By Shreya Karuna De
As worries of recession pick up across the world in an inflationary environment, analysts at Nomura have cut India’s 2023 growth forecast to 4.7% from 5.4% earlier as it expects growth to slow down over the next year.
“Higher inflation, monetary policy tightening, dormant private capex growth, the power crunch and the global growth slowdown pose medium-term headwinds. Consequently, we lowered our 2023 GDP growth projection from 5.4% to 4.7%,” the firm said in a note co-authored by Aurodeep Nandi and Sonal Varma.
For FY23, they see GDP growth at 7.0% and at 5.5% for FY24.
The Indian economy has been climbing above pre-pandemic levels and the improvement in growth has been broad-based across consumption, investment, industry and the external sector.
However, inflation remains a sticky point. The CPI inflation moderated to 7.0% on an annual basis in May from 7.8% in April while the core CPI inflation declined to 5.9% from 7.1%. This moderation was driven by a favourable base, a cut in fuel duties and lower bullion prices.
The retail inflation has remained above the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) tolerance band for the sixth straight month. It has averaged to 7.3% in Q1 FY23, lower than the RBI’s estimate of 7.5%.
” Despite the government’s recent fiscal steps to counter inflation , upside risks persist from the continued pass-through of higher input costs, services reopening pressures, pending electricity tariff revisions and elevated inflationary expectations,” Nomura said.
Central banks across the world are now expected to hike rates aggressively in a bid to control inflation, even at the cost of sacrificing growth.
The RBI hiked the repo rate by 50 bps to 4.90% in June following an intermeeting 40 bps hike early in May.
“We expect consumer inflation to track back within the RBI’s target range only in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal. For the full financial year, we project inflation to average at 6.6%. RBI’s policy action will be contingent on volatility in global crude oil prices and the rate hike trajectory by the US Fed. We see a 50 bps rate hike in August policy followed by incremental hikes of 25 bps each in the following two meetings with the terminal repo rate at 5.90%,” CARE Ratings’ Chief Economist Rajani Sinha said
However, with the pace of inflation increasing now a tad lower, analysts feel the RBI may refrain from opting from a 50 bps rate hike in the coming meetings.
“Falling commodity prices and lower than expected June quarter inflation could make the MPC refrain from a 50 basis point rate hike,” Citi economists Samiran Chakraborty and Baqar M Zaidi wrote in a report.
“The possibility of a larger rate hike can arise only if sustained depreciation pressure on the rupee forces the RBI to close down the interest rate differential faster,” they said.
WhatsApp may get Instagram-style quick reactions feature for status updates
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced new features for WhatsApp messaging platform such as message reactions, Communities and others. Now as per a latest report by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is planning to bring another Instagram-like feature to the platform. According to the report, the company is working on a quick reactions feature for status updates.
The quick reactions feature allows you to react to an Instagram Story story quickly with an emoji. When you swipe up while watching an Instagram Story, you will get an emoji panel with 8 emojis that you can use to react to the Story.
As per the screenshot shared in the report, while using WhatsApp on desktop, you will be able to see 8 emojis to use as reactions for status updates. The emojis seen in the screenshot are similar to the Instagram app that includes – Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes, Face with Tears of Joy, Face with Open Mouth, Crying Face, Folded Hands, Clapping Hands, Party Popper, and Hundred Points.
The report further reveals that once you use an emoji to react to a WhatsApp status, it will be sent in the chat as a simple emoji message. As the feature is still under development, WhatsApp may make a few changes in the user interface of the feature
As of now, WhatsApp has not revealed any details about this feature but it is expected that we may see it in the upcoming beta update for iOS and Android platforms.
WhatsApp is also reportedly planning to add the functionality that will allow users to use a WhatsApp account on multiple smartphones. The platform recently started to roll out the multi-device feature that allows users to access the platform on multiple devices even if there is no connectivity on the primary device. Users can link a single WhatsApp account with up to four more devices. However, the feature does not allow you to use your WhatsApp account on any other smartphone.
Source: News Mania Desk
