European Union ambassadors failed to resolve a dispute over the allocation of seats on the United Nations' Green Climate Fund (GCF) board on Friday, possibly undermining the bloc's credibility in i

The Asian Development Bank will provide a $100-million credit line to ICICI Bank to fund renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.

Japan International Cooperation Agency, which funded Phase I and II of the Delhi Metro rail network, signed an agreement with India on Thursday for providing Rs.7,922 crore as soft loan for construction of Delhi Metro's Phase III that would add another 103 km to the network.

The agreement was signed between JICA, the official donor agency of the Government of Japan, and the Union Finance Ministry here.

India's businesses, already facing high interest rates and a global economic slowdown, worry that the finance ministry will ask them to shoulder a bigger tax burden in the budget set for release on Friday to trim the fiscal deficit.

After a drubbing in recent state elections, the government has little room to cut subsidies costing 2.5 per cent of GDP. But without fiscal consolidation, the Reserve Bank of India will have a harder time lowering interest rates without stoking inflation.

New Delhi Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee proposed trimming the government's subsidy burden and called for speeding the pace of economic reforms, which have been stalled by political gridlock, in his Union Budget 2012-13 speech on Friday.

High oil prices have swelled India's subsidy burden to roughly 2.5 percent of GDP and Mukherjee called for reducing that to less than 2 percent in the fiscal year that starts on April 1.