For 2021-22, it projected the economy to clock a growth of 10.6 per cent.
India's economic growth is now 'extremely fragile' and needs all the support that it can get, as private consumption and capital investment are yet to pick up, RBI Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member Jayanth R Varma said on Friday. Varma further said out of the four engines of growth for the economy, exports and government spending supported the Indian economy through the pandemic, but other engines need to pick up the baton now. " I like to think in terms of the four engines of growth for the economy: exports, government spending, capital investment and private consumption. "...while exports cannot be the main driver of growth because of the global slowdown, government spending is necessarily limited by fiscal constraints," he told PTI.
Mittal's salary in 2019-20 was Rs 26.97 crore, unchanged from the previous fiscal year. However the value of perquisites was Rs 99.8 lakh, down from Rs 1.87 crore a year back. His retirement benefits were unchanged at Rs 2.15 crore.
While the finance minister had a great opportunity to come out with flying colours while presenting this last Budget of his government, he didn't, says Omkar Goswami.
If the Centre and states are keen on spending more to meet the COVID-19 challenges in the coming year, they must bear in mind the need to raise more resources through taxes and non-tax revenues, suggests A K Bhattacharya.
India's GDP is estimated to grow at 7.4 per cent in the financial year 2022-23 with rising prices triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict posing as the biggest challenge to the global economic recovery, Ficci's Economic Outlook Survey released on Sunday said. According to the survey, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to start a rate hike cycle in the second half of 2022, while a repo rate hike of 50-75 bps is expected by the end of the current fiscal. The RBI is expected to continue supporting the ongoing economic recovery by keeping the repo rate unchanged in its April policy review, the survey said.
The best possible way to deal with job uncertainty is accepting the fact that it could happen to anyone and if it does, then it is important to work on a multi-pronged strategy on how to get through it in the best possible manner, advises Sumit Sabharwal.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Thursday that a multilateral response is critical to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic in India and globally as it hailed recent announcements by several countries to provide immediate support to India. India is struggling with a second wave of the pandemic with more than 300,000 daily new coronavirus cases being reported in the past few days, and hospitals are reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds.
The Xi Jinping regime might try to quell internal distress by directing nationalism and militarism against India, warn Ajay Shah and Gautam Bambawale.
The Sri Lankan government has appointed an advisory committee comprising eminent economic and fiscal experts to provide guidance on addressing the current debt crisis and engaging with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other lenders as the country struggles to combat the unprecedented shortage of foreign reserves.
With the Budget-making exercise in full swing, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday said Budget 2021-22 is expected to be prudent and growth oriented. Das before donning the hat of RBI Governor was a career bureaucrat and was directly involved in crafting of about 10 Budgets for the country including one in the aftermath of global financial meltdown in different capacities at the finance ministry. In view of unprecedented pandemic and its impact on the economy, he said the government has maintained fiscal prudence in the response to deal with the crisis.
The income tax department on Tuesday said its new utility developed to help TDS deductors and TCS collectors identify non-filers or "specified persons" on whom higher rate of taxes will be levied will help ease compliance burden. From July 1, non-filers of income tax returns for the past two fiscal years would be subjected to higher tax deducted at source (TDS) and tax collected at source (TCS) rate if such tax deduction was Rs 50,000 or more in each of those two years. The provision was introduced in the 2021 Budget. The TDS deductors and TCS collectors would be required to check on the functionality of the PAN of the vendor from whom TDS is to be deducted or TCS to be collected, only at the beginning of the financial year.
Global rating agency Moody's on Monday said HDFC Bank's multiple digital outages are credit negative as such recurring incidents could lead to moderation in revenue and flight of customers to other banks. The recurring outages also risk hurting the bank's brand perception among a growing and increasingly digitally savvy customer base, and increases the potential that clients switch to other banks, which would lead to a reduction in revenue and low-cost retail funding, Moody's said in a statement.
