Earlier this month, the global financial services major revised its outlook for India's GDP growth for 2009-10 to 6.8 per cent from 5.5 per cent and for the next fiscal to 7.8 per cent from 6.6 per cent. The bank's revision of India's GDP forecast is mainly on higher investment growth, Citi said adding the key driver during FY'03-08 was the 17.1 per cent compounded annual growth in investments.
India's current account deficit declined sharply to 1 per cent of the GDP or $8.3 billion in the second quarter of this financial year, mainly due to lower merchandise trade deficit and growth in services exports, according to a RBI data released on Tuesday. The current account deficit (CAD), which represents the difference between the total amount of money sent abroad and money received from overseas across the economy, was 3.8 per cent of GDP or $30.9 billion in the July-September quarter in 2022-23. CAD was $9.2 billion or 1.1 per cent of GDP in the first quarter (April-June) of the current financial year 2023-24.
The Union government is projected to share about 32 per cent of central taxes with states during the financial year 2024-25 against the 15th Finance Commission's recommendation of 41 per cent. The Revised Estimates (RE) for FY24, too, show a similar share of states in the central taxes at 32 per cent. In absolute terms, however, there has been an increase in the amount devolved to states compared to the Budget Estimates (BE) for FY24 at Rs 11 trillion.
Barclays chairman Marcus Agius and chief executive Bob Diamond have resigned after regulators in the UK and US slapped a 290 million pound penalty on the bank.
Prospects of a stable government at the Centre have prompted at least six economic forecasters to raise their growth estimates for the current fiscal, citing lower-than-expected political risk after the recent general elections.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is likely to step up efforts to boost consumption and rural economy while keeping inflation under check when she presents her sixth straight Budget on February 1. Experts said one way to boost consumption is to put more money in the hands of people, and one of the possible ways of doing it is by reducing the tax burden through tinkering with tax slabs or increasing the standard deduction. Another proposal is related to increasing the funds under the rural employment guarantee scheme MGNREGA and higher payout for farmers.
Nobel Prize winner in economics in 2001, Stiglitz, who was delivering a lecture in the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, said that a government needed to play an important role 'in any economy correcting pervasive market failures'.
The growth of eight key infrastructure sectors slowed down to a 4-month low of 8.1 per cent in September 2023 against 8.3 per cent a year ago, according to the official data released on Tuesday. The growth rate in the output of refinery products, fertiliser, cement and electricity during the month under review has decelerated, while it was negative in the case of crude oil. The previous low was in May, when the growth rate of these sectors stood at 5.2 per cent.
Snapping its declining trend, retail inflation rose to a three-month high of 5.55 per cent in November on firming food prices, including vegetables and cereals, though it remains within the RBI's comfort zone of less than 6 per cent. Inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 4.87 per cent in October and 5.88 per cent in November 2022, the government data released on Tuesday showed. The previous high was 6.83 per cent in August and inflation had been on a decline since then.
Deficit-financed tax cuts could be a better option to revive the economy hit by global financial crisis as government spending is not effective due to leakages and delay in execution, economists feel.
'The sense of Constitutional propriety and political morality seems to be vanishing fast.' 'There are many things in today's politics of governance which Manmohan Singh would have never dreamt of saying or doing.'
'If it is true that we are in a moment in time when the few economic advantages we hold are being lost, our focus must be on that rather than on finger-pointing,' says Aakar Patel.
When it comes to newer prescriptions, there is not much in the form of solution on offer by economists even from the IMF stable. Every report, including this one in September 2011, is a mere rehash of existing ideas, theories and ideologies.
"China and India will certainly see a recovery in H2-09, but high-income nations will take longer to recover from the current downturn," Jeffrey told PTI on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Noting that mobile telephony is the single most powerful transformational tool in the development, Sachs said that it is one of the fastest growing sectors currently in the world.
Notwithstanding the protectionism and other hindrances, the current mood of optimism about the Indian business process outsourcing sector's growth prospects seems justified, according to the London-based magazine The Economist.
GST collections jumped 15 per cent to nearly Rs 1.68 lakh crore in November, the finance ministry said on Friday. Goods and Services Tax (GST) mop-up was over Rs 1.45 lakh crore in November 2022.
'Modigate is snowballing into a huge thing with the electorate. The BJP is in for huge punishment by the electorate.'
