The government today extended the tenure of Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Virmani by three months on a temporary basis, said a finance ministry spokesperson. His current two-year term came to an end on Tuesday.
The 31st meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, held in December 2018, deferred a decision to reduce the GST rate for cement from 28 per cent to 18 per cent. This was despite recognising that cement - along with automobile parts - remained among the few mass-consumption items still taxed at the highest slab, which was originally meant for luxury and sin goods.
The Economic Survey 2007-08 has some interesting insights for infrastructure aficionados.
Resolving the TBS challenge comprehensively would require 4 Rs: Recognition, recapitalisation, resolution and reform.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected the residential property market during the April-June period last year but sales have improved in affordable homes segment since July onwards, reflecting economic recovery in the real estate sector, according to the Economic Survey. The National Housing Bank's (NHB) Housing Price Indices (HPIs) are a broad measure of movement of residential property prices observed within a geographic boundary. The NHB-RESIDEX captures two housing price indices -- HPI@ Assessment Prices and HPI@ Market Prices - Under Construction Properties based on the data available for 50 cities with quarterly updation.
"Another major policy issue in the trade sector which created a lot of heat was that of SEZs... Some fundamental policy changes are needed for the merchandise trade sector and these include checking the proliferation of SEZs," the pre- Budget Economic Survey, tabled in Parliament on Thursday, said.
The social and educational conditions of 208 OBC communities enlisted by the state government will be collected during the survey, which will be followed by a special drive to ensure that none were left out across the state, an official said.
Yashwant Sinha has concluded that with the Economic Survey the government has accepted economic defeat as it is unable to sustain high growth.
Rumours in the bureaucracy on his successor include the names of Sajjid Chinoy of JP Morgan, Rathin Roy of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Neelkanth Mishra of Credit Suisse and the principal economic advisor, Sanjeev Sanyal.
The most striking features of this Budget was its focus on simplification and improving the ease of doing business in India, asserts Kaku Nakhate.
As per the survey, the trade sector that comprises wholesale and retail grew by 4.8 per cent to Rs 14.79 lakh crore (Rs 14.79 trillion) in 2012-13, accounted for 15.8 per cent share in the gross domestic product.
The Survey shows fiscal consolidation despite slowdown in growth.
The Economic Survey 2009-10 on Thursday made out a strong case for liberalising foreign direct investment policies for health insurance, rural banking and higher education, stating FDI can boost trade in services.
The 2005-06 Survey tabled in Parliament said the Indian industry needed to be unburdened from high level of taxes and distortive exemptions that provided perverse incentives.
India is not "rethinking" supporting investments from China, said Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday, referring to a proposal made in the Economic Survey 2024. The survey by India's chief economic advisor last week said India had two "choices" to benefit from the so-called China plus one strategy, either by integrating into that country's supply chain or by promoting foreign direct investment (FDI). "Chief economic advisor's report speaks about new ideas and gives out their own thinking. It is not at all binding on the government and there is no rethinking to support Chinese investments in the country," Goyal told reporters in Delhi.
At the same time, the survey also suggested broadening the long-term debt markets by liberalising the investment norms for insurance and pension funds and said that the government could consider a guarantee mechanism for credit enhancement of long-term infrastructure debt.
A lot of the 100-day programmes would be 'milestone-based' with timelines for achieving targets for social-sector schemes.
Questioning the relevance of the minimum support price regime in the politically sensitive farm sector, the Economic Survey on Wednesday recommended a broad-based agricultural development programme.
The Economic Survey said that a number of indicators -- GDP, IIP, credit, investment and capacity utilisation, point to a deceleration in real activity since first quarter of 2016-17 and a further deceleration since the third quarter.
'Not paying workers enough will end up being self-destructive or harmful for the corporate sector itself.'
The Economic Survey has suggested that Contract Law should also be amended, which would help in utilising such labour mainly in non-core activities. In addition, the survey has observed that labour laws should be applicable to companies that pay wages to contract labour.
