Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday pulled up public-sector banks for poor branch level connections with customers, which she said is affecting the credit push.&nbsp;Customers expect personal touch from bank branch staff, the FM said, adding banks should work at branch-level keeping with the 'letter and spirit' of banking, directly connecting with customers. The Finance Minister added that many bank branch staff do not have any information on government schemes.
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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday pulled up public-sector banks for poor branch level connections with customers, which she said is affecting the credit push. Customers expect personal touch from bank branch staff, the FM said, adding banks should work at branch-level keeping with the 'letter and spirit' of banking, directly connecting with customers. The Finance Minister added that many bank branch staff do not have any information on government schemes.

The year 2020 could see the worst global economic fallout since the Great Depression in the 1930s,&nbsp;IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday.&nbsp;Over 170 countries likely to experience negative per capita income growth due to the raging coronavirus pandemic, she added.&nbsp;Covid-19 has disrupted our social and economic order at lightning speed and on a scale that we have not seen in living memory, Kristalina said.

Telecom industry body Cellular Operators Association of India has asked the Department of Telecommunications to clear&nbsp;the dues&nbsp;of around ₹20,000 crore&nbsp;to vendors like Nokia, Sterlite, ZTE, Ericsson and other firms as these companies are facing serious constraints in terms of cash flows due to slowing economic activities in the current situation. The dues are owed by state-run companies, including BSNL and MTNL, and despite non-payment of their huge pending dues, the vendors have been supporting various PSUs&nbsp;in delivering uninterrupted services, the association said.

The Federation of Indian Exporters in a letter to the Prime Minister have said that the export sector is facing over 50% cancellations in orders.&nbsp;Such massive cancellations will impact India&rsquo;s current account deficit as foreign inflows slide. The exporters are seeking a package of ₹30,000 crore to cover for working capital expenses which includes salaries, wages, rent and electricity charges. The exporters have also sought easier lending from banks with collateral free loans.

The outlook for India's economic recovery has been sharply altered by the coronavirus outbreak, the Reserve Bank of India said in its Monetary Policy Report on Thursday. The Central Bank added that the pandemic 'hangs over the future, like a spectre', and the lockdowns will impact the country's economic activity directly.&nbsp;Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, the outlook for growth for 2020-21 was looking up, the Reserve Bank said. The RBI&nbsp;said that the global economy is expected to slump into recession in 2020, as post-Covid projections indicate.

Stock markets ended Thursday with strong recovery as global markets also posted gains. Also, traders unwound some of their short positions on expiry day&nbsp;due to positive global sentiment.
The Sensex&nbsp;ended 1,265 points higher at 31,159 and the Nifty closed 4.15% in green at 9,111. M&amp;M, Maruti, Cipla, Titan and Tata&nbsp;Motors were the top five market movers.
Currency markets also followed the sentiment as the rupee closed 4 paise&nbsp;higher at 76.29 after touching all-time low against the US dollar.&nbsp;

Indian equity markets&nbsp;opened higher on Thursday following gains in the global markets.
At 9:20 am, the Sensex was 753 points higher at 30,647 and the Nifty was trading 2.65% higher close to 9,000 mark. Cipla, Vedanta, Axis Bank, Sun Pharma and Wipro&nbsp;were the top five Nifty movers.&nbsp;
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State-owned oil marketing companies&nbsp;including Indian Oil, BPCL, HPCL may see significant erosion in the earnings during the January-March quarter of FY20 even though low crude and product prices jacked up their margins. The projection is that BPCL may report a net loss of ₹556.2 crore in Q4, while Indian Oil may report significantly higher losses at ₹2376.3 crore. ICICI Direct has projected loss to the tune of ₹628.4 crore for HPCL in January-March quarter of FY20.

India's fuel consumption in March shrank by 18%, the biggest decline in more than a decade, as per the official data released on Thursday. Diesel, petrol and aviation turbine fuel&nbsp;demand fell as a nationwide lockdown halted economic activity and travel.&nbsp;However, Sanjiv&nbsp;Singh, chairman of Indian Oil Corporation has told Bloomberg&nbsp;that their&nbsp;demand is running at 30% to 40% of normal.

As the coronavirus crisis and subsequent nationwide lockdown severely impact the Indian economy, a FICCI survey has said that few sectors like restaurants, auto and real estate may take around 12 to 24 months to recover. The other sectors also severely hit may require similar period to revive, including transportation and tourism, logistics, entertainment and consumer durables. The survey, however, said that recovery is dependent on consumption stimulus and survival of businesses itself.

India's GDP growth for the current fiscal is expected to slow down to 4.8%, a UN report has said, warning that the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to result in significant adverse economic impacts globally. It also mentioned that Covid-19 is having far-reaching economic and social consequences for the Asian-Pacific region, with strong cross-border spill over&nbsp;effects through trade, tourism and financial linkages.

