As the liquidity crunch reaches crisis levels and getting tax refunds remain a big headache, exporters saw orders fall by 15 per cent till October.
A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com attends Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's presser in Chennai to tom-tom the government's achievements in its first 100 days in office.
In its essence, GST is a national level system of value added taxation of goods and services, says Shankar Acharya.
India's economy is moving towards a higher growth trajectory and is likely to grow at around 10 per cent in 2021-22, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) chairman Bibek Debroy said on Wednesday. "I am confident that we are on a path towards a higher growth trajectory, higher poverty reduction, higher employment, and a prosperous, more developed and better governed India. "I think it is, more or less, agreed that the real rate of growth this year (FY2022) is going to be around 10 per cent," Debroy said at an SBI event. At the beginning of FY2021-22, the forecasts for real growth were in the 8.5-12.5 per cent range, he noted.
The trio, 'twin shocks' of demonetisation and GST, 'twin balance sheet' problem that has been weakening India's banking system and the 'twin deficit' problem will continue to challenge economic management and performance in the year ahead, says Shankar Acharya.
Modi said different laws related to Hindus, Christians and Parsis and the Special Marriage Act 1954 has determined minimum marriage age of 18 years for a woman and 21 years for man but the Muslim Personal Law holds marriage of a girl legal after she has attained puberty.
Also on the anvil is abolition of distinction between Plan and non-Plan expenditure and replacing it with capital and revenue expenditure
It is worth reconsidering if this fascination with either having a single party majority or Modi's leadership or, indeed, both, is such a great idea for India, says Udit Misra.
In fact, no other recent Union Budget has held so much significance for the Indian economy as the one to be presented in about six weeks from now, notes A K Bhattacharya.
Jaitley, while reviewing the security situation of Jammu and Kashmir at a high level meeting, also asked the forces to deal firmly with the inimical elements but ensure safety of the innocent people, officials said.
Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian says that he hopes GDP growth will be at the upper end of the 7-7.5 per cent range.
'The real lifting of the economy will happen only if this momentum sustains in the coming months.'
In another round of economic booster, Sitharaman announced steps to help homebuyers and push exports.
The mandate will help further the development agenda in these states, with good governance and policy reforms taking centrestage
The Nifty rose 176.50 points, or 1.74 per cent, during the week.
'Challenges will come but we will stay the course. No big step can be taken if one is afraid of criticism. We will not flinch from criticism,' says Railways Minister Piyush Goyal.
A summary of sports events and sports persons, who made news on Sunday
Kejriwal's centralised way of governance might work in Delhi, but Punjab will call for delegation, observes Sanjeev Nayyar.
Going ahead, the likely implementation of the goods and services tax bill in July and how the monsoons play out will have a bearing on India's demand for gold and gold jewellery
India needs to spread irrigation and do so against a backdrop of rising water scarcity and depleting groundwater resources
Sitharaman said the government understands that the contours and tone of issues for each sector varied from one to the other.
They are now scaling or shutting down their businesses because they can't compete with untaxed grey market gold. India's gold smuggling has increased significantly since the import duty was increased in the Union Budget 2019 in contravention with the broader market expectations of a cut.
There are indications or signs of the economy picking up -- collection of GST and consumption of electricity, said former RBI governor, C Rangarajan.
Consumption of gold is the highest among middle-income households - those with annual income between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 10 lakh - who account for an average of 56 per cent of gold sales over the last five years, according to a nationwide survey conducted by India Gold Policy Centre (IGPC) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). "Per capita consumption is highest among the rich, but total volume still rests with the middle-income group. "With increasing income, there is an increasing propensity to consume gold, although the share of gold in the portfolio does not increase with the same proportion of income," the survey report says.
Particularly hit has been the apparel sector, where the time taken by the industry to adjust to the Goods and Services Tax regime, downward revision of export incentives, and a credit squeeze faced by small and medium scale enterprises, has pushed production downwards.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh puts it succinctly: "Arun Jaitley was every non-BJP person's favourite BJP-ite."
A K Bhattacharya lists three reasons why Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will most likely present a full Budget on February 1, 2019.
There was a massive 24% decline in India's gems and jewelry exports to $2,321 million for September 2018 as against $3,053.38 million in the same period last year.
Earlier in May, Ford India announced that it had dropped its plans to make electric vehicles (EVs) in India, which it intended to export, under the production-linked incentive scheme (PLI). Ford was among 20 companies that had signed a Champion OEM Incentive Scheme under the PLI project with the government in February this year. The decision comes as a blow for the 4,000-odd employees at Ford India's Maraimalai Nagar plant near Chennai and in Sanand, Gujarat. In September last year, the company had announced that it would exit the India market, which it had entered in 1995 through an on-again, off-again joint venture with Mahindra & Mahindra (they split in 1998, signed a JV in 2019 and split again in December 2020), retailing petrol and diesel brands such as the EcoSport, Figo, Aspire, and Endeavour.
'We have promised to ensure reduced tax rates.'
Market breadth turned negative with 1,779 declines over 884 advances on the BSE
Gujarat and Karnataka have been ranked as the best performers in developing startup ecosystem for budding entrepreneurs, according to the ranking of states and Union territories by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). Among smaller states having population of less than one crore, Meghalaya has been adjudged as the best performer. The rankings are based on the initiatives taken to develop the startup ecosystem for promoting budding entrepreneurs.
Every twist and turn in KMC's civil service career is attributed to serendipity, an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. He plays down his capabilities, which took him to the top of the civil service as the Cabinet Secretary or his misfortune in losing a daughter in her prime and suggests that his career was indeed serendipitous, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Finance Minister Piyush Goyal: 'I hope the Congress governments and other states like West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Telangana will support our effort to bring petrol and diesel into the GST regime.'
'One way to deal with these is to address these quickly and have rapid reaction teams in New Delhi, the state capitals and wherever possible.'
With certain quarters demanding privatisation of public sector banks in the aftermath of the alleged fraud at Punjab National Bank (PNB), Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister chairman Bibek Debroy tells Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Ishan Bakshi and Indivjal Dhasmana that reducing government equity even to zero would not mean giving up of government control over these banks.
Given the many policy areas where the Centre and the states have not been seeing eye to eye in the last few years, it is time the Modi government convenes a meeting of the Inter-State Council, recommends A K Bhattacharya.
WGC expects demand to revive in H2 on surplus monsoon rains
'This year's Budget didn't give into populist measures everyone was expecting after demonetisation, so I think that was a positive step.' 'Hopefully the Budget will continue in the way it has been.'
CAIT has attributed its displeasure to the economic downturn, and indifferent attitude of ministers/officials towards domestic trade.
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