Prime Minister Modi, who is in Japan on a two-day visit to attend a summit of the Quad leaders at the invitation of his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida, penned an op-ed on the vibrant relations between India and Japan in the Yomiuri Shimbun.
The BJP would want that by March 2022, when UP votes, the economy starts looking up and it heads into the polls with no other issue distracting from its main poll plank of the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
'It is a balanced and prudent Budget that sets the foundation for future growth in the economy.'
Stressing that economic growth will only move upwards, the Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday pegged the GDP growth rate for the next financial year at 10.5 per cent, though a tad lower than the government's projection of 11 per cent. The projection is in line with the estimates in the Union Budget 2021-22 presented in Parliament earlier this week. The Economic Survey, tabled by the government in Parliament recently, has projected that the economy will grow at 11 per cent, up from an estimated historic decline of 7.7 per cent in 2020-21, on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chief Economic Adviser K V Subramanian on Wednesday said India is expected to hit a growth rate of 6.5-7 per cent in 2022-23 and accelerate further to 8 per cent in the subsequent years on the back of reforms undertaken by the government. He also said the government is expected to meet the fiscal deficit target of 6.8 per cent in the current fiscal despite pressure on revenue collections.
'In the long run, the boost to farmers' incomes must come from technological breakthroughs,' says Pratap S Birthal and Digvijay S Negi.
'Crony capitalism will gain due to these Acts.'
'We told the government that we won't dance to their tunes this time.'
Prime Minister Modi arrived in Riyadh late Monday night on a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia to participate in the high-profile financial summit Future Investment Initiative, dubbed "Davos in the desert", an initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
If Nirmala Sitharaman does indeed present a 'never-before' like Budget on February 1, going by her promise, she would create a new benchmark for post-contraction Budgets, observes A K Bhattacharya.
The Budget emphasises on capacity building and empowerment of marginalised sections of society including farmers.
Indeed, there were frauds, and the politician-banker-industrialist nexus played a role in the rise of NPAs, but governance issues in Indian banking are far more nuanced and complex, reveals Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Stating that open markets mean more opportunities, Modi said during the last six years the government has made many efforts to make the Indian economy more open and reform oriented.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday pitched for using the USO Fund to subsidise smartphones for select groups to help penetrate the digital revolution and said India should make the rollout of 5G or the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks a national priority. As much as 5 per cent of the licence fee paid by telecom operators goes to the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund, which was set up in April 2002 for achieving universal service objectives by providing access to telephone services in rural and remote areas and creation of infrastructure for mobile services and broadband in these areas. However, according to the CAG, less than half of the funds so collected are transferred for the said purpose.
'If a company contracts to buy its produce after three or four months, is there any loss in it?'
'However, this time it looks like that is not working.'
Kaur, the Union Minister of Food Processing Industries, is the only SAD representative in the Modi government.
Niti Aayog will prepare the next list of central public sector companies for disinvestment in the next few weeks, its vice chairman Rajiv Kumar said on Thursday and expressed hope that the proposed asset reconstruction and management companies to address banks' bad loan woes will do a good job like the UTI. Days after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the Union Budget for 2021-22 laying out various measures (including disinvestment proposals) to bolster the pandemic-hit economy, Kumar also emphasised that the Modi government has shown consistent commitment for the welfare of farmers and for the improvement of the agriculture sector. "Now the process has begun... We will complete preparation of the next list in the next few weeks, we have got the marching order," Kumar said about the list of public sector companies for the next round of stake sales.
The report admits that converting MSP to a floor price of auction on the eNAM portal will not completely solve the problem as the current data shows that average modal prices in e-NAM mandis is lower than the minimum support price in all commodities except urad.
A faltering economy may have led to a re-think on economic strategy. And Mr Modi might think he is politically strong enough to take some risks. But there could be a minefield ahead, observes T N Ninan.
'We need to encourage the next generation of farmers to continue in farming'
China on Thursday told Pakistan's new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that it will always put its "all-weather ally" as a priority in its neighbourhood diplomacy as it praised his commitment to promote the USD 60 billion CPEC initiative.
Armed with necessary macro and micro growth drivers, India is on its way to becoming the fastest growing major economy in the world, a finance ministry report said. Rapid vaccination and teeming festivities will push India's ongoing recovery resulting in narrowing of demand-supply mismatches and greater employment opportunities, as per the monthly Economic Review prepared by the ministry.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to meet heads of public sector banks (PSBs) next week to review performance of the lenders and progress made by them to support the economy battered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Banks would be urged to sanction loans for productive sectors to accelerate revival of the economy, sources said. According to sources, the two-day meeting would commence on November 17 and undertake a comprehensive review of various segments, progress in government schemes including Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.
'The numbers of troops on both sides are enormous.' 'They are about 50,000-60,000 soldiers facing each other in that sector -- that's about the total number of troops that both sides had in the 1962 War in all sectors.'
The experts said that climate change is not only raising temperatures and making India's heatwaves hotter, but also changing weather patterns that further drive dangerous weather extremes.
Nitish Kumar has to make an existential choice: Between governance and politics, argues Aditi Phadnis.
Later, there may be some tax relief aimed at the middle class and measures to benefit the sectors worst hit by Covid-19 and the resultant nationwide lockdown.
Congress general secretary and chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala accused the BJP of pushing India into a dark age of religious polarisation to "subserve its parochial political agenda in the short term".
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Wednesday approved a five-year-long reform-based result-linked power distribution scheme worth Rs 3.03 lakh crore, for strengthening system of utilities to improve efficiency. Briefing after the CCEA meet here, Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister R K Singh said, "We have done a lot for power distribution reforms. It needs to be strengthened. Today, the Cabinet has approved the new scheme worth Rs 3.03 lakh crore, including Rs 97,000 crore central outlay." He said the funds would be given to power distribution companies (discoms) to strengthen their system.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said there were visible signs of revival in the economy but the GDP growth may be in the negative zone or near zero in the current fiscal.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's Uttar Pradesh vice president Arvind Kumar Sharma will be reaching out to residents of western UP with public meetings in Noida, Greater Noida and Bulandshahr from Friday.
Weak consumer sentiment across urban and rural markets due to slow farm inflows, subdued agri-commodity prices, rising cost of ownership as a result of regulatory changes including safety, emissions, vehicle registration, along with a rise in interest cost/EMI, have impacted demand.
In the past, India strongly rejected references made to Jammu and Kashmir in a previous joint statement by Pakistan and China.
The World Bank report said Brand Northeast would build on elements such as healthy living, environmental sustainability, social responsibility, service orientation, among others.
This was the one Budget that required radical departures on all these fronts, when it had none, asserts, Shreekant Sambrani.
Ratings agency Moody's on Tuesday affirmed India's sovereign rating and upgraded the country's outlook to 'stable' from 'negative', citing receding downside risks to the economy and financial system.
Incessant showers caused landslides and floods in various parts of the country leaving at least 17 people dead on Wednesday while thousands more were forced to move to safety as rivers swelled and water reservoirs filled up fast.
State Bank of India's house economists on Monday said the recent farm sector reforms reek of parochial thinking and promote lazy farming as they only cater to cereal-producing states. In the recently concluded monsoon session, the government rushed through three legislation to change the way agricultural produce is marketed, sold and stored by dismantling the decades-old APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) mandis.
Skylark Drones, a leading drone platform company that counts Tata Steel, Ultratech Cement, Softbank Energy among its customers has secured $3 million in a pre-series A funding round. It would use the funding to strengthen its product offerings and fuel international expansion.