In a recommendation letter to the Finance Minister, industry body ASSOCHAM&nbsp;has urged the government for a minimum stimulus package of $200 billion.&nbsp;A stimulus package is the need of the hour to thwart the global recession brought about by the novel coronavirus outbreak, it said. A corpus of $50-100 billion cash needs to be infused over the next three months to arrest the loss of jobs and compensate for the loss of income. The industry body also said that the government should consider a reduction in GST across the board by 50% for at least three months and 25% for the fiscal.

The Indian rupee on Thursday fell to record low against the US dollar, despite strong traction in domestic equity markers. The rupee opened at 76.09 before sliding to a record low of 76.44 against the US dollar. Traders said investor sentiments remain fragile amid concerns over the impact of coronavirus outbreak on the domestic as well as global economy.

A second stimulus package India is poised to announce in coming days will be worth around ₹1 lakh&nbsp;crore&nbsp;($13 billion)&nbsp;and focus on help for small and medium businesses,&nbsp;two senior officials told Reuters. A separate package could be announced for bigger companies after assessing the extent of the hit they have faced due to the lockdown.&nbsp;The new package aimed at MSMEs could include increases in the limits of bank loans for working capital needs and relaxing rules for deposits of income tax and other dues, the report mentioned.

The government may set up a fund with a corpus of about ₹50,000 crore to ₹75,000 crore to revive industries, particularly labour-intensive small and medium units, the Hindustan Times reported on Thursday. This will be a part of an economic stimulus package currently under consideration to revive growth in the post-covid-19 era, the report mentioned.

China's top anti-corruption body has opened an investigation against property tycoon Ren Zhiqiang, who has been highly critical of the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis. The state's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection accused&nbsp;the magnate&nbsp;of serious violations of discipline and the law.&nbsp;Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday that the magnate's friends say they have lost contact with Zhiqiang&nbsp;since March 12 after an article he wrote criticizing the way in which Chinese government responded to the outbreak was widely shared online.&nbsp;Zhiqiang&nbsp;had described the Covid-19 crisis as a 'crisis of governance'&nbsp;and said that the lack of freedom of press and expression in the country further exacerbated the situation caused by the outbreak.
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About 40 crore workers in India working in the informal economy are at risk of falling deeper into poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The International Labour Organisation has said in a report on Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting 2.7 billion workers globally due to lockdowns, IANS has reported. In India almost 90% of people work in the informal economy. Without appropriate policy measures, workers face a high risk of falling into poverty, the report said.

Germany&rsquo;s Cabinet on Wednesday approved legislation that will make it easier for authorities to prevent foreign takeovers of strategically important companies. The plans pre-date the coronavirus crisis, but come as the German government has vowed to 'stand by local companies' in the face of investors who might now hope to acquire firms cheaply. The new rules, which require parliamentary approval, will lower the threshold for examining and blocking potential takeovers. Authorities will be able to examine whether an acquisition will lead to a 'foreseeable impairment' of public order or security, rather than an 'actual threat' to it at present.

Global trade growth is expected to plummet by up to a third in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the World Trade Organization said Wednesday. Warning that the numbers would be "ugly", the apex trade body said world trade is expected to fall by between 13 per cent and 32 per cent in 2020.&nbsp;There were a wide range of possibilities for how trade would be hit by the 'unprecedented' health crisis.&nbsp;However, WTO chief Roberto Azevedo warned the downturn 'may well be the deepest economic recession or downturn of our lifetimes'.&nbsp;

With the coronavirus pandemic affecting the economy, the Centre&nbsp;is making efforts to ease pressure on small business enterprises. And in this regard, the Income Tax Department has issued a notice ordering the issuance all pending tax-refunds pf&nbsp;up to&nbsp;₹5 lakh&nbsp;with immediate effect. This relaxation will benefit around 14 lakh tax payers. The notice also cleared the issuance of all pending GST&nbsp;and Custom refunds benefitting&nbsp;1 lakh business entities including MSME. Approximately, ₹18,000 crore will be refunded.

The Indian industry requires an immediate stimulus package of ₹9-10 lakh crore, which would account for 4-5% of the country's GDP, to recover from the impact of the coronavirus crisis and the ongoing nationwide lockdown, according to a survey by FICCI.&nbsp;The debt-to-GDP ratio of India is manageable, it added. This money has to be injected for relief and rehabilitation across all levels of the economy,&nbsp;it said. The survey also suggested that all tax payments including GST payments should be deferred by six months without inviting any penalty.

Nirmala Sitharaman pulls up PSU banks for poor services

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