The development of private data sources is a hugely positive development. It should serve as a challenge to the government to improve its own record on producing timely and reliable statistics, points out T N Ninan.
The country's demographic dividend is dissipating, with seriously adverse consequences for young India, asserts Shankar Acharya, former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India.
'Nobody is talking about the inequality that is going to come.'
The second wave of COVID-19 and the resultant localised lockdowns have impacted over 75 lakh jobs, taking the unemployment rate to a four-month high of 8 per cent, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said on Monday. The situation on the employment front is expected to continue to remain challenging going forward as well, CMIE's managing director and chief executive Mahesh Vyas said.
The fall in the employment rate translated into a 2.6 million fall in absolute employment between December 2022 and March 2023. Most of this fall was in March 2023.
Evidently, households see a brighter future after the Budget, reveals Mahesh Vyas.
Claims of a spike in poverty and inequality in India during the Covid-19 pandemic are patently false as such claims are based on uncomparable different surveys, according to a paper co-authored by eminent economist Arvind Panagariya. The paper also noted that inequality fell in the country during Covid years, both in rural and urban areas as well as nationally. Panagariya, Columbia University Professor and former vice chairman of NITI Aayog and Vishal More of Intelink Advisors, New Delhi have co-authored a detailed paper 'Poverty and Inequality in India: Before and After Covid-19'.
January 2021 more than recovered the loss of employment of the past three months, notes Mahesh Vyas.
The rate of unemployment was the highest in the urban areas, which constitute the most number of red zones due to the COVID-19 cases, at 29.22 per cent, as against 26.69 per cent for the rural areas.
Sebi has restructured its advisory committee on market data that recommends policy measures pertaining to areas like securities market data access and privacy. Rejigging its market data advisory committee, Sebi has said the panel will now have 21 members, as per the latest information with the regulator. Earlier the committee had 20 members. The committee is chaired by M S Sahoo, Professor at National Law University, Delhi and former chairperson, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI).
These could include strengthening the public-private partnership (PPP) dispute resolution mechanism, uniform PPP institutional framework, easier terms for infrastructure companies accessing bond markets, and tax sops, Business Standard has learnt. Investment in infrastructure projects with high multiplier effect has been the Centre's main plank to revive the economy, create employment and boost consumption.
Urban employment rate increased to 34.96 per cent in February. This is the highest employment rate recorded in urban India since September 2020.
Expenditure on new projects slowed down for the second quarter in a row amid an uncertain global environment and higher borrowing costs. There were new projects worth a cumulative Rs 3.26 trillion in the July-September period, according to data provided by project tracker Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). This figure is much less than Rs 4.39 trillion in the June quarter (Q1FY23) and Rs 8.46 trillion in the March quarter (Q4FY22).
About 56 million Indians may have plunged into extreme poverty in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, increasing the global tally by 71 million and making it the worst year for poverty reduction since World War II, according to fresh estimates by the World Bank. "The global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is likely to be missed: By then, about 600 million people will remain in abject poverty. A major course correction is needed," Indermit Gill, chief economist at the World Bank, tweeted. The World Bank in its latest "Poverty and Shared Prosperity" made fresh estimates of poverty using a new extreme poverty line based on the purchasing power parity (PPP) of $2.15, the earlier one being at $1.9.
Over 10 million Indians have lost their jobs because of the second wave of COVID-19, and around 97 per cent of households' incomes have declined since the beginning of the pandemic last year, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) chief executive Mahesh Vyas said on Monday. The unemployment rate measured by the think-tank is expected to come at 12 per cent at the end of May as against 8 per cent in April, Vyas told PTI, adding this signifies that about 10 million or 1 crore Indians have lost jobs in this period. Stating that the main reason for the job losses is "mainly the second wave" of COVID-19 infections, Vyas said, "As the economy opens up, part of the problem will be solved but not entirely."
'RBI is already late in addressing inflation pressures.'
'The China opportunity, the digital opportunity and the end of geography opportunity are the three pieces of luck India got due to Covid.'
