India and the United States are committed to finalising an interim trade agreement, despite recent challenges including the US imposing a blanket 10 per cent surcharge and India's decision to wait for a new global tariff architecture. The US Trade Representative's annual report highlights India's maintained high import tariffs and various non-tariff barriers across several sectors.
Budget 2026 sticks to fiscal discipline, shuns populist measures despite five key state elections coming up, but ends up rattling stock markets with a higher transaction tax on derivatives trading.
The 'rescue' operation occurred within kilometres of Iran's underground tunnel complex at Isfahan, assessed by the IAEA and US intelligence as holding a substantial portion of the country's 60 per cent enriched uranium stockpile. Retired senior US military officers have highlighted that the mission's footprint -- hundreds of special operators, multiple heavy-lift aircraft deep inside Iran -- appears outsized for recovering a single airman. Prem Panicker continues his must read blog on the Iran War.
India and the European Union are set to announce on January 27 the conclusion of negotiations and finalisation of a free trade agreement, which is aimed at boosting economic ties between the two regions amid disruptions in global trade due to US tariffs, an official said.
When missiles fly in this region, they are never just aimed at military targets.
India will now face a lower reciprocal tariff of 10 per cent, down from 25 per cent, after US President Donald Trump announced a new global levy on items imported into America in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict against his sweeping duties on several nations.
India and the European Union (EU) on Tuesday announced the conclusion and finalisation of negotiations for the proposed free trade agreement (FTA).
Following a Supreme Court setback, Donald Trump has announced an increase in global tariffs from 10% to 15%, impacting international trade relations and raising concerns about economic repercussions.
'Trump says India will buy over $500 billion of US goods.' 'At present, India's annual imports of goods and energy from the US are under $50 billion.' 'Reaching $500 billion would likely require more than 20 years, suggesting the figure refers to a long-term aspiration rather than a near-term commitment.'
'The real story of 2025 is that India officially stopped being a 'market of the future' and started acting as the world's primary economic engine.'
India, the world's fourth largest economy, is set to maintain the 'goldilocks' phase with tailwinds of good growth, low inflation and robust banking performance as well as reform initiatives poised to sustain the economic pace witnessed during 2025.
The private consortium would invest more than Rs 1,200 crore over the next five years to launch a constellation of 12 state-of-the-art Earth Observation satellites equipped with panchromatic, multispectral, hyperspectral, and microwave SAR (synthetic aperture radar) sensors.
In trade negotiations, as in chess, sometimes you need to accept a temporary disadvantage to secure a better long-term position, points out Sonal Varma, chief economist (India and Asia ex-Japan) at Nomura.
Japan is expected to increase its investment target in India from the earlier 5 trillion yen ($34 billion) to almost 10 trillion yen.
The United States action of levying 25 per cent additional tariff on Indian goods is 'unfair, unjustified and unreasonable', India said on Wednesday in a firm reaction, signalling increasing tensions between the two strategic partners over New Delhi's energy ties with Moscow.
'The Bhashini Mission has delivered a working technology at large scale, which is as good as or better than the one with MNC tech giants.'
If India caves in to US pressure as Trump hopes it will, he will further try to blackmail it into submission, points out Ramesh Menon.
The high-level panel also asked the government to work towards re-orienting subsidies in a targeted manner from the crop sector to the non-crop sector and redesign the electronic National Agriculture Market.
India maintains "high" import duties on a wide range of American goods such as agricultural items, drug formulations, and alcoholic beverages, besides imposing non-tariif barriers, a US report has said. A day before announcing reciprocal tariffs, the US Trade Representative (USTR) released the 2025 National Trade Estimate (NTE) Report on March 31.
'As far as contract farming is concerned, we already have a model Act and states will be encouraged to adopt them.'
The government will formulate a strategy to make India self-reliant in edible oils by boosting domestic output of oilseeds and launch a comprehensive programme to support dairy farmers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Thursday. India imports a large quantity of edible oils to meet the domestic demand. During the 2022-23 marketing year (November-October), the country imported nearly 165 lakh tonnes of cooking oils, valuing a whopping Rs 1.38 lakh crore.
'We have to be prepared for the larger disruption that is likely to take place.'
The commerce ministry is working on different scenarios to assess the possible fallout of reciprocal tariffs to be imposed by the US administration on April 2 on its key trading partners including India, sources said. US President Donald Trump has said that April 2 will be 'Liberation Day' as he plans to announce tariffs or import duties to bring down America's trade deficit, and promote the country's manufacturing.
I'...additional concessions, such as opening government procurement, reducing agricultural subsidies, weakening patent protections, and allowing unrestricted data flows -- demands India has resisted for decades.'
'As the global economy undergoes significant transformations in 2025, India's ability to navigate the complexities of trade wars, financial realignments, and emerging blocs will be pivotal,' explain Harsh V Pant and Soumya Bhowmik.
Bharat Krishak Samaj demanded that the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana should be replaced with a new crop insurance and compensation scheme.
The Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act of a state regulates the purchase of agricultural products, such as cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables for that region. It hobbles farmers, imposing multiple levies on produce and disallows direct sales to private companies.
India's merchandise exports in October rose by 17.25 per cent to $39.2 billion against $33.43 billion a year ago, according to government data released on Thursday. Imports increased by 3.9 per cent to $66.34 billion in October compared to $63.86 billion in the year-ago period.
India's good old 'mandis' are all set to make way for swanky spot exchanges soon. In two months' time, winds of change will sweep across the country's agricultural sector with the launch of electronic spot exchanges.
India is among the fastest-growing markets for Google in the cloud services segment, a senior executive has said, adding that the tech giant is looking to partner companies in their business transformation through its offerings. Google Cloud India is seeing an "increased adoption" of its offerings across segments from the public sector to small and medium businesses and from startups and digital-native companies, Google Cloud India vice president and country managing director Bikram Singh Bedi told PTI.
In April, RBI had projected retail inflation to be around 5 per cent.
The government also proposed promoting 'one product one district' for better marketing and export of horticulture crops. It also called on states for early implementation of three key central model laws on land leasing, agriculture produce and livestock marketing and contract farming.
People in the know said plans were afoot to begin the sale of all food grains through online, with a major quantity through auctions that would be later extended to other commodities.
Pressure is on India to eliminate duties on sectors like auto, pharma, chemicals, electronics, gems and jewellery for giving developed nations real market access.
Critics argue that much more could have been done and that the government was slow to react to many events.
Given the gap between budgetary allocation and use, a parliamentary standing committee has asked the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (Ayush) to take steps to prevent underutilisation of funds under the National Ayush Mission (NAM) scheme. According to the data, the ministry was allocated Rs 1,200 crore for the mission in the Budgetary Estimate (BE) for FY24. The Revised Estimate (RE) for the year fell to Rs 815 crore, of which Rs 589 crore, or 74 per cent, has been spent till January.
The government has identified nine key focus areas in the AI national programme, including agriculture, education, Indian languages, smart cities, cybersecurity, transportation, and finance.
Starting with a family, which had a dealership of Bajaj Auto's scooters, to becoming the owner of a household name in consumer appliances who could afford to have Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan as the brand ambassador, Venugopal Dhoot's is a story of an aggressive small town businessman's pursuit to be on the top. Now arrested in connection with the ICICI Bank loan fraud case, Venugopal Dhoot during his heydays was not the one to simply sit on small achievements like Videocon becoming the largest television set manufacturer in India.
In terms of value, this translates into more than Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) of delivered quantity.
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
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