India to give dossier on Abu Jundal during Indo-Pak talks today

New Delhi, Jun 30: With a spike of 18,522 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, India's coronavirus count now stand at 5,66,840, said the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry, 418 deaths due to COVID-19 were reported in the last 24 hours. The number of deaths in the country now stands at 16,893.

There are 2,15,125 active coronavirus cases in the country while the number of cured/discharged patients stands at 3,34,821 and one patient migrated.

As per the Ministry, Maharashtra is the worst-hit state with regard to the COVID-19 cases and has reported 1,69,883 cases, including 73, 313 active cases 88,960 cured/discharged patients and 7,610 fatalities.

Tamil Nadu has a total of 86,224 cases including 1,141 deaths. Delhi's COVID-19 count stands at 85,161 cases and 2,680 fatalities.

The total number of samples tested up to 29 June is 86,08,654 of which 2,10,292 samples were tested yesterday, informed the Indian Council of Medical Research.

New Delhi, Jul 16: With India's economic growth sputtering, the Reserve Bank of India was expected to maintain a rate-cutting cycle, but an uptick in near-term inflation could give the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee reason to pause for now.

Having cut its key lending rate by an aggressive 115 basis points (bps) in 2020, on top of 135 bps cuts in 2019, the RBI so far has had little success in spurring credit growth amid varying degrees of lockdowns across India.

Some economists and market insiders argue it may be prudent for the MPC, the policy committee, to hold its fire when it meets early next month.

"It's probably too early to administer a demand stimulus. The RBI still has room to cut rates, but we probably want to be more cautious of the timing," said Venkat Pasupuleti, portfolio manager at Dalton Investments.

"Maybe they should wait a quarter to see how things pan out once the lockdown situation is eased further."

Market participants have factored in at least a 25 bps rate cut by the MPC on August 6 while analysts are predicting a total 50-75 bps cuts over the rest of the fiscal year that runs to March 31.

The spike in the retail inflation rate above the RBI's mandated 2%-4% target range is another reason for the central bank to take a breather, analysts say.

Annual retail inflation rose to 6.09% in June, compared to 5.84% in March and sharply above a 5.30% median forecast in a Reuters poll of economists.

Rahul Bajoria, an economist at Barclays, said the spike in both consumer and wholesale prices "could lead to a tempering in enthusiasm for material front-loaded policy support from here on."

Almost all economists however agreed the RBI cannot move away from its accommodative stance or call an end to the rate cutting cycle just yet.

India's economy grew at 3.1% in the March quarter - an eight year low - and some economists have predicted a contraction of more than 20% in the June quarter and a contraction of up to 5% in the fiscal year.

"Even in the event of a pause, we think the RBI and MPC would want to hold out the promise of more cuts," said A. Prasanna, economist with ICICI Securities.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in a recent speech the need of the hour is to restore confidence, preserve financial stability, revive growth and recover stronger, suggesting inflation concerns are unlikely to deter the downward trajectory for rates too soon.

"The August policy decision would boil down to a judgment call over whether RBI can maintain easy monetary and financial conditions without the aid of a token rate cut," Prasanna said. 

New Delhi, May 1: The Centre has finalsed the criteria for delimitation of various zones after May 3. It has identified at least 130 districts as red zones, 284 orange zones and 319 green zones.

According to a letter written by Health Secretary Preeti Sudan to the Chief Secretaries of all States and UTs, all the states have to delineate the containment areas and buffer zones in the identified red and orange zone districts and notify the same.

The letter said, the national capital has at least 11 red zones, Uttar Pradesh 19 red zones, 36 orange zones and 20 green zones while, the state of Haryana has 2 red zones, 18 orange zones and 2 green zones.

The Gautam Buddha Nagar in Uttar Pradesh has been identified as a red zone district while, Ghaziabad has been designated as an orange zone. The national capital has no orange and green zone; there are only red zones according to the letter.

In Maharashtra, Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Nashik come in the red zone.

In West Bengal, Kolkata, Howrah, 24 Parganas -- both North and South have been identified as red zones while Hooghly, Nadia, Murshidabad etc have been marked as orange zones.

In the southern part of India, Kerala has 2 red zones and 10 orange zones, while Tamil Nadu has 12 red zones and 24 orange zones.

The Health Secretary said that the list will be revised on a weekly basis or earlier and communicated to states for further follow-up action in consonance with the directions issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 based on field feedback and additional analysis at state level, states may designate additional red or orange zones as appropriate.

However, states may not relax the zonal classification of districts classified as red or orange as communicated by the Ministry. This classification is multi-factorial and takes into consideration incidence of cases, doubling rate, extent of testing and surveillance feedback to classify the districts.

A district will be considered under green zone, if there are no confirmed cases so far or there is no reported case since the last 21 days in the district.