'India seems to be on a relatively better wicket compared to other emerging markets.'
Nirmala Sitharaman is proving to be a better finance minister than her initial rookie status might have led people to expect, observes T N Ninan.
At Rediff Labs, we analysed the data on military expenditure by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday raised the personal income tax rebate limit, doled out sops on small savings and announced one of the biggest hikes in capital spending in the past decade as she did a tight rope walk in the Budget between staying fiscally prudent and meeting public expectations in the year before general elections.
The finance minister could well be on her way to setting a record of achieving the biggest single-year reduction in the government's fiscal deficit, explains A K Bhattacharya.
From the enactment of the capital control Act to the recognition of the BSE as a stock exchange and the infamous Harshad Mehta scam, here are the 18 biggest events for stock markets from 1947 to 1993.
Never before in post-reforms India have Union Budgets seen a steady reduction in fiscal deficit for five consecutive years, points out A K Bhattacharya.
The government will set up 16 new medical colleges over the next five years.
The demand for black oils and specialty products like fuel oil, bitumen, petcoke and sulphur has also shown marked improvement, facilitating increase of refineries throughput.
'The government must provide more funds to enable the armed forces to fight and win tomorrow's wars,' states Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Tuesday's bridge collapse once again puts the spotlight on the city's urban infrastructure and a dire need for its development.
'The Budget will have to be substantially re-cast as soon as a new government takes charge after the elections.' 'Both revenue and expenditure numbers will have to be trimmed -- and then may better reflect the deceleration of economic activity caused by slowing consumption trends,' points out T N Ninan.
It was 55.3 per cent for the same period last year, and data shows the fiscal deficit for April-May was kept in reasonable check in spite of heavy frontloading of expenditure.
Experts said a dip in consumption expenditure indicated an increasing prevalence of poverty in the country.
Hit by the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and soaring fuel prices, airlines are flying towards record losses with a likely loss of a whopping Rs 20,000 crore for the full fiscal year, warns a report. The airlines are flying towards their steepest-ever net loss of over Rs 20,000 crore this fiscal, which will be 44 per cent more than Rs 13,853 crore they bled last fiscal, Crisil said in a report. This will push back the industry's recovery beyond fiscal 2023, the report based on three large listed airlines--Indigo, Spicejet, and Air India--which together command 75 per cent of the domestic traffic, warned.
Digital canvassing is expected to benefit from political money looking for alternative blow horns.
The Indian economy has recovered 'handsomely' from the pandemic-induced disruptions, former Niti Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya said on Tuesday, while expressing hope that the recovery will be sustained and the growth rate of 7 to 8 per cent will be restored. Panagariya suggested that the government must now signal its intention to wind down fiscal deficit by cutting it by half-to-one percentage point in 2022-23. "The Indian economy has recovered handsomely, returning to its pre-COVID GDP... "Only private consumption is still below its pre-COVID-19 level," the eminent economist told PTI in an interview.
Only Hindustan Unilever and Nestl bucked the trend.
When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tables her Budget on February 1, the numbers could be something to cheer.
While the five years of the Modi government have indeed seen a healthy increase in PSUs' outlay and the Budgetary support for them, the next year's numbers reveal the squeeze in the government's own resources even though it is expecting a much higher dividend income from the PSUs. These do not augur well for the PSUs in 2019-20 and the years ahead, unless these numbers are revisited and, hopefully, revised in the full Budget that will be presented later in July this year, says A K Bhattacharya.
The preliminary processing of tax returns is already undertaken with the help of technology. There is now greater scope of using more technology to reduce the human interface even further, notes A K Bhattacharya.
The growth in the contact-intensive portion of the economy trailed our expectation, highlighting how imperative it is for confidence to improve, either through accelerated vaccinations or otherwise, to drive a sustainable recovery in these sectors, asserts Aditi Nayar.
Experts attribute this trend to a combination of end of capital expenditure cycle, increased automation, RIL's preference for time-bound labour contracts, and telecom and retail's outsourced human resource model.