Highlighting a steep disparity in the pay hikes of executives and the labour force during the economic boom, Raymond Torres, director at the ILO's International Institute of Labour Studies in Geneva, pointed out that worldwide the average hike in executive pay was 10 per cent as compared to a mere 0.7 per cent for workers.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) might relax the disclosure norms around rumour verification to help smooth implementation and ease compliance amid pushback from India Inc, said people in the know. The rule has been notified following amendments to the Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR) by Sebi. However, its implementation has been deferred until February.
The point made by sociologist M N Srinivas, that it represented a Sanskritic act that was linked to caste, is never raised in Indian debates and the disapproval of drink is almost universal, notes Aakar Patel.
The 78-year old British economist tells Business Standard about his research that the so-called 'zero tax' is not the most efficient at least when it comes to happiness.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen moved the Calcutta high court, appealing against a notice of the Visva-Bharati university that asked him to vacate 13 decimal of land at his Santiniketan residence by May 6.
The Reserve Bank is likely to maintain status-quo on the key interest rates for the third time in a row in its upcoming bi-monthly policy review despite the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank hiking benchmark rates, as domestic inflation is within the RBI's comfort zone, say experts. The borrowing cost which started rising in May last year has stabilised with RBI keeping the repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent since February when it was raised from 6.25 per cent. In the previous two bi-monthly policy reviews in April and June the benchmark rate was retained.
Former chief economic advisor on life in government and the reform years.
Gross non-performing assets of public sector banks surged to 9.32 per cent (Rs 4.76 lakh crore) of advances in 2015-16, from 5.43 per cent (Rs 2.67 lakh crore) in 2014-15.
One should be careful when taking advice from experts, and not suspend one's own judgment.
Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) chairman Bibek Debroy on Tuesday said the government was losing revenue due to the GST, which should be revenue neutral with a single rate. Speaking at an event organised by the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce in Kolkata, he however said that GST has led to a lot of simplification. "The ideal GST is one that has a single rate, and it was meant to be revenue neutral.
The demand for cash transfers was highest in Bihar at 54 per cent, followed by 34 per cent in Uttar Pradesh and 22 per cent in Jharkhand, where the access to PDS foodgrain was found limited.
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.
Outward remittances under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) liberalised remittance scheme (LRS) surged by 50.64 per cent to $9.1 billion in the April-June quarter (first quarter, or Q1) of 2023-24 (FY24), driven by healthy growth across segments due to a revision in the timeline of tax collected at source under the LRS scheme and normalisation in international travel. Major drivers include equity and debt investments, deposits, and the international travel segment, among others. According to the latest RBI data, the amount remitted under LRS stood at $9.1 billion in Q1FY24, compared with $6.05 billion in the same quarter last year.
As more companies ask their employees to return to office after the pandemic, the share of women employed in regular salaried jobs in urban India decreased from 54 per cent in the first quarter to 52.8 per cent in the second quarter of the current financial year, according to the quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data. The slump in the share is the lowest in wage employment in any quarter in the last six years when the National Statistical Office started releasing the quarterly PLFS surveys in Q3 of FY19. The share of women in wage work was highest in Q1 of FY21 at 61.2 per cent.
With the fiscal deficit likely to shoot up during 2011-12, leading economists urged Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to expedite tax reforms to increase revenue and take steps to bring economy back on high growth path.
General Singh was assigned to receive leaders representing the planet's two superpowers -- the president of the United States and the premier of the People's Republic of China.
Very high GDP growth which is driven by lots of concessions to large corporates.
Manmohan Singh proved his loyalty for Gandhi family rather than showing the same to farmers who have no option but to commit suicide due to prevalent adverse economic conditions, he said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced a Rs 11.11 lakh crore spending on infrastructure and vowed to continue reforms as she resisted resorting to populist measures in Modi government's last Budget before general elections, instead choosing to stay on the path of cutting deficit while bolstering measures for focus groups.
The finance ministry on Thursday sought to clarify that there was no distress in household savings and the data indicated that changing consumer preference for different financial products was the real reason for the change in the pattern of household savings. The clarification comes in the backdrop of Reserve Bank of India data showing that household net financial savings rate is at its lowest in decades, at 5.1 per cent of GDP in FY23 compared to 7.2 per cent of GDP in FY22. The divergence in the data for household gross financial assets and liabilities is not a cause for concern for the government, as the loans have largely been taken to buy real assets or automobiles, the finance ministry said.
Brazil and Argentina have ousted Spain as the top picks for World Cup champions, according to a global field of 100 football fan economists polled by Reuters.
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