From the rollback of customs duty on key electronic components to fast tracking delivery of goods imported from China, players are looking for incentives on several counts.
She also holds the distinction of delivering the longest budget speech at two hours and forty minutes in 2020.
The government has merged the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) with the finance ministry to give it a better control over state-owned firms and facilitate its ambitious privatisation programme. Finance ministry will now have six departments while DPE's hereto parent ministry, the ministry of heavy industries and public enterprises will now be called the ministry of heavy industries. Previously, the disinvestment ministry - created under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government - was merged with the finance ministry and is now a department under it. Also, Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) was abolished and administration of foreign investments was given to the finance ministry (FinMin).
The department has proposed to pool prices of imported and domestically produced natural gas.
Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar was given the finance and planning portfolio on Friday, nearly two weeks after he broke away from the original party and took oath as Maharashtra's deputy chief minister.
India on Thursday said it will pursue an extradition request with Canada for Arsh Singh Gill alias Arsh Dalla, the de-facto chief of the Khalistan Tiger Force, following his arrest in that country.
In a pre-Budget memorandum, the ministry has submitted to the finance ministry that the industry may not accept bonds this fiscal. Nevertheless, the ministry's latest position seems to be in sync with the demand of the fertiliser industry that has persistently maintained that the securities are mostly trading in discount, affecting the balance sheet of companies.
With the fiscal deficit target staring at the government, the FY25 Budget has limited expenditure options, points out A K Bhattacharya.
Other ministers who have presented five straight annual financial statements include Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha, Manmohan Singh and Morarji Desai.
'Mrs Gandhi had nothing to do in the day-to-day working of Dr Singh's government.' 'People say Mrs Gandhi's office used to give orders, which is nonsense.'
India on Friday asked its citizens not to travel to Iran and Israel amid increasing fears that Tehran may launch an attack on Israeli soil in retaliation to a strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria 11 days ago.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into India have crossed the $1 trillion milestone in the April 2000-September 2024 period, firmly establishing the country's reputation as a safe and key investment destination globally. According to data from the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the cumulative amount of FDI, including equity, reinvested earnings and other capital, stood at $1,033.40 billion during the said period.
The Union government could target a fiscal deficit of 5.8-6 per cent of nominal GDP for 2023-24, and it should continue its capital expenditure push and look to simplify the personal income tax regime, economists recommended Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her team during their pre-Budget interaction on Monday. Starting last week, Sitharaman had eight pre-Budget consultations this time. More than 110 invitees representing seven stakeholder groups participated in these meetings, the finance ministry said in a statement. The stakeholder groups included representatives and experts from agriculture and agro-processing industry; industry, infrastructure & climate change; financial sector and capital markets; services and trade; social sector; trade unions and labour organisations; and economists.
The civil aviation ministry is holding talks with the finance ministry on rationaliation of sales tax on aviation turbine fuel and airport taxes.
The finance ministry wants the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to switch its policy stance, with growth concerns occupying centre stage and inflation showing signs of moderating.
Internship opportunities have been posted by 193 companies, including Jubilant Foodworks, Maruti, Eicher Motor, L&T, Muthoot Finance and Reliance.
Everybody talks of China as the real threat, but we aren't even building a decisive capability against Pakistan, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
For 2015-16, the planned outlay for the department was Rs 2,568 crore.
The revamped Special Economic Zone (SEZ) law is unlikely to see the light of the day before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, two people aware of the matter said. The commerce department had sought the Union Cabinet's nod to bring amendments to the existing SEZ Act, 2005 late last year. The plan, thereafter, was to introduce the Bill in the winter session of Parliament. Cabinet's approval remains pending.
Sheikh Hasina was on Thursday sworn in as the prime minister of Bangladesh for the fifth term, days after her Awami League won an overwhelming majority in the general elections boycotted by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies.
In a major relaxation of foreign investment rules in the pharma sector, a special group set up under the finance ministry has suggested it could consider permitting up to 49 per cent FDI (foreign direct investment) in the automatic route for brownfield investments in case the company's control remained in Indian hands.
'There is a need for an innovation sandbox where the PSBs can collaborate and then they can do their own innovation on top of it.'
The Budget for 2024-25 should focus on employment generation, besides promoting the manufacturing sector, economists attending the pre-Budget consultation meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman here on Wednesday said. The meeting was attended by National Co-convenor Swadeshi Jagran Manch Ashwani Mahajan, Director and Chief Executive of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID) Nagesh Kumar, and TCA Anant among others.
Startup founders need to sit up and think about how not to take stardom for granted and how not to disappoint their fans who have stood in long queues for those precious selfies with popular entrepreneurs, notes Nivedita Mookerji.
The leader of Nepal's largest communist party was appointed as prime minister on Sunday by President Ram Chandra Paudel to lead the coalition government with the Nepali Congress (NC), the largest party in Parliament, apart from other smaller parties.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will set a record by presenting the sixth Budget in a row -- 5 annual Budgets and one interim -- a feat achieved so far only by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. With the presentation of interim Budget on February 1, Sitharaman will surpass the records of her predecessors like Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha, who had presented five budgets in a row. Desai, as Finance Minister, had presented five annual Budgets and one interim Budget between 1959-1964. The interim Budget 2024-25 to be presented by Sitharaman on February 1, will be a vote-on-account that will give the government authority to spend certain sums of money till a new government comes to office after the April-May general elections.
GST collection in May rose 12 per cent to Rs 1.57 lakh crore, the finance ministry said on Thursday. The gross Good & Services Tax (GST) revenue collected in the month of May, 2023 is Rs 1,57,090 crore of which Central GST is Rs 28,411 crore, State GST is Rs 35,828 crore, Integrated GST is Rs 81,363 crore (including Rs 41,772 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is Rs 11,489 crore (including Rs 1,057 crore collected on import of goods).
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was on Friday given the additional charge of Finance Ministry with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh being admitted to the hospital for a heart bypass surgery on Saturday.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday pitched for front loading of capital expenditure, saying it is critical for revitalisting the economy post the coronavirus pandemic. During a virtual meeting with senior government officials to discuss the infrastructure roadmap ahead, she also asked ministries to aim to achieve more than their capital expenditure (capex) targets. The Union Budget 2021-22 provided a capital outlay of Rs.5.54 lakh crore, a sharp increase of 34.5 per cent over the Budget Estimate of 2020-21.
Nitish said he wanted his government to have a clean image and it was reflected in the resignation of Jitan Ram Manjhi even before he could assume office as he was facing a case in the bachelor of education scam.
She said I treated her like a bachchi. At another moment, she said I had gone to various people and 'bitched' about her. She also threatened to bring the entire matter to the PM's notice. A revealing excerpt from Subhash Chandra Garg's We Also Make Policy: An Insider's Account of How the Finance Ministry Functions.
Lok Sabha passed the Finance Bill, after approving more than two dozen official amendments, by voice vote, thus completing the Budgetary exercise for 2019-20 in the Lower House.
The finance ministry on Friday amended the foreign exchange management rules to exclude international credit card spends from the purview of liberalised remittance scheme (LRS). The amendment to the Foreign Exchange Management (Current Account Transactions) Rules, 2000, will be effective retrospectively from May 16, the ministry said in a notification. "...the use of International Credit Card for making payment by a person towards meeting expenses while such person is on a visit outside India" will not be covered under LRS, the notification said while inserting Rule 7 in the FEM (CAT) Rules.
Five state-run general insurance companies have a total exposure of Rs 347.64 crore, or 0.14 per cent of their total assets under management (AUM), in Adani group of companies, the finance ministry said on Monday. In a written reply to a question by Congress' Manish Tewari, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad said Life Insurance Corp (LIC) held Rs 35,917.31 crore in debt and equity of Adani group of companies as on December 31, 2022. This is 0.97 per cent of its total assets under management (AUM) of Rs 41.66 trillion.
With India's inclusion in global bond indices starting next financial year, the central government believes there will be greater scope for shifting to borrowings via long-term government securities (G-sec) from short-term instruments. This change may be factored into the FY25 interim Budget. "While this has been our focus, the inclusion of India in global bond indices gives us the opportunity to accelerate the shift towards longer tenure G-secs," an official said, requesting anonymity.
The finance ministry has cautioned that global and regional uncertainties and domestic disruptions may keep inflationary pressures elevated in the coming months, warranting "greater vigilance" by the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). "Russia's decision to terminate the Black Sea grain deal, along with dry conditions in major wheat-growing areas, caused a price spike in cereals. Domestic factors like white fly disease and an uneven distribution of monsoon exerted pressure on vegetable prices in India," the ministry said in its latest Monthly Economic Report for July, released on Tuesday. However, the report maintained, the recent price surge in certain food items "is expected to be transitory". "Tomato prices are likely to decline with the arrival of fresh stocks by the end of August or early September.
But the government will present a second tranche of Supplementary Demands for Grants during the Budget session of Parliament in February, when it can seek additional spending.
One has the impression that dictates of political accommodation rather than dictates of professional management of internal security have influenced his appointment as the home minister, says B Raman
In a bid to bring down the cost of air operations, Aviation and Petroleum ministries will meet FM to get ATF notified as 'declared good'.
