The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has called for policy initiatives that ensure effective risk management and sound corporate governance for the credit cycle to gain traction, which it said was important to support economic recovery. The observation by the RBI comes at a time when credit growth by banks has been decelerating for two years due to lack of demand and risk-aversion.

“The slowdown in credit is reflecting a scissors effect. Industrial activity and investment constrained credit demand, while stressed balance sheets of banks limited credit supply. Hence, policies aimed at boosting aggregate demand need to be supplemented with strengthening bank balance sheets to reduce stress for a sustainable boost to credit growth,” the RBI said on Tuesday in its report titled ‘Trend and progress of banking in India’.

Banks are facing sluggish credit growth even as the system is flush with liquidity and interest rates are at a new low. “For the last three years, private non-financial corporations have been net savers, progressively increasing their deposits with SCBs (scheduled commercial banks), while their credit offtake has remained anaemic,” the RBI said.

Global travel chaos that convulsed the Christmas weekend spilled into Monday with major flight cancellations impacting millions returning from holiday breaks, as Covid-19 cases surge to record levels in Europe and several US states.

Some 11,500 flights have been scrapped worldwide since Friday and tens of thousands more delayed, during one of the year's busiest travel periods -- with multiple airlines saying spikes in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant have caused staffing shortages.

Effects rippled worldwide, with about 3,000 flights already cancelled Monday and 1,100 more on Tuesday, according to flight tracker FlightAware.

Infrastructure works for India’s first bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad have been put on the fast track following completion of the land acquisition process in Gujarat and the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (DNH) though, as Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said recently, the project will miss the original deadline of December 2023 owing to land acquisition issues in Maharashtra and delays caused by Covid-19.

While land acquisition in neighbouring Maharashtra has been slower, the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) – the implementing agency for the `1.10-lakh-crore project – has initiated the process for building a tunnel between the underground Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) and Shilphata within Mumbai. A senior official with NHSRCL says the bidding process for eight new tenders has been initiated, including that for a tunnel in Mumbai and a training institute building at Vadodara. While most of the groundwork has been laid in Gujarat until now, the NHSRCL is speeding up construction related activities in Maharashtra, he says.

Indian markets ended Friday's session on a negative note after three days of gains as the volatility crept in today with India recording more than double cases of Omicron compared to last week. The markets ignored the positive cues from Asian peers as all sectoral indices except IT witnessed selling pressure and closed in the red.

The 30-pack Sensex opened higher in the morning on positive global cues to claim a day’s high of 57,624 but soon pared gains as the sentiments turned negative and made an intra-day low of 56,813. At close, Sensex stood at 57,124, down 191 points or 0.33 percent.

The NSE's Nifty opened with a gain of 77 points and made an intra-day high of 17,150 but breached the 17,000 level to make an intra-day low of 16,909. It closed the day 74.5 points or 0.4 percent lower at 17,004.

Indian Institute of Technology Madras has launched the 'Surendra and Dorothie Shah Chair' for furthering cutting-edge research in the field of Civil Engineering materials. This assumes huge significance due to the immense amount of construction work undertaken every year in India, with the volumes and expenditures continually increasing.

Prof. Surendra P. Shah, one of the foremost global experts in engineering materials, particularly concrete and other cement-based construction, chose IIT Madras to set up the Institute Chair. He has led the development of new advanced materials, which have become world standards in these fields, and his work revolutionized the way modern concretes are used worldwide.