The University of Chicago has conferred its Alumni Award for Professional Achievement to India's former chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy V Subramanian, the first Indian economist to receive the honour since 1941.
Retail inflation rose to a three-month high of 1.33 per cent in December 2025 mainly due to higher prices of kitchen essentials, including vegetables and protein-rich items.
Experts say the state's economy is grappling with hidden debt, rising welfare costs, and lack of transparency.
Following are comments from economists at leading financial institutions, banks and rating agencies on the interim Budget:
This will be the first full-year Budget of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government since it came to power for a third consecutive term in July last year.
It boils down to whether greater government spending makes up for lower private consumption or whether, through higher interest rates or inflation, it hurts it.
A rate hike will set back the recovery process, but if RBI does raise rates, it will be to prevent the rise in food prices from spilling over to other sectors and to dampen inflationary expectations.
Moody's on Thursday upped India's growth projection for the next financial year beginning April 1, to 13.7 per cent, from 10.8 per cent estimated earlier, on the back of normalisation of activity and growing confidence in the market with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccine. For current fiscal, the US-based rating agency expects the economy to contract 7 per cent, lower than its previous estimate of 10.6 per cent contraction.
Announcing her appointment, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde hailed the Mysore-born Gopinath as "one of the world's outstanding economists with impeccable academic credentials, a proven track record of intellectual leadership and extensive international experience".
The Indian rupee, which has depreciated 1.1 per cent so far in August, is expected to decline further on the back of a strengthening US dollar and a weakening Chinese yuan, according to a Business Standard poll of analysts. The Indian rupee hit an all-time low recently, closing at 83.15 per dollar. Five of the 10 respondents said the Indian currency might touch 83.5 per dollar in August itself, while others said the worst could be over.
There is no doubt the oil companies are bleeding, but the issue is whether the government should also reduce the extra taxes it gets from high oil prices.
Liquidity in the banking system has slipped into a deficit for the first time in three weeks, prompting banks to borrow the largest quantum of funds from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in around a month and a half. The key catalyst for the sudden tightening in liquidity was due to outflows on account of advance tax payments, which occur towards the end of a quarter. Analysts also cited other factors such as a currency leakage and possible interventions by the RBI in the foreign exchange market, which contributed to the tighter liquidity conditions.
India's per capita average annual water availability is reducing.
Declining vegetable prices brought down the retail inflation to a 15-month low of 4.59 per cent in December and within the comfort zone of the Reserve Bank, government data showed on Tuesday. It is for the first time during the current fiscal that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation print is below 6 per cent or in the RBI's target range of 2 to 6 per cent. The central bank factors in the CPI-based inflation while arriving at its monetary policy. The inflation in December 2020 came down from 6.93 per cent in November, mainly on account of 10.41 per cent decline in vegetable prices over the year-ago period.
Rajiv Kumar will continue as vice-chairman of the body, along with other full-time members V K Saraswat, Ramesh Chand and V K Paul.
Economic affairs secretary S C Garg said that all macroeconomic parameters are performing well.
Welcoming the latest round of stimulus announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday, experts said the measures will support the economic recovery boosting demand, job creation and by providing funds to the MSME and stressed sectors. The fiscal impact of the stimulus is likely to be around 0.25-0.6 per cent of GDP in the current fiscal, they said.
Instead of a rate hike, or even a pause, there could be a window for the RBI for an interest rate cut
GST collections in March touched a record high of over Rs 1.23 lakh crore, a 27 per cent growth over the year-ago period, the Finance Ministry said on Thursday. "GST revenues crossed above Rs 1 lakh crore mark at a stretch for the last six months and a steep increasing trend over this period are clear indicators of rapid economic recovery post pandemic," the ministry said. Closer monitoring against fake-billing, deep data analytics using data from multiple sources including GST, income tax and customs IT systems and effective tax administration have also contributed to the steady increase in tax revenue over last few months, it added.
Mop up grows 10% y-o-y at Rs 1.05 trillion, almost equal to levels in February before a nationwide lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic
Sharma was the president of the conference, the first since the Paris Agreement of COP21 that expected parties to make enhanced commitments towards mitigating climate change.
The excise duty collection grew by 81 per cent in first quarter against the budgeted 21.7 per cent.
The UK voted to leave the European Union after 43 years.
For all its claims to economic glory, the majority of India's population lives vulnerable lives, a situation that has only worsened over the past 15 years, to the extent that the government now fears to release economic data or even conduct a proper Census, notes Rathin Roy.
The central government's deposits with the RBI had fallen to just Rs 100 crore as of June 8.
If imputed inflation for April and May is used, then you have inflation of over 6 per cent for two consecutive quarters, which is a worrying signal for the RBI.
India's GDP estimates for 2020-21 show that the economy is expected to perform much better than earlier projections by different agencies, indicating a sustained V-shape post-lockdown recovery, experts said. The first Advance Estimates (AE) by the National Statistics Office (NSO) has projected a contraction of 7.7 per cent in the real GDP during 2020-21. This was better than the projections by certain international agencies like the IMF and World Bank.
Central bank moves to infuse liquidity into bond market to help boost sentiment.
The one common thread that we see across these jobs is that they are all highly human-centric, points out Ramesh Kumar.
Growth in the third quarter (October-December) is expected to be the weakest in years, with spending hit due to unavailability of enough replacement currency.
The main reason was that CPI inflation would likely remain below 4 per cent till July.
Recent data from market analytics firm Nielsen shows that the rural market in the country's 630,000-odd villages is pulling down the overall FMCG business.
After contracting for two quarters in a row, the Indian economy entered the positive territory with a growth of 0.4 per cent in the October-December quarter, mainly due to good performance by farm, services and construction sectors, official data showed on Friday. Trade and hotel industry registered a contraction of 7.7 per cent during the third quarter this fiscal, as the sectors continued to suffer on account of coronavirus pandemic. According to the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), the farm sector recorded a growth of 3.9 per cent, and the manufacturing sector output grew by 1.6 per cent in the quarter under review.
The central bank has nine executive directors, and one of them -- S Karuppasamy -- retired recently. R Gandhi, who was executive director, has now been promoted to the post of deputy governor.
As per the RBI Act, the central bank has to have four deputy governors.
While Bibek Debroy echoed his view in Twitter, Pronob Sen questioned Kumar's conclusion
'In 2016, we had De-Mon and in 2017, we had GST.' 'The combined impact of these two started showing up in 2019 and 2020.' 'COVID-19 only added insult to injury.'
'It will be only in fiscal year 2023 when the size of the Indian economy will be bigger than what it was in 2020, you will see demand and employment rising.'
Rather, the existing ones should be implemented speedily to clean up the mess.
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