A day after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) kept key interest rates unchanged, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday said further interest rate increases are needed in India with monetary conditions still accommodative and credit expanding strongly.

The RBI has kept the short term interest rates like repo and reverse repo rates as well as benchmark bank rate intact in its credit policy announced on Tuesday. However, the central bank increased the provisioning requirement for housing loans beyond Rs 20 lakh, personal loans and advances against shares, which might see some hike in interest rates on these loans.

"Inflationary pressures have picked up, promoting the Reserve Bank of India to tighten monetary policy. Nevertheless, with monetary conditions still accommodative and credit expanding strongly, further interest rate increases will likely be needed," IMF said in its World Economic Outlook report, released ahead of the Spring Meetings of the Fund-Bank.

IMF said activity in emerging market and developing countries rem-ains very strong with forecasts revised upwards in most countries and regions."In emerging Asia, GDP growth in both China and India has continued to surprise on the upside driven by strong domestic demand," the report said.

"Along with the recovery in IT this has supported an acceleration in activity in the rest of the region, although investment growth has yet to pick up substantially," it said.

The IMF projected comparable growth in China at 9.5 per cent for 2006 and slowing down to 9 per cent in 2007.

On world output, the report said in spite of higher oil prices and natural disasters, global economic growth has continued to exceed expectations aided by benign financial market conditions and continued accommodative macro economic policies.

Let’s take a look at some of the some new developments in the telematics space. Telematics is the use of telecommunication in conjunction with informatics, which helps in the passing of information from one computer to another via a telephone line or other electronic link.

Telematics forms the basis of a new patent-pending software application called Guardian Angel, launched by Expedite Media Group, Inc., a technology development and marketing company. What does Guardian Angel do? The company says that it lets parents remotely monitor their loved one’s location and direction of travel via a secure website. The new product line consists of a cellphone embedded with the Guardian Angel software that communicates every seven seconds with GPS satellites and transmits the data securely over the cellular lines to a website where parents or legal guardians can view locations, direction and speed of travel.

The Guardian Angel cellphone is equipped with the GPS technology. "Because teenagers prize their cellphones as one of their most precious items, parents are happy to provide them a cellphone with the extra benefits of being able to remotely track their teen’s location and even their driving speed without the constant ‘check in’ calls," Mr Mike Dirmeikis, president of Expedite Media Group, was quoted as saying by Telematics journal. "With Guardian Angel technology’s cellphones, both parents and teenagers have the best of both worlds," he says. I have an idea not many teenagers will agree with that assumption.

While on telematics, MeteorComm Wireless Communications has developed a software defined radio (SDR) communications platform designed for multiple uses such as land, rail and marine vehicle tracking, emergency services and remote data acquisition.

The SDR product can establish connections from low-band VHF legacy frequencies through UHF and up to the latest 2.4 GHz (WiFi) standards to maintain uninterrupted data communications from 9,600 bps (bits per second), to 54 Mbps, the company says. Functioning as a multi-band, multi-port wireless router, it acts as a bridge between older low frequency and newer high frequency fixed or mobile communications networks, providing maximum interoperability. "A single SDR can function as a remote, a base station or a repeater, which provides a self-organising mesh network topology, ideal for extended line of sight fixed and mobile networks in rural or marine settings," MCC says. The gadget also offers voice communications on high-band VHF, eliminating the need for separate voice and data radios.