Can the finance minister manage our expectations, asks A K Bhattacharya.
'We are in a position to start due diligence and private data room access shortly.'
'Not disclosing information to the public indicates that there is something wrong with Project Cheetah.'
By taking the mutual fund route, investors can take exposure to gilts with small amounts. Over a decade or more, returns from these funds tend to be sound.
'Interim Budget has ignited the entrepreneurial spirit.'
Tuesday's bridge collapse once again puts the spotlight on the city's urban infrastructure and a dire need for its development.
The Budget outlay for health and well being is Rs 2.23 lakh crore in 2021-22 as against BE of Rs 94,452 crore and marks an increase of 137 per cent," she said while presenting 2021-22 Budget in the Lok Sabha.
After some enforced slowdown in offtake during April-May 2024 due to elections, the cement sector is looking at a possible demand rebound which may help it to push up prices. The April'24 offtake was muted while May'24 saw some improvement with a likely 5-6 per cent rise in demand month-on-month (MoM). In June, some price hikes seem to have been taken, which suggests more sustained improvement in demand.
The coaching-tuition-profiteering model built on the back of a broken education system is a scandal and an abomination, and must go, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'Personal income tax is growing by 27 per cent and most refunds have already been issued.'
The government has limited room to reduce expenditure without further weakening growth, it noted.
Days after cutting the salaries and other allowances of MPs and ministers, the government has passed instructions to all departments to reduce their expenditure by as much as 60 per cent from their first-quarter spending plans.
The finance minister may stagger some of the recommendations.
Union finance secretary T V Somanathan recently said the Centre had saved Rs 10,000 crore in FY22 on interest payments after adopting new accounting mechanisms for central government agencies and centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) for state governments. Speaking at an event, Somanathan said due to these, there was an unspent balance of Rs 1.2 trillion with state agencies from CSS as on March 31, 2022. This means this amount will be reduced from the Centre's borrowing for now and it can be considered a short-term saving for the exchequer.
The government has exhausted only 39 per cent of its fiscal deficit target in the first half of FY24.
House economists at the nation's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) have urged the government to budget for nursing the pandemic-ravaged economy and not to focus too much on fiscal consolidation as there is a need for more stabilisation measures to sustain the fledgling recovery. And one of the best way to begin the new fiscal is to complete the share sale of LIC this fiscal. This can go a long way in repairing the overstretched balance sheet which in turn will bring down fiscal deficit to a much lower 6.3 per cent in FY23 as the public coffers will be left with a cash surplus of at least Rs 3 lakh crore to begin the new fiscal, SBI chief economist Soumya Kanti Ghosh said in a pre-Budget note on Wednesday.
The government has utilised 'escape clause' under the FRBM Act which provides it leeway for relaxation of fiscal deficit roadmap during time of stress.
A query has been raised about the "missing" Rs 1.7 trillion fiscal hole in India's financial accounts. This is so because the Budget uses the revised estimates, a projection of how much the government was expected to earn, while the Economic Survey uses the first actual numbers.
This is not an election Budget in the sense that I might target the voter in the coming elections. But if you look beyond this round of state elections, and tilt the periscope to graze at the more distant horizon, see how the Narendra Modi government wishes things looking by the summer of 2024, observes Shekhar Gupta.
India's smartphone shipment grew by 11.5 per cent in the first quarter of calendar year (CY) 2024 on a year-on-year basis to 34 million units. This is the third consecutive quarter of growth in shipments, International Data Corporation's (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker said.
India on Monday set aside over Rs 7,100 crore in its budget for 2021-22 as development assistance for countries in its neighbourhood as well as in Africa and Latin America, with Bhutan getting the maximum allocation of Rs 3,004 crore while Rs 100 crore will be given to Chabahar port project in Iran.
Terming infrastructure as the "backbone" of any nation's development, Goyal while presenting the interim Budget for 2019-20 in the Lok Sabha said India aspires to be a USD 10 trillion economy in the next eight years, and on the anvil is next generation infrastructure of roads, railways, seaports, airports, urban transport, gas and electric transmission and inland waterways.
Ahead of Union Budget, the government on Thursday said it hopes to exceed the indirect tax collection estimate of Rs 3.36 lakh crore for this fiscal in view of the buoyancy in the economy.
Sitharaman also said that the government's capital expenditure was on track and Budget estimates would be met.
Excluding the pension outgo, the allocation in the Union Budget for the armed forces stands at Rs 3.62 lakh crore.
There are several welcome standalone reforms, but these do not add up to a coherent strategy to achieve a $5 trillion economy or secure Aatmanirbharta, observes Rathin Roy.
While presenting her 2021-22 Union Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had set a fiscal deficit target of 6.8 per cent of nominal gross domestic product (GDP) against the 2020-21 Revised Estimate of 9.5 per cent. The fiscal correction in the upcoming 2022-23 Union Budget is unlikely to be that steep. Even as discussions among top Budget-makers are ongoing, the fiscal deficit target for 2022-23 may likely be in the range of 6.5-6.8 per cent.
The direct tax collections are likely to fall short of the revised Budget target by Rs 650 billion and, in fact, were Rs 150 billion lower than the original estimate for the fiscal
CAG recommended fixing a definite time frame for rolling out simplified GST return forms.
But it is disappointing to note that Sitharaman's third Union Budget continues to promote a few problematic ideas, observes A K Bhattacharya.
Tax devolution shares, which threaten to create a north-south divide among states, may have more to do with per capita income, and not so much with population.
Much of the Q3 data will simply not be available for the CSO to factor in its calculation.
Banking on increased freight haul and earnings from upper class travellers, Indian Railways has projected a gross earning of Rs 43,445 crore (Rs 434.45 billion) in 2003-04.
While indirect taxes collections have exceeded revised estimates (RE) by Rs 9,885 crore, direct tax realisations fell short by Rs 4,000 crore over the RE.
Can Jaitley's team hope to garner 17% more on personal income tax?
'As the city grows, so do its fire incidents.'
There are various estimates of India's debt to GDP ratio, but the consensus is that that it would be over 80 per cent at the end of the current fiscal year.
The government wants new domestic companies to set up their manufacturing units fast and hence the concessional tax rate of 15 per cent has been extended by a year till March 2024, revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj said on Friday. Stating that direct and indirect tax collections are going up and have good buoyancy, Bajaj said it means that the corporate sector is also doing well, and India's tax to GDP ratio could be "highest ever" in the current year. The Budget 2022-23 presented on February 1 has proposed that the concessional 15 per cent corporate tax rate would be available for one more year till March 2024 for newly incorporated manufacturing units.
The government had last fiscal exceeded the direct tax collection target set in the Budget.
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