The Plan panel on Wednesday said the government's refusal to accord environment clearance to Vedanta's proposed $1.7 billion aluminium project in Orissa would not tarnish India's image as an investment friendly destination.
The authority is set to cross the target by the end of this month, with a million enrolments every day. It has already allotted 116.3 million Aadhar numbers.
According to Ahluwalia, if everything goes well on the economic growth front for the next three months, then one can say that the economy will be back on higher growth trajectory in the long run.
Says govt's focus is to re-assure foreign investors that India is wide open for business.
The document which was tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister P Chidambaram has projected the growth rate for next fiscal at 6.1-6.7 per cent.
Raise diesel prices or else face a situation similar to the recent grid failure which led to complete blackout across 20 states for hours, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Friday.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is upset with the prime minister's office for not including DMK's M K Alagiri in the Empowered Group of Ministers on drought.
The presidential election has really come as a boon to the four-month-old Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh, which received a largesse of nearly Rs 80,000 crore from the Centre on Wednesday.
The Energy Co-ordination Committee, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, would meet on Tuesday with gas pricing, gas sourcing and gas allocation as the main topics on the agenda, an official source said.
The industrial growth number for the month of December has been revised upward to 2.53 per cent from the provisional number of 1.6 per cent released earlier.
The 12th Plan document describes three average annual growth scenarios - 8%, 6-6.5% and 5-5.5 per cent.
His interaction was webcast live on Twitter.
Terming HSBC's projection at 5.2 per cent for the current fiscal as incorrect, Ahluwalia said the second half is likely to be better than the first half's.
Farm activists say low MSP is fine, if salaries revised under the Sixth Pay Commission are lowered.
Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla, in an impromptu chat with reporters, sided with Sebi, while Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia cited the spat to make a case for setting up a Financial Development and Stability Council (FSDC).
Under attack over the Rs 32 per capita per day (in urban India and Rs 26 per day per person in rural areas) cut off for poverty line, the Planning Commission on Monday distanced itself from the controversial definition presented to the Supreme Court saying it did not represent its views.
When India's Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma met his counterpart in Beijing last year, he spoke mainly about India's yawning trade deficit and China agreed that this was a problem that needed fixing.
The Planning Commission said the decision of oil marketing companies to raise petrol price by Rs 3.14 per litre is a good news and will provide credibility to the economic reforms process.
Among the keenly watched contests are those involving former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj, UP) and Union ministers Giriraj Singh (Begusarai, Bihar), Nityanand Rai (Ujiarpur, Bihar) and Raosaheb Danve (Jalna, Maharashtra).
Defending the government's decision to raise prices of petroleum products, the Plan panel said on Wednesday it would suck money from the system and ease inflationary pressure in the long run.
Already Puducherry owed to the Centre as much as Rs 4040 crore (Rs 40.4 billion) over the years as loan and interest.
The principal Opposition party said an immediate cut in petrol and diesel prices was required in the larger interest of the nation. The BJP also demanded that interest rate on housing loans be brought down to 6 per cent and a real push be given for infrastructure development to 'avoid a catastrophe'.
Although India's private health insurance industry's business volumes have grown by over 35 per cent a year in the last few years, a staggering 85 per cent of the population remains uninsured, according to industry estimates.
One of the names proposed by the dailies is India's Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
Talking to reporters accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his US visit, the deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the trend of constant rising inflation in India was disappearing. Maintaining that the financial meltdown in the US has not had a direct impact on India, Ahluwalia said the country had an ample stock of foreign exchange reserves to deal with the temporary meltdown in financial markets.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, who has been charged with a criminal sex act and is under arrest in the United States, has resigned from his position, leaving the global financial body to hunt for a new chief.
Besides Mukherjee and Deora, the EGoM would have power minister Sushilkumar Shinde, fertiliser minister M K Alagiri, law minister Veerappa Moily and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
It has emerged that a senior US government functionary offered to help India garner greater funding from the World Bank in return for protecting Dow Chemicals from possible legal fallout from the gas tragedy.
The Planning Commission's latest poverty estimates, based on the 2011-12 consumption expenditure survey, shows that across India, the number of people living below the poverty line declined by more than 15 percentage points -- from 2004-05 to 2011-12 and from 37 per cent to 21.9 per cent.
Mukherjee said uncertainty was still there on oil prices front due to unrest in West Asia and North Africa.
A Group of Ministers headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukhejree is likely to meet on Monday to vet London-listed mining group Vedanta Resources' $ 9.6 billion acquisition of Cairn India.
Deficient monsoon is likely to pull down the economic growth in the current fiscal to about six per cent, from 6.5 per cent a year ago, the Planning Commission said on Friday.
India may end the financial year with a seven per cent GDP growth rate, as the economic deceleration is expected to continue in the third quarter, said Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission.
Manmohan Singh, who also heads the government's Plan think-tank, complimented the internal Planning Commission for starting the process of mid-term appraisal in 'right earnest.'
Enthused by the prospects of good monsoon, the Planning Commission on Tuesday said the double digits inflation would decline by December, and sounded optimism that economic growth would exceed 8.5 per cent this fiscal.
According to Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, more than the anticipated growth in the farm sector will make up for the shortfall in the industrial output.
His outburst has to rank among the most bizarre episodes of two arms of the government fighting in public.
Defending the government's decision to open up the multi-brand retail sector to foreign investment, Plan panel deputy chief Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Friday said it would help farmers as well as consumers.
Planning Commission on Friday said there is no case for providing stimulus to the industry to arrest moderating growth as the fiscal deficit is high and may exceed the Budget estimate of 4.6 per cent by about one percentage point.
India will set up a high-level committee to identify areas for expanding economic ties with the United States, from where it expects an estimated investment of $250-300 billion in infrastructure space.
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