According to the data released in Patna by Development Commissioner Vivek Singh, the state's total population stood at a little over 13.07 crore, out of which the EBCs (36 per cent) were the largest social segment followed by the OBCs at 27.13 per cent.
'Mamata needs to address the anger and resentment among various sections of the Hindu community because low-scale communal violence has always paid richer electoral dividends for the BJP.'
'The long term strategy is that this government wants to create a second class citizen list.'
The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Bihar government to put in the public domain the break-up of the caste survey data to enable those aggrieved to challenge the findings.
Stating that the food subsidy bill is becoming "unmanageably large", the Economic Survey 2021 on Friday suggested the government to increase the selling price of foodgrains provided through ration shops to over 80 crore beneficiaries. Foodgrains via ration shops are supplied at highly subsidised rates of Rs 3 per kg for rice, Rs 2 per kg for wheat and Rs 1 per kg for coarse grains through Public Distribution System (PDS) as per the National Food Security Act (NFSA). "While it is difficult to reduce the economic cost of food management in view of rising commitment towards food security, there is a need to consider the revision of central issue price (CIP) to reduce the bulging food subsidy bill," the survey said.
TCS, Wipro and Infosys dropped by up to 4.47 per cent, dragging down the BSE IT index by 2.96 per cent
The Indian economy could remain less affected by global trade wars than other countries because the two engines of domestic growth - consumption and investment - are likely to face a limited impact from such headwinds, according to an article on the 'State of the Economy' in the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) bulletin, released on Tuesday.
A cross-country comparison shows that India currently has the lowest number of taxpayers.
Marketmen feel the reformist wishlist prescription for the government for next five years though presents a good road-map for future growth but is hard to implement. The Economic Survey mooted the idea of doing away with cess, surcharges on taxes and initiating reforms in petrol pricing and financial sector, besides recommending a disinvestment target of Rs 25,000 crore (Rs 250 billion) annually.
'Three manufacturing sectors can create jobs by the million: Apparel, food, and electronic assembly.' 'Let's talk to them and ask them what it would take to scale by a factor of ten,' suggests Naushad Forbes.
The Economic Survey prescribed on Thursday a new bankruptcy law for ensuring speedy disposal of insolvency petitions. Tabled in parliament, the survey called for a new bankruptcy law to 'ensure speedy and effective bankruptcy so as to save/preserve assets for alternative use.'
The government should lift the ban on futures trading on rice, sugar, tur and urad and decontrol sugar sector, saying the resultant price discovery would help farmers and other stakeholders, the Economic Survey said on Thursday.
The central government spent a budget estimate of 19.46 per cent of its total expenditure (both plan and non-plan) in 2009-10 on social services, including rural development, against 10.46 per cent in 2003-04, the Survey tabled in Parliament said on Thursday.
The rupee had depreciated sharply during the last six months of 2011. It had reached a peak of Rs 43.94 to the dollar on July 27, 2011, and hit a low of Rs 54.23 on December 15, 2011.
The next government in these states may find it tough to push economic growth through long-term reforms, which would be necessary.
The headline inflation is expected to decline to 6.2-6.6 per cent in March 2013.
As a new initiative for promoting highway development, the mode of engineering procurement and construction contracts is being brought in, it said.
The investment by FIIs in equity instruments amounted to $5.4 billion during April-May 2009, while a turnaround has been noticed in the performance of mutual fund industry that had remained subdued during 2008, the survey stated. The mutual fund investments (net) in equity markets turned positive in March 2009 and were Rs 2,320 crore (Rs 23.2 billion) during April-May 2009, the survey said, adding they invested Rs 36,791 crore (Rs 367.91 billion) in debt instruments.
Already, the government's resources are strained due to various fiscal stimulus and the Survey has separately noted that high growth environment creates scope for partial rollback of these stimuli.