India spent USD 63.9 billion on its military in 2017, an increase of 5.5 per cent compared with 2016 and of 45 per cent since 2008.
Every option before the finance minister comes with a price tag, observes T N Ninan.
India's harsh lockdown has left companies grappling with temporary closure, chaotic supply chains and depressed demand. Consequently, business plans have been modified.
In 10 years from 1995 to 2005, the military expenditure in South Asia increased by 50 per cent, and one in every 10 military personnel in the world are in this part of the globe, a United States report has said.
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.
Almost 63 per cent of the increased allocation of around Rs 1.01 trillion has been spent in the first five months of 2020-21.
Despite unprecedented levels of uncertainty in Samvat 2077, investors have little to complain about on the returns front. The BSE Sensex delivered returns of 38 per cent in this period, while the Nifty registered a return of over 40 per cent. As is the case in bull markets, companies in the small- and mid-capitalisation basket outperformed the benchmarks, with returns almost twice those of frontliners.
India's Rs 4.5-trillion fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector was one of the first to bounce back from the lockdown induced blues, reporting a year-on-year (YoY) growth in the October-December quarter last year. That said, the overall consumption figures continue to remain depressed. The FMCG market, which includes daily consumables like branded atta, hand sanitizers, edible oils, shampoos, razors, and so on, recorded 7.3 per cent value growth during the period, while the smartphone market grew by 21 per cent.
Historically, there has been no correlation between growth in bank credit to industry and lower benchmark interest rate
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said the Indian economy is witnessing a strong recovery after a long and strict lockdown. Addressing a press conference to announce more stimulus measures to boost growth, she said macro-economic indicators are pointing towards recovery. She noted that COVID-19 active cases have declined from over 10 lakh to 4.89 lakh with case fatality rate (CFR) at 1.47 per cent.
Citing the massive surge in Omicron infections and the resultant impact on overall economic activities in the March quarter, Swiss brokerage UBS Securities has revised downwards its India's growth forecast for the current financial year to 9.1 per cent from 9.5 per cent earlier. However, UBS Securities does not see the third wave impact extending to the next financial year as it has revised upwards its real GDP forecast to 8.2 per cent, up from 7.7 per cent earlier, expecting the real GDP growth to remain well above the historical average. The World Bank pegs it at 8.3 per cent, unchanged from its June assessment, saying the recovery is not broad-based yet.
First it was called content-led commerce. Then it came to be known as influencer-led commerce. And its latest iteration is creator economy. This evolution of the terminology for online personas impacting buying decisions -- through blogs, memes, bite-sized videos, and podcasts -- has happened over the past five to seven years.
Emerging markets such as India have always run higher inflation rates than developed economies such as the US and countries of Western Europe. But for the first time in the past 30 years, the US reported a higher consumer price inflation (CPI) rate than India in five consecutive months. The US reported a CPI rate of 7.5 per cent in January 2022 against 6.01 per cent in India and analysts expect the trend to continue for at least a few months more
Xi does not want to risk any political or economic crisis complicating his bid to remain in office, observes Ambassador Shyam Saran, the former foreign secretary.
10 stocks which are most popular with brokerages right now and are expected to deliver maximum upside over the next 12 months.
India's projected economic growth for 2022 has been downgraded by over two per cent to 4.6% by the United Nations, a decrease attributed to the ongoing war in Ukraine, with New Delhi expected to face restraints on energy access and prices, reflexes from trade sanctions, food inflation, tightening policies and financial instability, according to a UN report released on Thursday. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report downgraded its global economic growth projection for 2022 to 2.6 per cent from 3.6 per cent due to shocks from the Ukraine war and changes in macroeconomic policies that put developing countries particularly at risk. The report said while Russia will experience a deep recession this year, significant slowdowns in growth are expected in parts of Western Europe and Central, South and South-East Asia.
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