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi cited a viral video on social media platforms, claiming that in it Modi's voice is heard in a call with BJP rebel Kripal Parmar.
The growth is particularly remarkable because it comes at levels higher than during the pre-Covid times, notes Mahesh Vyas.
'Unemployment barely figures in the Budget except as a derived demand from the industry and infrastructure.' 'There is no effort at direct attack on unemployment.'
Nearly 3.64 lakh educated and "semi-educated" youngsters had registered with employment exchanges across Gujarat till December 2021, according to state government data.
The unemployment rate shot up to a record 10.9 per cent in the week that ended on December 18, points out Mahesh Vyas.
'According to CMIE data, employment in manufacturing saw a reduction from 51 million in the country in 2016 to 27 million in 2021. 'That is, it has halved in just 5 years. 'At the same time, the national lockdown resulted in reverse migration to rural areas, and an increase in the number of workers in agriculture. 'It also means joblessness has increased in agriculture because there are too many workers; the number of workers went up from 200 million to 232 million.'
India's unemployed, the report said, were mostly those with higher education degrees and the young.
Casual labour, which is the type of employment provided by agriculture, yields much lower wages -- of the order of Rs 291 per day. Labour would not voluntarily shift to this lowest wage-rate sector unless it had no better option, observes Mahesh Vyas.
While there were Rs 7.01 trillion worth of new assets in December 2019, this fell 88.6 per cent to Rs 80,000 crore for the three months ending December 2020, shows data from project tracker Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), reports Sachin P Mampatta.
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy has revised its GDP growth forecast for the current fiscal to 6.7 per cent from 6.2 per cent announced last month.
'The pipeline of new industrial projects is the best I've seen in the last 10 years, and it looks solid enough to sustain for at least a few quarters,' points out Naushad Forbes, adding, 'It is only when we get back to the same labour force participation we saw before Covid that the economy will have truly recovered.'
'Some people even boldly ask for a 100% increase in the salary.'
Only West Asia and North Africa have a lower employment rate than India, points out Mahesh Vyas.
Households with only one employed person can be considered to be somewhat vulnerable. Their proportion is rising. Also rising is the proportion of highly vulnerable households with no person employed, observes Mahesh Vyas.
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy on Tuesday said industrial production growth is likely to decline in the second half of the current fiscal, while the first advanced estimate of kharif crop showed a 10 per cent drop in food production.\n\n\n\n
The biggest loss of jobs among salaried employees was of 'white-collar professional employees and other employees'. Among these are engineers including software engineers, physicians, teachers, accountants, analysts and so on, who are professionally qualified and are employed in some private or government organisation All the gains made in their employment over the past four years were washed away during the lockdown, reveals Mahesh Vyas.
Retail sales of cars are back to January 2018 levels in August 2021. Two-wheeler retail sales are 22 per cent lower, nearly four years down the line.
The finance minister did very well for equity market investors but not so with families, reveals Mahesh Vyas.
'The FY2023 inflation outcome is likely to exceed the RBI's current forecast by a wide margin.'
In his address after more than 75,000 people were given appointment letters for various government jobs in the first tranche, Modi acknowledged the challenges facing the economy the world over with many countries hit by a record inflation and unemployment and said India is making every effort to come out of the situation unscathed.
'By November 2020, men recovered most of their lost jobs, but women were less fortunate: 49 per cent of the job losses by November were of women.' 'The recovery has benefited all, but it benefited women less than it did men,' notes Mahesh Vyas.
The manufacturing sector (excluding petroleum sector) would report a 24.3 per cent PAT growth mainly on account of low raw material prices and soft interest rates, CMIE said, adding PAT of the financial and non-financial services would rise by 32.2 per cent and 20.4 per cent, respectively.
Indian economy is expected to grow by 10 per cent or more in the current fiscal, and 8 per cent plus in the next fiscal year, Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar said on Tuesday. Addressing a book launch event, Kumar further said that seven years of the Modi government has laid a strong economic foundation for businesses to thrive in India. "There was a hiccup (in economic growth) for two years due to COVID-19 pandemic.
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