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The World Malaria Day (WMD) is observed every year on 25th of April to raise awareness and funds for the treatment and prevention of the disease. The day also highlights the need for sustained investment and political commitment for malaria prevention, control and elimination. As part of the WMD 2019, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched grassroots campaign ‘Zero malaria starts with me’ to keep malaria high on the political agenda, mobilize additional resources, and empower communities to take ownership of malaria prevention and care.

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The global startup ecosystem map Startupblink has released its latest 2019 Startup Ecosystem Ranking. In it, India has been ranked 17th out of 100 countries, based on the strength of its startup ecosystem. The index is topped by United States, followed by UK, Canada, Israel, and Australia. The ranking is carried out on the basis the impact startups have been able to make in the country. Additionally, it has also considered how many startups and support organisations are there such as accelerators, coworking spaces, startup events along with technology infrastructure, red tape, bureaucracy, etc. It used data from startups, accelerators and co-working spaces registered on its platforms as well as data received from global partners such as Crunchbase and SimilarWeb. StartupBlink also ranked cities globally in its top 25-city ranking that included Bengaluru at 11 and New Delhi at 18 andMumbai at 29.

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Fitch Ratings has recently said in its APAC sovereign credit overview report that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is the first Asia-Pacific (APAC) central bank to begin interest rate easing cycle by cutting the policy rate back-to-back in the last two monetary policy reviews in 2019. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), headed by RBI Govenor Shaktikanta Das, cut rates in February and April, citing prospects of benign inflation. In the four months of 2019, the RBI has cut policy interest rates twice twice by 0.25% each to one-year low of 6%. Earlier in April 2019, Fitch Ratings kept India’s rating unchanged for the 13th time in a row at BBB- , which is the lowest investment grade, along with a stable outlook. The agency cited various challenges faced by the country such as high public debt, weak financial sector and lagging structural reforms.

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The Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB) has become the first Destination Bank to go live with Net Banking and Debit Card-based authentication solution on NPCI’s e-Mandate API platform. The facility will enable its customers to create electronic mandates (similar to the erstwhile eNACH with Aadhaar + OTP) via both the Debit Card and Net Banking channels. This allows Kotak to go live as a sponsor or acquirer bank for corporates and merchants seeking recurring payments. In a first-of-its-kind initiative in the industry, customers can register both physical and e-mandates on a single platform with validation on the mandate fields to remove rejections on account of various reasons.

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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has divested its entire stake in National Housing Bank (NHB) and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) for Rs 1,450 crore and Rs 20 crore, respectively. The move is part of ending the cross-holding in regulatory institutions and follows the recommendation of second Narasimham committee report of October 2001 and the RBI’s own discussion paper on the same entitled ‘Harmonizing the role and operations of development financial institutions and banks. The current change in the capital structure of both these financial institutions was brought in by the government through amendments to the Nabard Act of 1981 and the NHB Act of 1987 which were notified on January 19, 2018 and March 29, 2018, respectively. With this, the Government of India (GoI) now holds 100% stake in both these financial institutions.