Business

Real estate developers sold 26 per cent less apartments during January-March period across nine major cities as economic slowdown and coronavirus outbreak affected demand, News Corp-backed PropTiger said.

Sources said OID cess, which has increased from USD 3 to USD 13 over the years, is causing a lot of stress on current and new oil and gas projects.

Italy, Spain, France and Britain reported drops in daily death tolls and slowing infection rates, while Germany began allowing some shops to reopen and Norway restarted nurseries.

Fitch Solutions on Monday cut India's economic growth forecast for the financial year 2020-21 to 1.8 per cent saying private consumption is likely to contract due to large-scale loss of income in the face of worsening domestic outbreak of COVID-19.

In order to check the spread of COVID-19, the government has decided to extend the lockdown to May 3, with some relaxations for specified sectors.

Rangarajan said though there may be negative growth in the GDP during the first quarter, if the situation recovers during the next three quarters, the growth rate may be closer to 3.5 per cent.

The International Monetary Fund had earlier said the global economy will shrink by 3 percent due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Addressing representatives from the real estate sector, Parekh said unless the stressed accounts are restructured, financial institutions will find it difficult to provide additional liquidity to the sector.

Against the backdrop of increasing fund requirements in various quarters to deal with the pandemic, the corporate affairs ministry has already said that contribution to the PM-CARES Fund would be considered as CSR.

From April 2-8, Railways delivered a total of 2,58,503 wagons containing commodities out of which 1,55,512 wagons carried essential items.

According to the Association of Mutual Funds in India, SIP contribution in the just concluded fiscal 2019-20 rose to Rs 1,00,084 crore from Rs 92,693 crore in 2018-19. Inflows into SIPs have averaged about Rs 8,200 crore in the past 12 months.

The forecast further stated that India’s economy will likely contract in the first two quarters of the year as consumption plunges during a three-week lockdown to contain the coronavirus outbreak.

The new tablets — the generic version of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp’s Myfortic delayed-release tablets — are used to prevent organ rejection in patients receiving kidney transplants.

New Delhi may need to make a provision of at least 200-250 billion rupees ($5.90 billion) for capital infusion in state-run banks. However, this number can increase significantly.

The market will open at 10 am instead of the current 9 am and closing timings too have been revised to 2 pm for all segments.

Till February, the total receipts of the Centre grew only 6.8 per cent, while its expenditure grew 12.6 per cent, leading to a fiscal deficit of 135.2 per cent of the revised estimate for FY2020.