Mumbai, Oct.26 Managing the trade-off between supporting growth and reining in inflation expectations poses a complex challenge, says the Reserve Bank of India even as its latest survey of professional forecasters has brought down India’s growth rate for FY2010 to 6 per cent as against 6.5 per cent reported in the earlier survey. The central bank unveiled these findings on the eve of the second quarter review of the Monetary Policy for 2009-10.

This downward revision in growth outlook is due to the expected decline in agricultural output on account of poor monsoon, according to the RBI’s second quarter review of the macroeconomic and monetary developments, released on Monday. “Lead information in terms of growth in non-oil imports and demand for credit in the second quarter of 2009-10 does not point to any major recovery in demand from the private sector. The overall economic outlook is, therefore, a mixture of upside prospects of recovery and downside risks,” the review said.

Underscoring the RBI’s dilemma, the review says that while premature reversal of the monetary policy stance entails the risk of stifling recovery, persistence of accommodative stance could adversely impact inflation expectations. The moderation in the economic activity is underscored by the fact that the non-food bank credit grew by only 11.2 per cent year-on-year as on October 9, 2009, as against 29.4 per cent a year ago.

Amplifying its concerns on the inflation front, the review said inflationary pressures have increased since the presentation of the first quarter review. High consumer price index (CPI) is a major risk to inclusive growth, since it could lead to erosion in real income of segments of the population for which the indices have been prepared.

NEW DELHI: Australian fast bowlers Brett Lee, Mitchell Johnson and all-rounder James Hopes have been ruled out of second One-Day International against India to be played in Nagpur on Wednesday.

Lee and all-rounder Hopes are suffering from elbow soreness and a hamstring injury respectively while Johnson twisted his left ankle during the first ODI at Vadodara. Meanwhile, Moises Henriques will join the Australian squad as a replacement player.

Earlier on Monday Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting was absolutely furious, claiming that the Champions League Twenty20 hindered his team's preparation for the ongoing ODI series. Three players of the Australian squad -- Brett Lee, Nathan Hauritz and Doug Bollinger -- joined the team in Vadodara on the night before the first ODI, after guiding New South Wales Blues to the Champions League Twenty20 title in Hyderabad on Friday.

The NSW trio missed four training sessions and the pre-match team meeting as well. While all three arrived fatigued, Lee had this additional complaint of a sore elbow, which eventually kept him out of action towards the end of first ODI.

NEW DELHI: Petrol will be costlier by seven paise per litre and diesel by four paise as the oil ministry has raised dealer margins on these motor fuels. The new rates came into effect from midnight Monday, Federation of All India Petroleum Traders chief Ajay Bansal said.

He said the quantum of increase will be uniform throughout the country as it will not have any incremental increase in local taxes. Dealers at present get Rs 1.02 as commission per litre of petrol and 63 paise on diesel. Bansal said the increase in fuel prices will come about as dealer margin will be passed on to consumers.

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo! has closed GeoCities, a free Web hosting service that it purchased for over three billion dollars at the height of the dot-com boom. "We have enjoyed hosting websites created by Yahoo! users all over the world, and we're proud of the community you've built," the California-based Internet pioneer said in a message at the GeoCities website.

"However, we have decided to focus on helping our customers explore and build relationships online in other ways." Yahoo! said GeoCities would not be available after yesterday and recommended GeoCities refugees set up new online homes at its paid Web hosting service, with an introductory offer of just five dollars for the first 12 months.

The closure of GeoCities comes a week after Yahoo! reported that aggressive cost-cutting helped it more than triple its net profit despite a 12-per cent decline in revenue in its third quarter. Yahoo! said net profit soared more than 244 per cent in the quarter to 186 million dollars, or 13 cents per share, from 54 million dollars, or four cents per share, a year ago, easily surpassing analysts' forecasts

The better-than-expected performance was due in large part to cost-cutting measures implemented by Carol Bartz since being named in January to replace Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive.