Insurance companies are seeking a separate deduction limit of Rs 1 lakh for insurance premium payment under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act in the upcoming Union Budget to bring in more people under the ambit of insurance. The insurers also want reduction in the goods and services tax (GST) rate of 18 per cent currently applied on health insurance products to 5 per cent to make such products more affordable to common people. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget for 2022-23 on February 1.
'Look at the number of billionaires, the number of new billionaires in India.' 'Adani and Ambani are not the only ones.' 'What's wrong with people making money as long as it benefits us?'
Stepped up public expenditure must be accompanied by focused policies, advises Vinayak Chatterjee.
We are in this mess as the machinery of the government in a market economy is broken. We need technically sound banking regulation, so that capital is not misallocated, and the landscape does not get littered with zombie firms kept alive through evergreening, says Ajay Shah.
A Parliamentary Standing Committee praised the government for the wrestling and boxing facilities at the Sports Authority of India's Sonepat Center but pointed out that "excellence needs to be replicated for other sports disciplines".
NITI Aayog had been asking for Rs 7,500 crore for three years to set up an AI framework.
'We are looking at the Budget with the hope that it will address all issues even at the cost of exceeding the fiscal deficit target.'
The panel will also recommend a fiscal consolidation road map for the central and state governments, study the impact of GST on the divisible pool, and propose performance-based incentives for states.
'The idea is to have a separate and independent consultation on non-personal data, and decide the contours of how it should be regulated, whether as guidelines, rules, or a separate policy,' said a senior official at MeitY.
There is money to buy the central public sector enterprises, but buyers will need a firm assurance that the disvestment programme will keep environment issues front and centre of their corporate plans.
''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.
Poor predictability, credibility and effectiveness of fiscal performance have been key reasons for successive governments failing to deliver on their promises.
The Finance Commission has substantially increased the allocation of funds to panchayats, but a large part of it is apportioned by state governments.
According to the draft, in the northeastern states the threshold is at Rs 500,000.
Tamil Nadu's latest budget offers path-breaking initiatives and major boost for social infrastructure, which other state governments are sure to follow in the coming years, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The coronavirus epidemic highlights the need to start thinking more actively about multilateral coordination, including, but not confined to, health emergencies and climate uncertainties,' says Rathin Roy.
Govt to chalk out entry of sovereign funds from Abu Dhabi, Qatar into such projects.
The 39-year-old was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate from Ranchi after the agency conducted multi-city raids against him, Singhal, her businessman husband Abhishek Jha and others, on May 6.
Here's the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to a joint session of the United States Congress, delivered on Thursday.
Officials said Sebi first proposed to the FinMin to amend the relevant provisions in the Sebi Act to discontinue RBI's representation on its board, as it already has adequate presence of government nominees and in its over 25 years of existence the regulator has evolved as an "effective and one of the best in the world".
Has the Modi government been more at odds with institutions than other governments? There is no doubt that there have been more run-ins. While the RBI and CBI cases have drawn attention, there have been others, less publicised, Subhomoy Bhattacharjee points out.
The implementation of the NEP and four-year undergraduate programme were approved by the Standing Committee on Academic Matters and the Academic Council last week.
According to the NIPFP, there is the possibility that even if the banking system matures over time, some transactions could bypass the system so as not to pay the BTT.
'We are all in a tizzy about NBFCs in the aftermath of the IL&FS default.' 'We tend to jump to the notion that an NBFC is like a bank. But banks make a promise that deposits are liquid and have an assured return.' 'NBFCs make no such promises,' points out Ajay Shah.
Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit won't be afraid to tangle with the toughest of them.
He said his 'Rashtra Manch', a political action group, would start a movement against the policies of the Centre.
'When we say we want to increase pension participation, do we want to increase participation through the savings route?' 'Or do we want people to save in specific pension products?' asks Renuka Sane.
'The quick fixes have failed; there is now no alternative to deeper reforms,' says Ajay Shah.
India will welcome two trade missions in 2015 focused on meeting its infrastructure needs with US technology and services.
21st century may have witnessed expansion of higher educational institutions, but who can afford it? Sushree Panigrahi & Jeet Singh look at the numbers.
The list in 2018 contained about 7,600 names. It has been reduced to under 3,800 in the past 18 months, according to Castellum.AI, a New York-based regulatory technology company. About 1,800 of the names have been removed since the beginning of March, according to data collected by Castellum.
In a first, the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) officers reached out to several ministries in the last week of April as part of a confidence-boosting measure. The meeting brought the CAG officials and those from the ministries across the table to discuss the pain points in their relations. CAG of India Girish Chandra Murmu took this novel step because of growing tensions between those audited and the auditor.
The Budget sets out a comprehensive vision.
'India resembles not just the more turbulent bits of its own past, but other 'managed' democracies, where all institutional strength and independence have been hollowed out to serve political power,' notes Mihir S Sharma.
We import from China not because we love China, but because they sell us these things at cheap prices, points out Rathin Roy.
'What does the nation get out of the CBI's fabulous infrastructure? Very little that is useful.'
'Russia has got inherent military strength, they have a very good military equipment manufacturing infrastructure and by and large they are self-sufficient in their production capabilities'
N R Bhanumurthy, professor of economics at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, and the author of the series, presented in a report to the National Statistical Commission, explains to Abhishek Waghmare various aspects of the methodology.
With nearly a million identified slums, UP urgently requires housing for the poor
A major criticism of the new law is that it can become an instrument of abuse as it confers the tax enforcement authorities with strong discretionary powers, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
