Best of BS Opinion: States' unhappiness index, stressed assets, and more

Global forecasters are cutting their growth estimates for the Indian economy. Fitch Ratings, for example, now expects the economy to contract by 10.5 per cent in the current fiscal year, compared to its earlier estimate of 5 per cent contraction. Goldman Sachs expects the output to contract by 14.8 per cent. A sharp contraction, among other things, will affect asset quality in the banking system and make the recovery more difficult. Business Standard opinion pieces for the day, apart from other policy issues, talk about the banking sector.

While recommendations of the Kamath panel and the framework adopted by the regulator have safeguards, it will still be critical to ensure that the new facility is not used by lenders to hide bad loans, argues our lead editorial

While mergers reduce the number of public sector banks, they do not address the issue of the economic size of the sector and associated fiscal risks, writes former RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya

Centre’s proposals on settling states’ demand for GST compensation can throw up new challenges, writes A K Bhattacharya

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“Hiring sentiment is the weakest since the survey began 15 years ago, remaining relatively stable when compared with the previous quarter, but declining by 16 percentage points in comparison with this time one year ago.”

ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey