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India’s Covid pandemic hell could be purgatory: Reuters April 23, 2021, 10:23 AM IST in Foreign Media, India, TOI
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By Una Galani
India has slender room to act if economic activity follows its medical infrastructure into a virus-induced state of collapse. So far there’s a wide gap between the two measures of health. Optimists hope antibodies and vaccines will cause the Covid-19 contagion to burn out quickly. The government will have a hard time softening the financial pain if it doesn’t.
The second wave is proving more virulent than the first; India recorded the world’s highest daily tally of infections at 314,835 on Thursday. Hospitals are running out of oxygen; even fancy private healthcare facilities in Mumbai and New Delhi can’t keep pace. People are turning to makeshift facilities for mass cremations.
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ZURICH (Reuters Breakingviews) - Arbitrage is normally the trick of the wily financier, not the peripatetic journalist. But traveling at what we can only hope is the twilight of the Covid-19 pandemic requires similar skills. Another key to legally traversing borders without tweaking authorities is keeping abreast of fast-changing – and often arbitrary, even politically driven – changes in travel restrictions. That’s a competence not too different from following the news.
A jumbo jet takes off shortly before midday from Heathrow Airport in west London April 15, 2010. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Many financial and business professionals hanker to get back on the road, see their customers and colleagues, and return to some normal sense of doing business. Three Breakingviews columnists who have, with an admittedly healthy sense of entitlement, crisscrossed oceans and hopscotched frontiers in Europe, North America and Asia offer some of their experiences.
LIGHT WEIGHT. With lucrative international travel still restricted due to the pandemic, an airline listing was always going to raise eyebrows. Hanoi-based Bamboo Airwaysâ plans to raise up to $200 million in an initial public offering in the United States feels like a difficult long-haul journey.
The Vietnam carrierâs ambition spotlights recent successes at home. Helped by exports, the economy was one of the few in the world to grow during 2020, expanding 2.9%. Pre-pandemic the country was the 19th largest aviation market based on weekly seat capacity and it is also one of the few that successfully switched large volumes from international to domestic services as the health crisis struck, says global travel data provider OAG.
SHINING BRIGHT. Citigroupâs (C.N) consumer banking business in India may be the most valuable of the 13 markets boss Jane Fraser has ordered the U.S. bank to retreat from read more . Unlike in China, in India a sale offers rivals a juicy chance to bulk up.
Conservatism has cost Citi. Its Indian wealth management business is large, but its share of credit cards has fallen to 4% from more than 10% over a decade as the market has rapidly expanded. Its customers spend more than average, however.
Focusing on the affluent has kept books clean. Citi could add more than one-quarter of loans to the retail portfolio of $47 billion Kotak Mahindra Bank (KTKM.NS), Credit Suisse notes. Singaporeâs DBS (DBSM.SI), led by an ex-Citi banker, is in expansion mode too and may also be keen.