'If you do quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, someone earning Rs 10 lakh can get a benefit of anywhere between Rs 35,000 and Rs 45,000, even if s/he is availing exemptions.' 'A large proportion of people do not avail full exemptions as they don't have money to invest in those schemes.'
The govt said Rs 30,729 crore was required for waiving loans of small and marginal farmers.
''Even without major reforms, with a business as usual scenario, and with current inflation trends, we should be clocking around 11 to 12 per cent nominal growth.' 'That is not happening and is a source of worry,' Rathin Roy tells Arup Roychoudhury.
The Centre on Monday earmarked a separate Rs 2,217 crore for 42 urban centres to tackle air pollution and announced the much-awaited voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and polluting vehicles, even as it shrunk the budgetary allocation for the environment ministry from the last fiscal by nearly eight percent. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech for 2021-22, announced a total of Rs 2869.93 crore for the ministry, Rs 230 crore less than the last fiscal. Officials said the outlay has been lesser this time as the economy is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The panel will also recommend a fiscal consolidation road map for the central and state governments, study the impact of GST on the divisible pool, and propose performance-based incentives for states.
'Will Mr Jaitley listen, or is that expecting too much in pre-election season?' asks T N Ninan.
'Modi had not discussed demonetization with me prior to his announcement on 8 November 2016. 'I learnt of it along with the rest of the country. 'I was not surprised when he did not discuss the issue with me prior to making the public announcement. 'It fitted in with his style of making dramatic announcements.' A fascinating excerpt from Pranab Mukherjee's The Presidential Years: 2012-2017.
It would be a good idea to create independent oversight committees for each regulatory institution and indeed, even for their appellate bodies, says A K Bhattacharya.
Tamal Bandyopadhyay offers some unsolicited advice for a government wh,ich came to power, with brute majority and the nation's pragmatic chief money man.
Chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian discusses the Budget, goods and services tax, Centre-state relationship and larger issues facing the economy
Regional States will be worried that the US's nascent engagement with the Taliban behind the fig leaf of humanitarian aid enables the return of US intelligence personnel to Afghanistan, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'We are looking at the Budget with the hope that it will address all issues even at the cost of exceeding the fiscal deficit target.'
India's aggregate NPA as a percentage of GDP is far lower than that in Italy, Greece.
With less than five months left for the report of the Fifteenth Finance Commission to be submitted, its chairman N K Singh said the report will have fiscal road map for states, depending on their current situation.
'We are not able to manufacture even low-end products as cheaply as China.' 'We are not buying Chinese goods today out of any love for China.'
Kerala has seen one of the worst floods in its history during this monsoon. From August 8 to 20, nearly 223 people have lost their lives, 33 are missing and around 1.2 million individuals from 3,02,441 families are in 3,941 relief camps. Initial losses are estimated to be around Rs 200 billion (Rs 20,000 crore). With the rescue measures in its last leg, the Kerala government is looking at raising funds to rebuild the state. In an interaction with Gireesh Babu and T E Narasimhan, Kerala Finance Minister T M Thomas Isaac says he has a three-pronged strategy to raise funds. Edited Excerpts.
'When you start distributing wealth, you end up distributing poverty.'
The Centre's push to sell Air India on priority has led to delays in other strategic divestment proposals, such as privatising United India Insurance, as well as ongoing transactions, such as Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), revealed multiple officials involved in the process. The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) is yet to take new privatisation recommendations of the NITI Aayog to the core group of secretaries on disinvestment (CGD) headed by the Cabinet secretary, said one of the officials. The priority now is to ensure all approvals for Air India are in place since the government intends to hand over the national carrier as early as this month.
Indian economy about to take-off
No longer Bengal's finance minister, Amit Mitra, Mamata's principal chief advisor, will still advise and aid the 'chief minister and finance department on all matters relating to management of state finance', represent the 'state government in national and international events/meetings/committees' and examine 'important proposals/files and policy issues relating to financial matters referred to him for advice/views'.
Emergency measures are needed to avoid "a total collapse in public security, health, education, transport and environmental management," a decree in the state's Official Gazette said.
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Friday
Pranab Mukherjee's stewardship of the economy will stand out as much for the manner in which he managed controversies as for creating quite a few of them, says A K Bhattacharya.
One incident should not be used to generalise the health of all cooperative banks, says RBI governor Shaktikanta Das.
One crucial revenue source that can help the government achieve its fiscal-deficit target is the proceeds from the sale of its stakes in public sector companies.
Shifting to a PPP model could repeat the errors of the past
'The Reserve Bank's independence has remained a work in progress, an enduring challenge that the nation has been grappling with on an ongoing basis,' says RBI Deputy Governor Dr Viral Acharya.
Eminent business journalist and author Tamal Bandyopadhyay discussed Budget with rediff.com readers on Tuesday.
A key hindrance to a faster turnaround of these banks is the slow progress in the resolution of legacy bad loans and the need to build up provisions against those assets.
Duvvuri Subbarao recounts how his tensions with P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee, then finance ministers, over monetary policy spilled over into other issues in the central bank in this excerpt from Who Moved My Interest Rate?, his memoir of his term as Reserve Bank of India governor.
FY16 GDP growth was seen at 7.5%, against 8.1-8.5% earlier.
Abheek Barua & Bidisha Ganguly explain why the US treasury should intervene if the overvalued greenback continues to rise.
The 'terrible' surge of the coronavirus cases in India has severely impacted COVAX's vaccine supply in the second quarter of this year to the extent that there will be a shortfall of 190 million doses by the end of June, according to a joint statement by the WHO, UNICEF, GAVI and CEPI.
The going is not going to be easy for the DMK and its allies in Elections 2024. Despite the seats sweepstake in the 2021 assembly polls, the vote-share difference of 5.6% (DMK's 45.38% versus AIADMK-BJP's 39.72%) is not insurmountable on a bad day, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das tells Anup Roy, Raghu Mohan and Niraj Bhatt that it is time for banks to lower interest rates and start lending to cash-starved finance companies after due credit appraisal and proper risk assessment.
The Biju Janata Dal will not oppose the government simply for the sake of opposing it, BJD Member of Parliament Bhratruhari Mahtab tells Aditi Phadnis.
'We should build a military with the capability to fight today's war on priority -- balancing it with the requirements of the future,' says Lieutenant General Anil Chait, one of the Indian Army's most cerebral thinkers who recently retired as chief of the Integrated Defence Staff, in his agenda for the new defence minister.
Infrastructure and inflation targeting are expected to be top priorities for the new Reserve Bank of India governor, says A V Rajwade.
'Growth is predicated on the misery of large sections of people.' 'Maybe Hindutva will be used to suppress any such unrest.'
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