Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said they will pose three questions a day to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue.
Ahead of the 2023-24 Union Budget, the thinking at the top level of the central government is clear: Gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 6-6.5 per cent is a comfortable enough target for FY24 and the focus should be on fiscal consolidation to ensure that the sovereign cost of borrowing does not become prohibitively expensive in a high-interest rate environment, according to people in the know. Those aware of deliberations between the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Ministry of Finance said while the Budget would look to strike a balance between infrastructure investment and welfare schemes, it is unlikely to be populist, though it will be the last full-year Budget before the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Incidentally, 6-6.5 per cent GDP growth is what the upcoming 2022-23 Economic Survey is expected to project for FY24.
CNG price in the national capital and adjoining cities on Tuesday was hiked by Rs 0.50 per kg, while an imminent increase in petrol and diesel price has been put on wait-and-watch mode for more clarity on global oil prices. CNG price in NCT of Delhi has been increased to Rs 57.51 per kg from Rs 56.51, according to the information posted on the website of Indraprastha Gas Ltd - the firm which retails CNG and piped cooking gas in the national capital. Following the firming up of international gas rates, IGL has been raising CNG rates by up to 50 paise (Rs 0.50) per kg periodically. Prices have gone up by about Rs 4 per kg this year alone.
At issue size of Rs 10,355 cr, the offering will be Asia's biggest this year and fifth-largest domestically.
The surge in wheat export from India owing to the Ukraine crisis has once again demonstrated how farmers in states that have flexible marketing frameworks and low taxes benefit more from an emerging situation. The bulk of the wheat exported from India, trade and industry sources say, is being sourced at rates significantly higher than the state-mandated price of Rs 2,015 per quintal in Madhya Pradesh (MP), Uttar Pradesh (UP), and Gujarat - states which have low mandi taxes compared to Punjab and Haryana. This is not only benefiting farmers there but could also lead to significant savings for the states in procurement costs in the months to come.
The annual rate of inflation based on monthly wholesale price index (WPI) was 1.22 per cent in December as compared to 1.55 per cent in the previous month. It was 2.76 per cent in December 2019. The decline last month was mainly due to lower increase in food prices, data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry showed on Thursday. The food inflation for December dropped to 0.92 per cent as compared to 4.27 per cent in the previous month.
Following are the highlights of the RBI's first monetary policy statement of 2022-23 unveiled by Governor Shaktikanta Das: Policy repo rate unchanged at 4%; marginal standing facility rate & bank rate too remain unchanged at 4.25%. Monetary stance to be accommodative with focus on withdrawal of accommodation to keep inflation within target. GDP growth projection for FY'23 slashed to 7.2% from 7.8%; growth projections based on assumption of crude oil (Indian basket) price at $100 a barrel during FY'23. Inflation forecast hiked to 5.7% for FY'23 from 4.5%.
India's largest insurer LIC is likely to list on the stock exchanges on May 17, a week after its bumper initial public offering (IPO) closes. The government is selling over 22.13 crore shares in LIC at a price band of Rs 902-949 a piece in the initial public offering, which opens on May 4 and closes on May 9. As per the final papers filed with Sebi, the allotment of shares to the demat account of bidders will happen by May 16, post which LIC would commence trading of equity shares in the stock exchanges and list "on or about May 17".
Investors not comfortable investing directly may take the mutual fund route, where they get exposure to a diversified portfolio of bonds.
Believe it or not, the regulator is even stretching its arm to identify stressed borrowers and gauge the 'distance to default' as a measure of a particular bank's fragility, reveals Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Three bills were introduced in Lok Sabha on Tuesday amid uproar with members from Left parties trooping into the Well to protest against rising prices of onion while other members raised the Telangana issue.
When he didn't respond (Mr Saver has lost count of how many relationship managers he has had in the past few years!), the gentleman landed up at his doorstep and started pleading with him to open fixed deposits with the bank, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The video shows the 42-year-old British Indian former minister interacting with voters and is also seen catching a quick power nap on a bench as a voiceover praises his efforts to "fight for every inch".
The government is likely to take a call on the timing of LIC initial public offering within this week, a senior official said. The sale of 5 per cent stake or 31.6 crore shares in the country's largest insurer was originally planned for in March, but was postponed in view of the geopolitical tension. The government has time till May 12 to launch the IPO without filing fresh papers with markets regulator Sebi. The official said it would be a tough call to decide whether to go ahead with the retail and domestic investor demand or to wait for geopolitical tension to ease and FIIs to return to market.
Enter the fireworks city of Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu and you can smell a familiar mix of sulphur, potassium nitrate, aluminium and carbon - familiar because if you've ever burst crackers, say on Diwali or Onam, chances are they were made here. Almost every household used to contribute to India's festive joy by contributing almost 90 per cent of the fireworks made in the country. Before the pandemic, around 300,000 people worked in the industry directly and another 500,000 indirectly. Located 540 kilometres from Chennai, Sivakasi is famous for its fireworks and crackers, along with printing and matches, but is almost a ghost town these days.
