"We firmly hold that undermining the central bank is a recipe for disaster and government must desist," All India Reserve Bank Association said in a letter. The association said Acharya's comments about the government's interventionist role vis-a-vis the RBI has created a flutter across the nation. "This is, however, not a sudden outburst, but was waiting to happen due to long simmering discontent," the association said.
The TIME 100 AI list is an interesting assortment of titans. Indians make up about 20 per cent of the coveted list, which is pretty commendable, notes Sandeep Goyal.
Amid concerns raised by RBI over its autonomy, the central bank has for the first time sought the Finance Ministry's nod for wage revision in the apex bank.
Vardhan had said on Friday, "Doctors at AIIMS are doing the best they can."
About a million railway employees participated in the strike ballot of NFIR. In December, 800,000 employees participated in the strike ballot conducted by another leading union, the All India Railwaymen Federation, with 96 per cent voting in favour of a strike.
The total allocation to the defence sector is 12.9 per cent of the total budget of the government of India for the financial year 2024-25.
The Union ministry of consumer affairs has given the finishing touches to the policy framework to allow foreign direct investment and foreign institutional investment in India's national commodity exchanges.
'He will go to any extent, and he will have the full support of the Union government as they may not like a Left government to continue here.'
The Union labour ministry has said that it can invest part of the Rs 5 lakh crore (Rs 5 trillion) provident fund corpus in the stock market provided the finance ministry guarantees safety of the workers' money.
Banks will also consider requests from MSMEs for restructuring their stressed standard assets. So far, only 25 per cent of the around 1 million eligible MSMEs have taken benefit of the RBI's special dispensation.
'The pace of disbursement and project recommendation picks up as the tenure of the House draws near and usually all amount is released.'
P Chidambaram was on Tuesday made the finance minister as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh undertook a minor reshuffle in portfolios in the Union Cabinet, necessitated by the exit of Pranab Mukherjee in June. According to the announcement, Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde is the new home minister in place of Chidambaram.
'The BJP's numbers in this government are almost the same as those enjoyed by the Congress under P V Narasimha Rao when the reform process was kicked off in 1991.' 'As before, the only constraints on the prime minister's actions are internal, not external.' 'They come from his own assessment of the political consequences of any action,' points out Mihir S Sharma.
The Finance Ministry has asked all banks, including private sector lenders, to open branches in locations with population of more than 5,000 in the under-banked districts by September, 2012.
'Each state and central government body may be asked to update its system to ensure PAN is used as a common identification to access its services.'
The accusation comes a day after the President's secretariat forwarded the assertions of the Opposition BJP that Delhi was facing a constitutional crisis to the ministry of home affairs for "proper attention".
The generation of quality jobs and skill development should be the focal point, cutting across ministries and departments, asserts Nivedita Mookerji.
Poor predictability, credibility and effectiveness of fiscal performance have been key reasons for successive governments failing to deliver on their promises.
Finance Minister P T R Palanivel Thiagarajan has proclaimed his determination to set Tamil Nadu's fiscal house in order in five years, and Friday will show how he plans to go about it when he rises to present the Stalin government's maiden budget, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Under the proposed mechanism, the finance ministry has said banks will notify customers when someone tries to deposit money in their accounts, a government official said.
Rationalisation of income tax slabs, infrastructure status for digital services and incentives to hydrogen storage as well as fuel cell development were some of the suggestions made by various stakeholders at the pre-Budget consultation meeting convened by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The customary pre-Budget consultation meetings were held with the finance minister virtually between December 15 and December 22, as per the finance ministry statement. More than 120 invitees representing seven stakeholder groups participated in eight meetings, scheduled during this period, it said.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will on Monday meet chief ministers and state finance ministers to discuss measures to attract private investments to help boost the economy. Finance secretary T V Somanathan said the meeting comes in the backdrop of strong economic recovery post the two COVID waves, and the central government has made a big push in Capex. The focus of this interaction will be on state-level issues, opportunities and challenges, which will enable us to go to a higher trajectory of investment and growth, he said.
The richest one per cent in India now own more than 40 per cent of the country's total wealth, while the bottom half of the population together share just 3 per cent of wealth, a new study showed on Monday.
The new scheme may be announced before the Lok Sabha elections.
The committee's suggestion that existing commercial banks be allowed to hold payment banks as subsidiaries is also seen as unviable by RBI and the finance ministry.
Now that the economy is growing at a higher-than-expected rate, it is time to accelerate the pace of fiscal consolidation, and the Budget could be a good starting point, argues Rajesh Kumar.
As 2010 comes to an end, the mood in North Block is not that sanguine.
General Budget is a terminology earlier used to differentiate between the Union Budget with the Railway Budget. Full-fledged budgets are titled "Union Budget", while interim Budgets are titled just that.
The tourism ministry wants rationalisation of import duty on adventure sports equipment to promote adventure tourism in the country. There is a proposal for exemption of service tax for inbound tour operators on their foreign exchange earnings. Sources said Tourism Minister Kumari Selja would submit the detailed proposals to the finance ministry, seeking various tax incentives for the sector.
Union finance secretary T V Somanathan recently said the Centre had saved Rs 10,000 crore in FY22 on interest payments after adopting new accounting mechanisms for central government agencies and centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) for state governments. Speaking at an event, Somanathan said due to these, there was an unspent balance of Rs 1.2 trillion with state agencies from CSS as on March 31, 2022. This means this amount will be reduced from the Centre's borrowing for now and it can be considered a short-term saving for the exchequer.
Besides advancing the presentation of the Budget to perhaps the first week of January, , there are four new initiatives that could be rolled out from the next Budget, says A K Bhattacharya.
Further, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the banks have sufficient liquidity, and efforts are being made to ensure that due payments are released to the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector by large corporates.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey are at the hospital to enquire about his health condition.
The government would be ironing out issues related to the controversial 'bail-in' clause in the earlier Bill, explore hiking the deposit insurance cover of customers, and decide whether the resolution framework should apply to public sector banks.
The government on Monday allocated an increased sum of Rs 3073 crore for the Sports Ministry in the Union budget for fiscal 2009-10, and also proposed to sanction Rs 3472 crore for next year's Commonwealth Games. The budget for the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has been increased by Rs 1480 crore than what was proposed in the interim budget presented before the Lok Sabha elections.
Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday pitched for formulating a policy for using the Reserve Bank of India's rising foreign exchange reserves for funding road projects, saying the country needs low cost finance for such infrastructure projects. Addressing a virtual event organised by industry body CII, Gadkari further said that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) should also have a financial arm like the power ministry's Power Finance Corporation (PFC). "We have a surplus of dollar reserves in the country. I have decided to talk with the RBI Governor, about how we can formulate a policy by which we can use this foreign exchange reserves for development of infrastructure in the country," he said.
Chidambaram has not been named as an accused in the FIR and the CBI is yet to file a chargesheet in the matter.
Elections are not won or lost by expounding on such macro-economic matters. For the aam admi, what matters in manifestos are promises that will improve their quality of life, notes Vinayak Chatterjee.
RBI will make a presentation on January 24 before the panel on the state of NPAs and stressed loans.
The first Budget of Independent India was presented by R K Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947.
