Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on his maiden visit as minister to Washington, DC, addresses two think thanks, leaves American Establishment impressed, reports Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com.
ArthaKranti wants the government to abolish income tax and 56 other taxes and replace it by a banking transaction tax.
He said, clothing, footwear and electronic sectors are large job creators and need big reforms.
The Indian economy needs to generate an average of nearly 78.5 lakh jobs annually until 2030 in the non-farm sector to cater to the rising workforce, according to the Economic Survey for 2023-24. The Survey tabled in Parliament on Monday also laid emphasis on the private sector's role to create employment in the country saying "In more than one respect, the action lies with the private sector. "In terms of financial performance, the corporate sector has never had it so good."
The Budget should use the extra RBI surplus to better effect, suggests A K Bhattacharya.
Whether it took the corona crisis to bring about the transformation, or otherwise, the change ought to be welcome, notes Virendra Kapoor.
All eyes will be on whether Sitharaman will deliver a populist budget leaving more money in hands of the common man or push the reform agenda by staying on the fiscal glide path to lower the fiscal deficit to 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2025-26.
Rising energy demand could tilt India's energy basket towards fossil fuels from coal to oil, natural gas.
What is most troubling is that not a single party that is part of INDIA has talked about any kind of reform and economic sense, argues R Jagannathan.
Government unlikely to bring in an ordinance to address the developments arising out of the Supreme Court order.
Catch all the latest action from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha here.
'Any finality in such matters requires political views. We will review it closer to the full Budget.'
'Till the time you have the equations right the market will remain concerned.' 'If the (coalition) government is taken care of, then probably (the markets will) come back to its rhythm.'
One of the the biggest tax reforms since Independence, GST will create a national market for goods and services
The Budget, to be presented on February 1, is likely to be less worried about fiscal deficit and will be focused more on nursing the fragile growth, according to a Wall Street brokerage report. Bank of America Securities India expects the budget to peg "fiscal deficit at a high 5 per cent of GDP for FY22 and 7.2 per cent for FY21, as it is likely to step up capex, recap public sector banks, push asset sales to break government monopolies, offer sops for real estate, tax cuts for lower income groups and creation of a bad bank". Its house economists expect these spends to be funded by debt and partly by imposing a cess on high income groups and also by some non-fiscal measures like tapping the central bank's revaluation reserves and bank recapitalisation and infra bonds.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday hard sold his government's reforms spanning from manufacturing to taxation to labour, saying they have changed the world perception about the country from 'why India' to 'why not India' and went on to quote record foreign investment during the pandemic as a testimony to that. Speaking at industry association Assocham's Foundation Week event, Modi also said agriculture reforms brought by his government six months back have started benefiting farmers. The reforms in the last six years have influenced in changing the sentiment of the industry from 'why India' to 'why not India' in investing.
Among parties, the NCP stood out with five of its MPs raising an average of 410 questions each. On the other hand, two Apna Dal (Soneylal) raised only five questions each on average.
'China is struggling to get out of its property bubble.' 'Japan took 35 years to walk out of its equity bubble.' 'Bubbles can be difficult to forecast.'
According to reports, eight hours have been allocated by the speaker for discussion on the tax reform bill.
The climate for 'doing business' remains forbidding, taxtortion is still rife, corruption at state and district levels has increased, oil prices remain extortive with high taxation, and the continued red tape has kept the enterprise system as stifled as before, points out Debashis Basu.
About 82 per cent of the total income from unknown sources declared by national political parties in 2022-23 came from electoral bonds, according to a poll rights body.
He stressed that reform for him was just a way station on the long journey to the destination and the destination is the transformation of India.
Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said India has lost one of the finest political leaders and a legal luminary.
Kamala Harris used her forceful presidential acceptance speech to present herself as a leader who could unite the country to chart a 'new way forward' and warned Americans of 'extremely serious' consequences of putting her Republican rival Donald Trump back in the White House.
'I am shocked that the BJP makes so many commitments. What did they deliver as the NDA?'
Aimed at creating a single tax for goods and services across the country, government on Friday introduced the long-pending GST Bill in the Lok Sabha for roll-out of the new regime from April 2016 subsuming various levies like entry tax and octroi.
The one national GST unifies the country's $2 trillion economy and 1.3 billion people into a common market, an exercise that took 17 tumultuous years.
Mumbai accounts for the largest share of electoral bonds sold since inception.
The party said it is "considering opposing" the proposal for taxing the PF corpus in Parliament.
Seven of the 30 largest U.S. corporations paid more money to their chief executive officers last year than they paid in U.S. federal income taxes, according to a study released on Tuesday that was disputed by at least one of the companies.
The representation of women in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls continues to remain dismally low, as only about 12 percent of the candidates in the fray in the fifth phase are female, according to an analysis by poll rights body ADR.
In her fourth tranche of the economic package, she said commercial mining will be done on revenue sharing mechanism instead of the regime of fixed rupee/tonne.
'Traders must adopt digital payments as soon as possible within a set timeframe, as the nation is moving rapidly towards digitisation.' 'Ignoring digital systems is not an option for strengthening trade.'
There are two ways: Deliver a rapidly growing economic pie or reform GST and close corporate tax loopholes, suggests T N Ninan.
The panel suggested inclusion of alcohol and petroleum products in GST, as is being demanded by the Congress.
The Budget sets out a comprehensive vision.
'If the NDA comes to power with 320-330 plus seats, then we could see some correction. We could possibly see a level of 19,500 to 20,000.' 'If the NDA comes to power with a majority of 400-plus, we could see the markets going to about 23,500-24,000 levels.' 'And from there we could see some correction because markets are expensive at this point of time and a correction is overdue.'
Jaitley said the government has created transparent environment.
Listing the series of reforms which led to the upgrade, he said while demonetisation took the economy towards greater formalisation and digitisation, use of Aadhaar ensured targeted delivery of government benefits.
A robust dispute settlement system would help the government unlock tax revenues, and also aid ease of doing business.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances