful.

With the government sticking to a conservative fiscal path, the focus will now turn to central bank, which is set to review monetary policy on Feb. 6. Given inflation has surged to a five-year high of 7.35%, the RBI is unlikely to lower interest rates.

What Bloomberg’s Economists Say:

The burden of recovery now falls solely on the Reserve Bank of India. With inflation breaching RBI’s target at present, any rate cuts by the central bank are likely to be delayed and contingent upon inflation falling below the upper end of its 2%-6% target range.

-- Abhishek Gupta, India economist

Governor Shaktikanta Das may instead focus on unconventional policy tools such as the Federal Reserve-style Operation Twist -- buying long-end debt while selling short-tenor bonds -- to keep borrowing costs down.