India's public debt ratio, which remarkably remained stable at around 70 per cent of the GDP since 1991, is projected to jump by 17 percentage points to nearly 90 per cent because of increase in public spending due to COVID-19, the IMF said.
Extreme poverty in India declined by 12.3 percentage points between 2011 and 2019, with rural areas doing better than urban centres, according to a working paper of the World Bank. India has not released a new household consumption survey since the NSS from 2011. By extension, the country has not released any official estimates of poverty and inequality for over a decade now, added the paper co-authored by economists Sutirtha Sinha Roy and Roy van der Weide.
The foreign exchange kitty had crossed the half-a-trillion mark for the first time in the week ended June 5, 2020, after it had swelled by $8.223 billion to stand at $501.703 billion.
Gold reserves increased $1.54 billion to $32.68 billion in the reporting week.
The government should not go in for an 'aggressive fiscal consolidation' in the upcoming Budget as global risks have not abated, RBI Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) Member Ashima Goyal said on Wednesday. Goyal further said subsidies are expected to come down as food and energy inflation moderates. WPI inflation in food articles in November was 1.07 per cent against 8.33 per cent in the previous month.
