Passenger vehicle dispatches in India from factories to dealers rose to record levels at over 43 lakh units in FY25, with utility vehicles accounting for 65 per cent of the total sales in the segment, industry body SIAM said on Tuesday. Passenger vehicle (PV) dispatches rose to 43,01,848 units in the last fiscal year, marking a 2 per cent increase compared to 42,18,750 units in FY 2023-24.
Projecting a 7 per cent growth rate in 2005-06, government's pre-budget Economic Survey on Friday outlined reforms in tax and expenditure and labour laws as a priority in the budget.
India's labour laws have become less complicated with bold economic reforms and the over one billion population has become a potential human resource 'asset' in the nation's leap forward, a labour lawyer has said.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday night is understood to have cleared the agenda for action initiated by the Planning Commission to spur economic reforms in the current fiscal.
Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh passed away at the age of 92 on Thursday. He will be given a state funeral with full state honors at Nigambodh Ghat on Saturday. Singh served as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014 and was known for his role in India's economic reforms. Leaders from across the political spectrum paid their respects to the departed leader, highlighting his contributions to the nation.
India must carry on structural reforms, the finance minister said.
Tuesday's Congress Working Committee meeting put a lid on the issue of whether the party was putting its full force behind the government's current economic decisions, which have attracted widespread protests.
The resilience of the economy and strength of domestic demand will continue to make India an engine of growth amid the rapidly evolving global trade landscape as a result of US tariffs, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in London on Tuesday.
While the capital spending is being maintained at 3.1 per cent of the GDP, a little more would have boosted economic growth even further, suggests Rajiv Memani.
Trying to hardsell India, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday assured the United States business community that the country's growth story was intact and it was committed to expediting reforms and further liberalisation of the foreign investment regime.
Shastri took the first big step to transform India's agriculture, the benefits of which his successors reaped in plenty, says A K Bhattacharya.
From the 30-share blue-chip pack, Zomato surged over 7 per cent. Maruti, ITC Hotels, ITC, Mahindra & Mahindra, Asian Paints, Titan and IndusInd Bank were among the biggest gainers. Power Grid, Larsen & Toubro, NTPC, UltraTech Cement, HCL Tech, Tech Mahindra, Infosys and Adani Ports were among the laggards.
'When the average growth in the last three years was just 2.5%, how does that make us the fastest growing country?' 'They only tell you what has happened in the last 2 years; they are not taking into account what happened in FY21 on account of their mistakes.'
The list of departures from the path of economic reforms can be longer.
India still has to go a long way to implement reforms in various sectors.
From the 30-share blue-chip pack, Adani Ports, UltraTech Cement, Larsen & Toubro, Sun Pharma, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, NTPC and State Bank of India were the major laggards. Tata Consultancy Services, Reliance Industries, ITC, Asian Paints, HCL Tech and Maruti were among the gainers.
Planning Commission Member N K Singh on Wednesday said there was a need to continue with crucial economic reforms to sustain eight per cent GDP growth.
'We are going to need more technical people in government.' 'You can't expect a generalist to understand the complicated world of financial engineering.' 'I regret to say that most of our politicians have no competence to deal with these things. Nor is there a willingness to learn.'
But their trajectory and direction have been largely influenced by politics and the political leadership's understanding of how the economy needs to be managed, explains A K Bhattacharya.
'But this Budget alone will not fix what ails the Indian economy.'
What does economic liberalisation mean to the common people? Are they happy with it or do they think an overt obsession with the issue has given birth to an unmanageable problem of inflation?
It's time India re-visited its Western alliances for the attitude and approach that the West reserves for the nation when it comes to security cooperation of the kind that they might not have visualised outside of China, India's bug-bear, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Debroy's economic interests and research work covered numerous areas such as economic theory, income inequality, and infrastructure financing.
Many were hoping that with Vajpayee's NDA gone, there would be a return to the Congress normal. Nobody was prepared for the opposite. Sonia Gandhi was sceptical. This became the only issue over which Manmohan Singh took on his party bosses and risked his government. Politically, it was riskier than the 1991 reform, recalls Shekhar Gupta.
Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday said the Bharatiya Janata Party has been a party with a difference and that is why it has repeatedly won the trust of voters, but cautioned against the saffron outfit repeating mistakes committed by the Congress in the past which saw its exit from power.
The chief adviser alleged elections held under Hasina's regime were "rigged blatantly and generations of young people grew up without exercising their voting rights."
Cargill believes the reforms would act as a catalyst in attracting private sector investment in building supply chains for taking Indian farm produce to national and global markets.
Members of a UN Commission on 'Private Sector and Development' have commended the model of economic reforms followed by India
Worried by the slow progress of economic reforms, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared on Friday "we need to move rapidly" to end inspector raj through governance reforms at various levels.
Even as the Centre is working overtime to roll out FDI in retail while the real decision might rest with the states, Arvind Singhal, chairman, Technopak Advisors, often referred to as the poster boy of the Indian retail sector, said the so-called big-ticket measure was "not the most important thing"for the sector.
As many as 76 per cent of the respondents did not expect economic reforms to move forward, given the upcoming 2014 general elections.
Essential and strategic items such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, copper, and energy products like oil, gas, coal and LNG are exempted from the 27 per cent import duty announced by the US on Wednesday, according to think tank GTRI.
The Prime Minister should focus his energies now on reforming higher education.
India must continue with its economic reform agenda or risk lose the credibility it has acquired in the world over the years, a top US administration official has said.