Tata Motors on Wednesday forayed into the CNG segment with the launch of Tiago and Tigor trims, priced between Rs 6.09 lakh and Rs 8.41 lakh respectively (ex-showroom Delhi). The Tiago iCNG range is priced between Rs 6.09 lakh and Rs 7.64 lakh while the three variants of Tigor iCNG are tagged at Rs 7.69 lakh, Rs 8.29 lakh and Rs 8.41 lakh respectively. With the launch, the homegrown auto major plans to strengthen its position in the CNG market which has been growing at a fast pace. "It is very clear that the CNG segment is going to witness a steep growth over the next few years.
Inflation trajectory, domestically as also globally, is what will shape the economy, and therefore the market, over the next couple of quarters.'
'When you need to revive the economy, when you need to revive aggregate demand, you cut taxes.' 'But what's this government doing?' 'It's increasing taxes for the middle class and the vast majority of the poor on fuel, which has a ratchet effect on most other products.'
This permission was given some time late last month, before the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on March 31 issued the indicative borrowing calendar for the states for April-June and the one for the Centre for April-September.
India suffers from peak power deficit of three per cent.
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.
Difficulties in containing the virus, an anaemic policy response, and underlying vulnerabilities, especially across the financial sector, are leading us to expect growth to fall by 5 per cent this fiscal year before rebounding in 2021, S&P said in a report.
India is set for decent growth in 2015.
Ford India and Renault too reported good sales growth in April
The RBI's mistake may have been in interpreting its mandate to maintain retail inflation at 4%, with 2% leeway in either direction, as being a mandate that permitted it to do nothing even when inflation was at or near the upper bound of 6%, observes T N Ninan.
Highlights of Economic Survey 2020-21, tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday.
The government's second round of stimulus will spur consumer spending in the near term but support to economic growth will be minimal, Moody's Investors Service said.
India's economy, estimated to contract by 6.9 per cent in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, is forecast to record a "stronger recovery" in 2021 and grow by 5 per cent, according to a UN report which said the country's current fiscal year budget points to a shift towards demand-side stimulus, with an uptick in public investment. The report, 'Out of the frying pan ...Into the fire?' published Thursday as an update to the Trade and Development Report 2020 by UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said the global economy is set to grow by 4.7 per cent this year, faster than the 4.3 per cent predicted in September 2020, thanks in part to a stronger recovery in the US, where progress in distributing vaccines and a fresh fiscal stimulus of $1.9 trillion are expected to boost consumer spending.
The income tax department on Monday launched a new portal e-filing 2.0, which will make online filing of returns and tax payment easier. The new portal -- www.incometax.gov.in -- replaces the 'http://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in' site, and can be accessed by taxpayers in various regional languages. The income tax department also asked taxpayers to re-register their DSC (Digital Signature Certificate), update personal mobile number and email ID under 'primary contact', act on 'pending action', if any, and respond to 'outstanding demand'.
S&P Global Ratings has forecast India's economy to shrink by 5 per cent in the current fiscal. It, however, has projected GDP growth to be 8.5 per cent in 2021-22 and 6.5 per cent in 2022-23.
Moody's Investors Service on Friday projected India's growth at zero per cent for the current fiscal and said the negative outlook on sovereign rating reflects increasing risks that GDP growth will remain significantly lower than in the past. The outlook also partly shows weaker policy effectiveness to address economic and institutional issues, it noted in the update to its November 2019 rating forecast.
The Congress had moved the motion on Wednesday, targeting the Chouhan government over law and order, unemployment, inflation, corruption, 'discrimination' against the opposition legislators, atrocities against women and tribals, farmers' problems and other issues.
Finance Minister P T R Palanivel Thiagarajan has proclaimed his determination to set Tamil Nadu's fiscal house in order in five years, and Friday will show how he plans to go about it when he rises to present the Stalin government's maiden budget, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The implementation of their recommendations means that an adequate apparatus to change this is at the disposal of the government.
If Kerala wants to sustain its room for independent thinking and talk back to Delhi when needed, it should put its finances in order. Or - if one takes the North East example - Kerala's political posturing may end up commensurate with its financial dependence on others, suggests Shyam G Menon.
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.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her second Budget a little more than a month from now. Like any other FM, Sitharaman will depend on her team of bureaucrats and advisors to frame and present the Budget.
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.
'At this time, staying in the game is more important.' 'If we do that, then wealth can be generated.'
''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.
