From a surge in airfares to rattled aircraft lessors to thousands of employees staring at uncertainty, it has been a month of continued turbulence since cash-strapped Go First suspended flights from May 3. As the government and other stakeholders hope that Go First restarts operations at the earliest, plans are being worked out for the budget airline’s revival. A section of Go First staff are optimistic about restarting of operations, another section are pessimistic about the airline’s future course considering what had happened to erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways, according to employees who spoke to PTI.

Falling for the second consecutive week, India’s forex reserves dropped by $4.34 billion to $589.14 billion for the week ended May 26, the Reserve Bank said on Friday. In the previous reporting week, the reserves had declined by $6.05 billion to $593.48 billion. It can be noted that in October 2021, the country’s forex kitty had reached an all-time high of $645 billion.

Improvement in financial savings channelised massive inflows into the equities market through the mutual fund route.

The banking sector emerged as an outlier when the rest of India Inc witnessed a slowdown in earnings in FY23. The combined net profit of listed public and private sector banks was up 39.4 per cent year-on-year (YoY) last financial year and their share in India’s gross value added (GVA) or gross domestic product (GDP) at factor cost rose to a record high of nearly 1 per cent up, from 0.8 per cent a year ago. Listed banks’ combined net profit grew to Rs 2.36 trillion in FY23, from Rs 1.69 trillion a year ago. In comparison, India GVA at current prices was up 15.2 per cent YoY at Rs 247 trillion in FY23; it was around Rs 214 trillion a year ago.

As artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to replace jobs, a new report from Microsoft has suggested that Indian employees are caught between a fear of losing jobs and an opportunity to reduce workload by delegating tasks to technology. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2023 found that while 74 per cent of Indian employees are worried about AI replacing their jobs, 83 per cent would delegate as much work to it as possible, to help lessen their workloads. More than three in four Indian workers would be comfortable using AI not just for administrative tasks (86 per cent), but also for analytical work (88 per cent), and for the creative aspects of their role (87 per cent).