India's budget for the fiscal beginning April focuses on giving a boost to the ongoing economic recovery through a sharp increase in capex spending but is short on major growth-enhancing structural reform announcements, Fitch Ratings said Wednesday. The deficit targets present in the Union budget 2022-23 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday "are a bit higher than our forecasts when we affirmed India's 'BBB'/Negative sovereign rating in November," said Jeremy Zook, director and primary sovereign analyst for India, Fitch Ratings. While it was widely expected that the fiscal deficit will be lower than the targeted 6.8 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, Sitharaman put the number at 6.9 per cent.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Proceedings in Rajya Sabha were repeatedly disrupted on Monday before being called off for the day as opposition members protested on the alleged phone-tapping and other issues and demanded discussions on them in the House.
Amid a stalemate between the government and the Opposition over the issue, the House failed to transact any significant business and was adjourned for the day.
The number of disgruntled leaders in the party is swelling.
Jhunjhunwala passed away early on Sunday morning due to a cardiac arrest, a source in his newly set up airline said.
'You cannot treat workers like beggars.'
'I am being treated for kidney related problems and certain infections that I have contracted,' he said in a tweet.
Most of the 40 MLAs in the Shinde camp don't have enough legislative experience to conduct business in the House and so the first ministry expansion needed induction of veterans.
The Finance Minister, however, left the current income tax slabs unchanged.
Slamming the Budget, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Saturday said the Modi government was in complete denial that the economy faces a "grave macro economic challenge" and it has given up on reviving the economy, accelerating growth or creating jobs. There is nothing in the Budget that leads one to believe that growth will revive in 2020-21 and the claim of 6 to 6.5 per cent growth next year is "astonishing and even irresponsible", the former finance minister said at a press conference.
Investment in infrastructure was necessary for the economy, as power shortages, inadequate transport and poor connectivity affect overall growth performance, as per the Economic Survey 2019-20 tabled in Parliament by Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. "To achieve GDP of USD 5 trillion by 2024-25, India needs to spend about USD 1.4 trillion (Rs 100 lakh crore) over these years on infrastructure so that a lack of infrastructure does not become a constraint to growth," it said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman cut fuel subsidies while slapping additional fuel taxes on unblended transport fuels in the latest Union Budget. The former will hit the rural poor, households that secured a subsidised LPG connection under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a programme that was partly instrumental in helping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win the 2019 general elections. The latter will pretty much hurt the entire population after it kicks in from October. That's what it looks like. Or, perhaps, it's not as it appears to be, at least on the subsidy front.
Fadnavis, the first Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister of the state, filed his papers from the Nagpur South-West constituency.
Belligerent Congress members, who were in the Well, shouted slogans against the minister and asked 'Aapka goli kaha hai (where is your bullet?)', an apparent reference to the minister's controversial remarks. Some members also shouted 'Goli maarna band karo (Stop shooting)'. Whenever Thakur was responding to supplementaries during the Question Hour, the members began sloganeering against him.
India will either have to create a system in which certain geographical areas will wind up being permanent political outsiders at the Union level or it will have to create a system in which certain votes are weighted more heavily than others, observes Mihir S Sharma.
Nationalisation has served its purpose. It's time to move ahead, keeping majority ownership of the government in a few banks to serve the people, argues Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The panel suggests the government be authorised to raise the thresholds, which trigger applicability of Corporate Social Responsibility provisions.
Banking operations including cheque clearance across the country got affected on Monday as bankers under the aegis of the United Forum of Bank Unions have gone on a nationwide strike to protest against the proposed privatisation of two state-owned lenders.
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.
Today, a friendship forged by common ideals behind prison walls has become a transactional understanding, notes Aditi Phadnis.
He said the Congress party is capable of dragging the judges into an unsavoury controversy and make them controversial 'should their judicial opinion not appear favourable in the cases in which the party has an interest'.
Chief Minister MK Stalin has shown that he is cut from a different cloth when it comes to embracing what is current, modern and absolutely necessary. Thus, even while retaining the spirit and content of the pan-Tamil, Dravidian socio-political and socio-economic ideology to the 't', his government has also acknowledged the need to accepting scientifically-proven facts in operational matters, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Karti and Mukerjea were brought face-to-face and questioned by the CBI team for about four hours.
The government would be ironing out issues related to the controversial 'bail-in' clause in the earlier Bill, explore hiking the deposit insurance cover of customers, and decide whether the resolution framework should apply to public sector banks.
Karunanidhi was convinced that using the 2G cases against the DMK and reopening the fodder case against Lalu Prasad Yadav were products of the Congress leadership's short-sightedness. A revealing excerpt from A S Panneerselvan's Karunanidhi: A Life.
The Paris-based global watchdog for curbing terror financing and money laundering will hold its virtual plenary session from October 21 to 23. It will review Pakistan's progress on the 27-point action plan.
There is as yet no clarity on how the process of consulting with the RBI Governor, initiated under Section 7 of the RBI Act, would unfold in the coming days. The government is keen that its suggestions made in the public interest should be heeded by the central bank, says A K Bhattacharya.
market rally, especially in mid-caps, has also been driven by a pick-up in the monsoon and the government's resolve to get the goods and services tax (GST) Bill cleared in the recent session of Parliament.
Amid the din in which BJP and Congress members tried to shove each other and some members banged the door leading to the secretary general's desk, Birla adjourned the House for the day.
We bring you some of the best pictures from across the nation in the last one week.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Sunday alleged that Dinesh Trivedi, who resigned from the Rajya Sabha on Friday, took the 'House for a ride' and was 'allowed' to use the floor of the House for his 'devious political ends'.
The current crisis began Friday night when the Rajasthan Police sent a notice to Pilot, asking him to record his statement over an alleged attempt to bring down the government.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
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.
There was no relief for existing home buyers who are stuck in stalled projects and are paying both rent and EMI on their home loans.
The BJP leadership believes these parties are flexing their muscles in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls for better seat-sharing deals.
Where does one find a man who shows no bitterness or animosity towards Hindus, even after a frenzied Hindu mob burnt his house down?, Jyoti Punwani asks in this tribute to a truly extraordinary Indian.
According to the draft, in the northeastern states the threshold is at Rs 500,000.
On the arrest of P Chidambaram, Karti said, "This is like a staged reality show to have all these dramatic visuals on television. There is no reason for this kind of drama... It's not done in an honest investigation.
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