After announcing special payments to its staff working in bank branches during 21-day shutdown to battle coronavirus, State Bank of India (SBI) has made modifications to the Scheme-I to cover employees affected on account of Covid-19 infection. Bank employees in the event of death, disability, serious injury while on duty are covered under the Scheme-I for payment of compensation. In a circular SBI announced, ‘Keeping into view the special circumstances of outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, it has been decided to extend the provisions of the captioned scheme to cover employees affected on account of Covid-19 disease. Accordingly, any employee affected due to the Covid-19 disease while on duty or otherwise, in the event of death, shall be covered under the “Scheme-I" for payment of compensation.’ ‘The cash

HDFC Trustee Company Ltd. has bought 3.4 crore shares of SpiceJet Ltd. from the open market, thus picking up 5.45% stake in the airline, livemint reported. HDFC Trustee Company Limited, arm of HDFC Mutual Fund country’s largest mutual fund is wholly owned subsidiary of Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited. ‘This act shows that companies such as HDFC, which owns the country's largest mutual fund, has confidence in the airline to come out of the current crisis,’ it added. At 1:07pm shares of SpiceJet were down 4.5 per cent at Rs 35.35 apiece, while the benchmark Sensex dropped 989 points at 28,826.66 . The Indian government has banned passenger flights on all domestic and international routes from 25 March to 14 April to contain the spread of the highly contagious virus in the world’s seco

On Monday, the National Investment and Infrasture Fund Ltd (NIIF) has received a commitment of about $100 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) into the NIIF Fund of Funds (FoF). With ADB’s investment into the NIIF platform, the total commitments towards the FoF stand at $700 million, which includes investment pledges from the government and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), NIIF said in a press statement. In June 2018, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) had approved an equity investment of $100 million as part of FoF’s initial closing, committing a further investment of $100 million as part of phase II for the final closing. The Fund of Funds is mandated to invest as an anchor investor in third party fund managers. It can also selectively form joint ventures with fund managers.

On Monday, S&P Global Ratings cut its estimate for India's GDP growth for the fiscal starting 1 April to 3.5 per cent from its earlier forecast of 5.2 per cent as it expects the hit to output from the covid-19 outbreak for the Asia-Pacific region to be as large as the financial crisis in Asia during 1997-1998. ‘Amid unusually high uncertainty, we forecast Asia-Pacific growth to dive to 2.2 per cent in 2020 with a U-shaped recovery taking hold only later this year, this would push activity 4 percentage points below trend,’ it said in a report published on Monday. Moody’s Investors Service last week slashed India’s economic growth projection for 2020 to 2.5 per cent from 5.3 per cent, as the coronavirus pandemic is expected to cause an unprecedented shock to the global economy. S&P said China

Many countries has closed their borders, the COVID-19 outbreak acutely impacted the travel industry, especially airlines witnessing the most notable casualties. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), airlines could lose a quarter of a trillion dollars in revenue this year as commercial flights come to a grinding halt. Sydney-based CAPA Centre for Aviation estimates that many carriers will go bankrupt by the end of May if they cannot find support and further predicted that about half of all global airlines could go out of business before the end of the year. Bloomberg, using the Z-score method developed by Edward Altman in the 1960s to predict bankruptcies, determined that among airlines that are in danger of going under are Pakistan International Airlines, SpiceJet, Norwegian, America

Staff at Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp's India and the Philippines centre, up to associate level, will get extra salary in April, chief executive Brian Humphries said in a note to employees. The US-headquartered company said that the extra money of 25 per cent of base pay, is in recognition of the hardship the employees and their families as well because they work from home in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will apply to more than two-thirds of the India workforce. ‘This will be processed with your April paycheck, and we will be reviewing this approach monthly,’ Humphries said. Cognizant has over 2 lakh employees in India, next only to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) which has a global headcount of more than 4 lakh, the majority of which are based in India. ‘We all recognize that Covid-

The three weeks nationwide lockdown has resulted in low electricity demand, but a sudden change in grid frequency could lead to a power blackout, according to government officials. Grid frequency is a critical aspect of power system operations, with global standards requiring that grid frequency be kept close to 50 hertz (Hz). Any sudden change in demand pattern impacts the grid frequency. India’s electricity demand was around 100 gigawatts (GW) as compared to the peak electricity demand of about 127.96 GW on 25 March. The demand was about 163.73GW on 20 March. India’s peak demand in FY19 was 168.74GW and touched a record high of 176.72GW in April last year. ‘We have been able to manage the grid despite a sudden drop of electricity demand because of the lock-down,’ said a government official requesting

RBI governor Shaktikanta Das has announced a series of steps to boost liquidity in a stimulus worth 3.2 per cent of GDP to counter the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak. Here are some key points from Das's announcements: All lending institutions can allow a three-month moratorium on EMI payments. Deferment on loan and interest repayments will not be classified as defaults and will not impact the credit history of borrowers. The policy repo rate has been reduced by 75 basis points from 5.15 per cent to 4.4 per cent. Reverse repo rate reduced by 90 basis points to 4 per cent. Monetary Policy meet scheduled for March 31-April 3 was advanced to March 25-27. Monetary policy committee voted 4:2 majority to cut repo rate by 75 basis points. Reverse repo rate cut more so that banks are incentiv