The central government's fiscal deficit touched 67.8 per cent of the full-year target at the end of January due to higher expenses and lower revenue realisations, according to official data released on Tuesday. In actual terms, the fiscal deficit or gap between the expenditure and revenue collection during April-January period stood at Rs 11.9 lakh crore, as per the data from the Controller General of Accounts (CGA). The fiscal deficit in the comparable period of 2021-22 was 58.9 per cent of that year's Revised Estimate (RE) in the Budget.
Benchmark indices closed higher on the last day of August, amid volatile trading session led by FMCG and IT shares.
Even if the same party returns to power, what is important to debate is that having introduced an entitlement, how challenging it is to reverse such decisions, says Mukesh Butani.
Agri experts are meeting FinMin ministry officials on Monday to give their inputs on the Budget.
Unperturbed by the rise in the fiscal deficit, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday exuded confidence that it would remain within the target of 4.8 per cent of GDP in the current financial year.
The finance ministry on Friday withdrew expenditure curbs on various departments and ministries imposed in June in the wake of the COVID-19 second wave, reflecting improvement in public finances and the urgency to step up growth.
Ramoji Rao lived as the interface between business and politics and was an active participant in both for most of his remarkable life.
Moody's Investors Service on Wednesday raised India's economic growth estimate for 2023 to 5.5 per cent from 4.8 per cent pegged earlier, on the back of a sharp increase in capital expenditure in the Budget and a resilient economic momentum. It however revised downwards India's growth estimate for 2022 to 6.8 per cent from 7 per cent pegged in November last year. In its February update to Global Macro Outlook 2023-24, Moody's raised the baseline 2023 real growth projections "meaningfully" for several G20 economies, including the US, Canada, the Euro area, India, Russia, Mexico, and Turkiye, accounting for a stronger end to 2022.
The government expects to realise Rs 35,100 crore from the partial sale of Bharatnet fibre assets and around 13,500 mobile towers owned by state-run telecom firms as part of its national monetisation pipeline released on Monday. Government think tank Niti Aayog has valued over 2.86 lakh kilometre of optical fibre assets laid by BBNL and BSNL under rural broadband project Bharatnet at Rs 26,300 crore, according to the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) document. According to the document, BSNL's 13,567 mobile tower assets and MTNL's 1,350 towers have been valued at Rs 8,800 crore.
Escalation of the conflict in West Asia between Israel and Iran has had a direct impact on the energy markets, and more broadly on the financial markets as well as the global economy.
Infosys on Thursday posted a 7.8 per cent year-on-year rise in consolidated net profit at Rs 6,128 crore in March quarter of FY23, and gave 4-7 per cent revenue growth forecast for FY24 amid macro economic uncertainities. The net profit (after minority interest) stood at Rs 5,686 crore in the fourth quarter of FY22. Seen sequentially, the net profit for Q4 came in 7 per cent lower.
So far, 38.38 lakh taxpayers accounting for 64.42 per cent of the total businesses, who had registered in July, filed returns.
Several critics including some rating agencies have doubted prospects of meeting this ambitious fiscal deficit target.
Finance minister attempts a clean-up job, keeps projected expenditure growth low.
Billed as the first exercise of its kind in demystifying the process of drawing up Budget, Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday made public the draft Budget for 2003-04 that earmarks over 40 per cent of total allocations to irrigation and power.
As part of the plan, government departments may have to surrender the unspent project-linked component of the Rs 70,000-crore (Rs 700-billion) additional gross Budgetary support at the end of the financial year.
The Individual tax payer exemption limit to be raised to Rs 200,000 from Rs 180,000.
Economy to grow by 7.2-7.5 per cent in second half of current fiscal, says FM.
Budget was a mild disappointment. Yet, the bull run continues.
Capex for next year expected to be up 25% to Rs 3 lakh crore
'The household sector, which is still the largest contributor of financial savings, has been experiencing a decline in the last six years, and it has fallen below 8% of GDP.'
More services such as ATM operations are proposed to be brought within the service tax net.
In a Q&A with Doordarshan, Jaitley discusses how he chose the areas on which he would spend more.
The government had set a budgetary target of over Rs 1.87 lakh crore for collection from customs duty in current fiscal
More incentives will be given to agriculture sector for increasing agriculture production.
Modi government's story of five years with regard to equity allocation for PSUs shows that it may have allowed a large part of its resources to be wasted. This is also a worrying reflection of the government's inability to take hard decisions - whether they pertain to privatisation or forcing weak public-sector banks to wind down their operations, says A K Bhattacharya.
The railways have been able to project improvement in finances.
The interim Budget has attempted to tick all the boxes that could help the Modi government return to power, reports Archis Mohan.
'Let us hope that this Budget delivers.' 'It needs 10 per cent plus real GDP growth in 2021-22, the rebound year,' notes Omkar Goswami.
The higher salaries and pension outgo will be equivalent to about one per cent of the GDP.
The government is committed to restrict the fiscal deficit at 3.4 per cent of GDP as envisaged in the Budget.
Amid rising demand for coal freight and an aggressive push towards diversifying its freight basket, Indian Railways is planning to buy 100,000 more wagons over the next three fiscal years. The procurement plan will majorly comprise BOXN wagons, which are used to transport coal, said a senior Ministry of Railways official. Notably, the railways recently floated a sizeable tender worth Rs 35,000 crore of wagons, which had been in the pipeline since 2018. "Our Budget Estimates for freight increase were conservative.
The first Cabinet meeting was held immediately after Siddaramaiah was sworn in as Chief Minister, and D K Shivakumar as Deputy Chief Minister along with eight MLAs as Ministers.
Collection will have to rise by 30 per cent in the remaining period of the financial year to achieve the Budget estimate.
Anticipating an adverse impact in view of a bad monsoon, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday set an ambitious direct tax collection target for the current fiscal, revising it upward to Rs 4 lakh crore, up Rs 30,000 crore (Rs 300 billion) over the Budget estimates.
The economic growth slowed to 6.9 per cent in the second quarter against 8.4 per cent in the same period last year.
The Budget decides to take the lead in revving up infrastructure.
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