The truth about the deficit is that it is designed to serve political objectives, not economic ones.
While the April-February deficit is pegged at 5.3 per cent of GDP, the final print may be a tad lower due to revenue push and expenditure cuts seen in March, the last month of 2013-14 fiscal year, it said.
Railway Minister Lalu Prasad on Friday presented a populist interim Railway Budget in Parliament on Friday. Following is the entire speech of the railway minister:
While festive season spends by consumers did contribute to the uptick seen in Q3, experts said greater aggression displayed by retailers to corner a larger share of the shopper's wallet also worked.
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The estimated market borrowing by these two companies during current fiscal were pegged at Rs 13,800 crore (Rs 138 billion) from markets, as per the interim Railway Budget for 2014-15 tabled in February.
The worst of recession could coincide with the run-up to the elections.
Consumer goods manufacturers, expecting to see a revival of demand from the nearly Rs 16,500 crore Pay Commission arrears for government employees, are likely to be disappointed.
A number of new IITs started functioning in 2008-09, the minister said, adding that two more IITs in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan will start functioning in 2009-10.
Presenting the Interim Budget in Lok Sabha, the minister said the enactment of the Act by the Centre and many states has 'bridged a critical gap in the public decision-making process and ushered in greater accountability of public servants.'
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday said that government has taken a conscious and bold decision to enhance the Gross Budgetary Support for the Annual Plan 2009-10 by Rs.40,000 crore (Rs 400 billion) over the Interim Budget for 2009-10.
Finance Minister Jaswant Singh chose a newly refurbished hall in North Block to defend his announcements in a post-interim Budget interview.
Reserve Bank of India Governor D Subbarao said on Friday that another stimulus package could help the economy in the short-term but a sustainable recovery required the government to return to fiscal consolidation.
The rise in the fiscal deficit, which is a reflection of the government's borrowing, was mainly on account of subdued tax collection. The revenue deficit also rose to 3.27 per cent, up from the revised estimate of 2.4 per cent of the GDP.
"Jobs must be protected even if it means some reduction in compensation at various levels," Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at International Labour Conference in New Delhi.
The extension of interest subsidy scheme by another six months for loans taken by exporters in labour-intensive sectors was the only fiscal stimulus measure announced in the Interim Budget for 2009-10.
Finance Secretary Arun Ramanathan said the government was closely watching the trickle-down effect of the first two stimulus packages and will respond to the evolving situation.
Pranab Mukherjee in the Interim Budget for 2009-10 announced that the government has given in-principle or final approval 50 infrastructure projects worth Rs 67,700 crore (Rs 677 billion).
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has launched many new schemes to provide steady monetary assistance to weak and downtrodden people in the society.
The praise for peasants, most of whom are subsistence farmers, comes ahead of general elections due in a few months. The minister presented statistics to hard-sell the government's initiatives to prop up the agriculture sector and improve the conditions of roughly about 60 per cent of the country's population depending upon it.
India's foreign direct investment inflow between April and November 2008 was $23.3 billion, a growth of 45 per cent compared with that during the same period in 2007, said union Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is holding additional charge of the finance portfolio while presenting the Interim Budget for 2009-10 on Monday in parliament.
The government has pegged fiscal deficit at 5.5 per cent of gross domestic product for the next financial year, against the revised figure of 6 per cent in the current financial year. The fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal was 2.5 per cent. However, fiscal measures initiated in the wake of the global economic downturn and reduction in revenue collection have impacted resource mobilisation resulting in widening of deficit.
Railway Minister Lalu Prasad on Friday left freight rates unchanged in his interim budget to keep traffic from shifting to road transport that has become cheaper following cut in diesel prices.
GST will create a single, unified Indian market
President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Wednesday thanked India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving Sri Lanka 'a breath of life' by providing timely economic assistance to his country as it faced the worst economic crisis in decades.
Stock market expert Rajan Malik offers some valuable tips.
Revival hopes of the diamond industry have been dashed as gems and jewellery manufacturers feel that little help has been provided to them in the Interim Budget for 2009-10.
Troubles for the textile industry, which has been grappling with financial blood-letting both in international and home markets, are likely to deepen further. While there are fears of half-a-million more job losses, exports from the sector are likely to take a hit of about Rs 15,000 crore (Rs 150 billion), according to industry estimates.
The National Investigation Agency, set up in the wake of audacious strikes in Mumbai, has been allocated Rs 10 crore for 2009-10.
He said most of the states where farmers were committing suicide were being run by Congress or its United Progressive Alliance constituents. "We (NDA government) had left the country in a healthy economic state. Now things are bad," he alleged.
The corpus of the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF), which is the main instrument of the government to channelise bank funds for financing rural infrastructure, has been increased from Rs 5,500 crore (Rs 55 billion) in 2003-04 to Rs 14,000 crore (Rs 140 billion) for the year 2008-09 ensuring greater availability of funds for its activities.
While the plan allocation for agriculture has gone up by 300 percent between the period 2003-04 and 2008-09, the agriculture credit disbursement too has increased from Rs 87,000 crore (Rs 870 billion) to Rs 2,50,000 crore (Rs 2500 billion) up to 2007-08.
The outlay for the flagship programmes, which -- in addition to the Bharat Nirman scheme -- include the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and others, is proposed to be raised to Rs 1,23,000 crore (Rs 1,230 billion) during 2009-10 from Rs 90,000 crore last year, representing an increase of about 37 per cent.
P Chidambaram presented the Union Budget for the eighth time.
The country's apex exporters body Federation of Indian Export Organisations said that support extended by the minister for research and development activities and reduction of duties on capital goods will help in increasing competitiveness of Indian products in the global market.
Apart from this, the health sector as a whole has an allocation of Rs 4,447 crore (Rs 44.47 billion). The finance Minister said the response for Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, which was operationalised last year, has been very good.
According to official statistics, half of India's GDP comes from as many as 420 million workers in the unorganised sector including street vendors, rickshaw pullers, construction workers, rag pickers, agricultural workers, among others. This massive workforce remains outside the purview of the formal banking and insurance industries.
Insisting that PM Modi has consistently cared for the farmers, Goyal said the Rs 75,000 earmarked for paying Rs 6,000 per annum to each of 12 crore farmers is not one time but a 'sustainable' provision.
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