Consumption of gold is the highest among middle-income households - those with annual income between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 10 lakh - who account for an average of 56 per cent of gold sales over the last five years, according to a nationwide survey conducted by India Gold Policy Centre (IGPC) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). "Per capita consumption is highest among the rich, but total volume still rests with the middle-income group. "With increasing income, there is an increasing propensity to consume gold, although the share of gold in the portfolio does not increase with the same proportion of income," the survey report says.
Project Vivaan won big at the Solar Decathlon, placing second overall (and missing the first position by a whisker). Members of the award-winning Team Shunya tell Mrigank Warrier how they built a carbon-neutral, water-neutral, energy-positive home for a family of four.
Rejecting these notices, the Chairman said, "I have not admitted (the notices) as there are other avenues to raise this matter in the House and some matters are local."
Pakistan's Finance Minister Miftah Ismail on Monday said the government can consider importing vegetables and other edible items from India following the destruction of standing crops due to massive floods, three years after Islamabad downgraded trade ties with New Delhi over the Kashmir issue.
Why weren't the chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra and Telangana -- all of which have borders with Karnataka -- not invited to Saturday's swearing-in ceremony, asks Shyam G Menon.
Most of us have dreams, but what we don't want to do is pay the price for it. And boy, nothing comes for free.
'The CM kept his cool, but his adviser was liberal with filthy language.' Tamal Bandyopadhyay recreates the diary of a general manager in a public sector bank, providing a glimpse of how they balance their work and life.
The AG said the country needs the Rafale jet to defend itself 'from F-16 fighter planes that recently bombed us'.
The Oil Ministry has proposed raising natural gas prices by at least 60 per cent, a move that will result in rise in urea as well as power costs.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has bluntly told the government there is no reason for its members to roll out 5G networks as they will be unviable if 'captive private wireless networks' are allowed to be run by enterprises. The COAI, which has Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea as its key members, has written to Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying there is 'no business case for the roll out of 5G networks'. Permitting such captive networks will 'diminish the revenue so much that there will be no viable business case left for the telecom service providers and there will not remain any need for 5G network roll out by telecom service providers (TSPs)'.
Protests by members over Joint Parliamentary Committee report on spectrum scam, price rise, Telangana and the death of children in Muzaffarnagar relief camps disrupted Parliament on Monday leading to repeated adjournments.
'India has formed tremendous resilience and still a strong growth.'
Shiv Sena member of Parliament Sanjay Raut on Tuesday said the Bharatiya Janata Party was using central agencies to topple the Maharashtra government by targeting the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders and their family members.
'I am dismayed and will not accept that my integrity is being doubted by certain areas of the media, especially given that UEFA has already disclosed in detail all facts regarding these contracts'
Markets regulator Sebi's proposal of treating all orders emanating from application programming interface (API) as algorithmic or algo order can restrict the growth of such trading in India, brokerage houses said on Monday. In market parlance, algo trading refers to any order that is generated using automated execution logic. The algo trading system automatically monitors the live stock prices and initiates an order when the given criteria are met.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted searches at 44 places across the country in a money laundering investigation against Chinese smartphone manufacturing company Vivo and related firms, officials said. The searches are being carried out under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) at locations in several states including in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya, Maharashtra and others. The agency is conducting searches at 44 places related to Vivo and associated companies, they said.
A summary of the concluding day's action in the Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Saudi Pro League.
When the Tatas re-boarded Air India on January 27 last year, the price of aviation turbine fuel was at over Rs 80,000 per kilolitre. Rupee was trading at around Rs 74 to a US dollar. The Omicron variant of Covid-19 was in prevalence - barely a week earlier, India had reported over 340,000 cases on a single day. Seven-day home quarantine of international travellers was the norm.
Why does the world's fastest-growing major consumer of energy fail to attract investments in oil and gas? This is a question worth pondering after private sector conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) failed to close a $15-billion downstream asset deal with Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Aramco. It's understandable if multi-billion dollar investments in oil and gas projects or deals involving state companies that need to traverse a complex bureaucracy at state and federal levels and the corridors of ministries unravel. However, Mukesh Ambani-run RIL, India's most successful energy company, is not typically known to fumble on closing deals (Ambani closed deals worth around Rs 2 trillion early last year in telecom and retail with blue chip investors).
A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com speaks to common folk in Tamil Nadu about whether they will invest in Arun Jaitley's gold monetisation scheme. Their reactions will not make the Union finance minister happy.
If you have seen Zwigato, Param Kumar's story will sound familiar. Laid off from his job as a repairman at a Gurugram-based water purifier provider, he now delivers groceries and food for a mobile-based delivery app, in Delhi. Kumar, who started making deliveries last August, told Business Standard that he is working longer hours than his older salaried job as an RO repairman, and has no paid leaves or health insurance. Kumar is part of India's estimated 7.7 million-strong force of gig workers.
Commercial 5G services will be rolled out in 13 cities in India, including the metropolises, in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a statement on Monday. These cities are Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Jamnagar. "These metros and big cities would be the first places for the launch of 5G services in the country next year," the DoT said.
'Has any prime minister spent so much time in one state holding election rally after rally?'
In the Rajya Sabha, Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu could not read out his customary closing remarks that sum up the business conducted in the House during the session, as Shiv Sena and other opposition MPs created a ruckus.
Analysts cautious on outlook, expect earnings to remain under pressure over medium term.
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