The central government should provide for free vaccination to all Indian citizens and greatly ramp up RT-PCR testing in both rural and urban areas, a group of former civil servants said on Thursday in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
'How does one square up the fact that despite the infusion of money at election time there was no price rise?' 'It is time the new government ordered an external audit of the RBI to find out the truth,' says Col Anil Athale.
'When you start distributing wealth, you end up distributing poverty.'
The RBI governor has to convert the zero-sum game with the government from a non-cooperative one -- which his two predecessors had made it -- to a cooperative one, explains T C A Srinivasa Raghavan.
The stock markets, which had opened in the green on rate cut hopes, tumbled after the monetary policy announcement.
The sentiment in the real estate industry turned optimistic during October-December 2020 and the outlook for the next six months is positive on the back of revival in demand for both residential and office properties, according to a survey by Knight Frank India-FICCI-Naredco. The 27th edition of 'Real Estate Sentiment Index Q4 2020 survey' of developers, banks, financial institutions and private equity players operating in the sector was released on Monday in a video-conference. As per the report, the 'Current Sentiments Score', for the first time in 2020, entered the optimistic zone at 54 points in Q4 (October-December) 2020, a significant jump of 14 points over the previous quarter.
Housing prices could drop by up to 30% over 6 to 12 months after demonetisation.
The BJP still does not have a majority in Upper House of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, and this will pose hurdles to the party's legislative reform agenda
...and getting GDP to measure India's data economy, recommends Ajit Balakrishnan.
'We are at $2.7 trillion and 2024 is not far away.' 'The country will need to grow by 9% every year for 5 years continuously and raise the aggregate investment rate to 38% of GDP to achieve the government's target of turning India into a $5 trillion economy.' 'Given the fact that we are only growing at about 5% and our investment rates are only about 30%, it may take a number of years before we can reach that targeted level.'
The government and unions representing farmers, who have been camping at Delhi's border for about three months in protest against the three laws that they see will end state procurement of crops at MSP, have held 11 rounds of talks, the last being on January 22.
In its latest interim Economic Assessment report released today, OECD said a moderate expansion is under way in most major advanced and emerging economies.
Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, said that 'Khalistanis' have infiltrated the protest and he will file an affidavit along with the necessary inputs of the intelligence bureau (IB).
At a combined level, the fiscal deficit of the Centre and states together will come at 12.1 per cent, with the states contributing 4.5 per cent.
IT, FMCG and manufacturing sectors are less attractive to foreign portfolio investors
Business failures rise when growth declines. When Indian growth slowed in the last decade, defaults increased. This is the normal working of the market economy, points out Ajay Shah.
'Look at the number of billionaires, the number of new billionaires in India.' 'Adani and Ambani are not the only ones.' 'What's wrong with people making money as long as it benefits us?'
The economists, who were surveyed, also felt it will take time for banks to make any further reduction in deposit rates
'Punjab elections are there and so are UP elections. They must have done some calculations (before announcing the repeal).'
In terms of stock selection, India continues to benefit from two phenomena - the big getting bigger and availability of quality stocks in relative abundance compared with its Asian peers.
Indian firms have seen a significant fall in orders in the year-to-date period.
The government on Wednesday asked the Reserve Bank to maintain retail inflation at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side for another five-year period ending March 2026. To control the price rise, the government in 2016 gave a mandate to the RBI to keep the retail inflation at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side for a five-year period ending March 31, 2021.
In fact, India's investment activity growth is also estimated to touch a 17-year low in FY20. With overall demand not showing signs of revival, investment activity may take longer to recover, economists said.
October infrastructure output, which contributes nearly 38 per cent to the industrial output index, was up 3.2 per cent annually.
Buoyed by an increase in public investment and incentives to boost manufacturing, India's economy is expected to grow by 8.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2021-22, less than the previous projection early this year before the country was hit by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank has said in its latest report. World Bank chief economist for the South Asia Region Hans Timmer told PTI here that when one looks at the high frequency data, they see that as a result of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the recovery paused, and some indicate that the recovery actually declined briefly. "We project for this fiscal year 8.3 per cent (growth rate for Indian economy) that is less than we projected early in the year before the health crisis caused by the second wave. "Given the sharp contraction of the economy last year, it might not look like a lot, but in my view, that is actually very positive news, given the violent second wave and the severity of the health crisis," he said on Thursday.
The university in Haryana's Sonipat became the centre of a controversy earlier this week, when Mehta, who had resigned as its vice chancellor two years back, chose to step down as professor, saying that the founders made it "abundantly clear" that his association with the institution was a "political liability".
Banerjee, 58, was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D in 1988. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
India'sstartups have a good beginning but will they survive competition is a big questions which needs immediate attention.
The opinion of a Junior Associate Economist employed with Moody's Analytics has been splashed all across implying it as the opinion of Moody's Analytics.
The Indian economy is sinking but everyone's busy leading the high life, no one's worried, says veteran economist Ashok Mitra, in an interview to Rediff.com's Indrani Roy.
Had Finance Minister Sitharaman thought a little more about the middle class, disadvantaged sections, and the poor who are struggling, it would have been an inclusive Budget that would have made history, notes Ramesh Menon.
Firms said subdued demand conditions, unfair pricing among competitors and economic woes affected the sector.
If the WTO talks in Bali fail, it will adversely impact India.
World Bank on Wednesday warned that a prolonged war in Iraq may adversely affect India's GDP growth prospects in this fiscal.
The country is gripped in an unprecedented economic downturn which is certainly going to spill over into the second half of this year unless the infection rate can be brought under control.
Prime Manmohan Singh on Thursday sought Chinese investments in manufacturing and infrastructure sectors in India and called for market access in China for Indian IT and Pharmaceutical firms.
An alert government in Delhi should have begun government-to-government discussions with Moscow the moment it came to know that Russians were developing a vaccine. That is to say, almost an year's time has been lost, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
