After a rise in the prices last week, what was the price that gold and silver touched?

The RBI said that banks will have to maintain a provision coverage ratio of 70% of their gross bad loans only till September 30, 2010 after which they will have to follow the standard capital provisioning requirement as per the norm set by the Basu committee. Under the present provisioning norms, banks have to maintain funds ranging from 10% for sub-standard assets to 100% for assets under 'loss category'.

Silver ready (.999 fineness) sky-rocked by Rs2,170 per kg to finish at Rs72,980 from overnight closing level of Rs70,810. The yellow metal marched ahead aggressively to conquer a milestone of Rs22,000 per 10 grams boosted by sustained investment and jewellery buying during the wedding season.

About 189,008 cars were sold in February, going up 22.63% year on year. At 64,057 units, commercial vehicle sales registered a growth of 10% year on year. Three- and two-wheeler sales during February grew 24.03% (49,082 units) and 22.04% (1,022,272 units), respectively.

Reversing a three-week decline trend, food inflation shot up to 8.74% for the week ended April 9 from 8.28% in the previous week on account of expensive fruits, protein-based items and onions, according to the official data released.

SBI Easy Home Loan and SBI Advantage Home Loan (teaser rate products) will be replaced by floating interest rate schemes on par with other commercial banks. The home loan from SBI will now attract an interest rate of 9.5% to 10.25% depending upon the loan amount.

US-based Seagate Technology spent $1.4 billion on acquiring Samsung Electronic Co's loss-making hard disk drive (HDD) business. After the deal, Samsung will supply NAND-type flash chips to Seagate for its products, while it will source Seagate HDD for computers, laptops and consumer electronics products. Seagate will also get access to Samsung's customer base across China and Southeast Asia.

Indian utility Tata Power has upsized its 60-year bond issue to $450 million from its guidance of $300-400 million. It has priced the bond at 8.5%, the term sheet showed, the lower-end of its 8.50%-8.75% guidance. The bonds have a call option on the fifth year.

State Bank of India has raised its benchmark lending rate, or base rate, by 25 basis points to 8.5% per annum with effect from April 25. Indian banks have been raising their lending and deposit rates after series of interest rate hikes by the central bank to tame inflation in Asia's third-largest economy.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide up to $150 million in credit guarantees to help India scale up its use of solar power as a major renewable energy source. The guarantees will be available to local and foreign commercial banks that finance private sector solar power plants in the country and will cover 50% of the payment default risk on bank loans made to project developers.

India's GDP is projected to continue to grow at a brisk pace of 8.8% in 2011-12 (FY 12). The domestic environment is conducive for growth and private final consumption expenditure is projected to grow by a healthy 7.5% and gross fixed capital formation by 14.6%. In FY 12, the agricultural and allied sector is projected to grow by 3.1%, on top of the 5.1% growth estimated in 2010-11. The industrial sector, including construction, is projected to grow by 9.4% during 2011-12, as compared to 8.5% estimated in 2010-11.