COVID-19 Highlights: India has registered 84,712 coronavirus cases, data from state health departments showed on Friday, crossing the COVID-19 tally of China where the virus emerged in late last year. India now is ranked 11th in the world in terms of coronavirus cases.
However, India's fatality rate still remains significantly better than China's at 3.2 per cent compared to 5.5 per cent. More than 27,000 people have recovered in India, according to the latest available data from the Union Health Ministry.
Meanwhile, the government will amend Essential Commodities Act to enable better price for farmers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said today, in her third set of announcements on the mega economic stimulus to tackle the coronavirus crisis.
Agriculture food stuff including cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato will be deregulated, Ms Sitharaman said.
The government will also bring in law to implement agriculture marketing reforms to provide marketing choices to farmers. The law will provide adequate choices to farmers to sell produce at an attractive price, said the Finance Minister.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a cumulative package of Rs 20 lakh crore, nearly 10 per cent of India's GDP, to help various sections of the economy battered by coronavirus lockdown.
This included a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package comprising free foodgrain and cash to poor for three months announced in March, and Rs 5.6 lakh crore stimulus provided through various monetary policy measures by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The government has so far made two tranches of announcements with a cumulative package of Rs 9.1 lakh crore, comprising largely of credit lines to smaller firms, concessional credit to farmers and support to shadow banking and electricity distributors.
