Something seems to be working for Indian consumers. Yet, the Indian consumer expresses some caution this festive season, reveals Mahesh Vyas.
'The cost of the lockdown so far is the loss of about 11 million jobs.' 'It is important that a fresh lockdown does not make this worse,' asserts Mahesh Vyas.
'The linking of Aadhaar to births and deaths will revive the debate around citizenship.'
India's housing sector is witnessing probably the "biggest boom" in the last one and half decade driven by various factors such as affordability and customers aspiration to own homes, HDFC Capital Advisors Managing Director and CEO Vipul Roongta said on Tuesday. Addressing a real estate summit organised by FICCI, he noted that the residential real estate segment has revived strongly after going through a lot of pain due to new realty law RERA and demonetisation. "In the last one and half decade, I think this is probably the biggest boom I am personally seeing as an organisation on the residential segment, whether it is affordable mid-income and premium housing properties," said Roongta, who is also co-chairman, FICCI Real Estate Committee.
Should we not be creating roles in India for the talented, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday allowed microfinance lenders to fix interest rates on loans with a rider that those should not be usurious for the borrowers. A microfinance loan is defined as a collateral-free loan given to a household having an annual income of up to Rs 300,000. Each regulated entity (RE) should put in place a board-approved policy regarding pricing of microfinance loans, said the 'Master Direction - Reserve Bank of India (Regulatory Framework for Microfinance Loans) Directions, 2022'. In the past, the central bank used to announce the rates on quarterly basis.
The prime minister recalled the innumerable every day adversities that his mother encountered and successfully overcame.
It would not be surprising if India, the world's largest producer of milk, has to resort to imports to meet the elevated summer demand, states Surinder Sud.
The Economic Survey 2022-23 (FY23), to be presented a day before Union Budget 2023-24 (FY24), is likely to project India's real gross domestic product (GDP) growth between 6 per cent and 7 per cent for FY24, Business Standard has learnt. The broader theme of the Survey could be on how India has dealt with two years of a global pandemic and the ongoing geopolitical disturbance, the strengths and weaknesses that emerged, and what lessons may be learnt. The much-awaited Survey will be the first one by Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran and his team in the finance ministry's economic division.
Claims of a spike in poverty and inequality in India during the Covid-19 pandemic are patently false as such claims are based on uncomparable different surveys, according to a paper co-authored by eminent economist Arvind Panagariya. The paper also noted that inequality fell in the country during Covid years, both in rural and urban areas as well as nationally. Panagariya, Columbia University Professor and former vice chairman of NITI Aayog and Vishal More of Intelink Advisors, New Delhi have co-authored a detailed paper 'Poverty and Inequality in India: Before and After Covid-19'.
Feeble demand in rural areas of the country has affected sales of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in September as compared to August, which saw heavy stocking ahead of the festival season, according to the data of Bizom, a retail intelligence platform. Sales in rural India fell 14.3 per cent while urban sales growth stood at 1.1 per cent in September as compared to the previous month. Overall FMCG sales fell by 9.6 per cent in September as compared to August.
Indians face COVID-19 with record debt, stalled income.
The fall in urban sentiments in June is worrisome, observes Mahesh Vyas.
The study, 'socioeconomic effects of broadband speed: a microeconomic investigation', says in emerging countries like India, setting up a new broadband connection of speed 0.5 Mbps could lead to an increase in household income by $800 a year, which means Rs 50,168, according to the latest currency conversion rate (a dollar was Rs 62.71 as on Friday).
Fitch Ratings on Monday cautioned that the Indian government has little fiscal headroom at its disposal to respond to possible shocks to growth given the country's lowest investment grade credit rating with a negative outlook. "India's public debt/GDP ratio, at about 87 per cent in FY21, is well above the median of around 60% for 'BBB' rated sovereigns. "We revised the Outlook on India's rating to Negative, from Stable, in June 2020, partly owing to our assumptions about the impact of the pandemic on public finance metrics. "The government has little fiscal headroom at its current rating level to respond to possible shocks to growth," it said in a report.
India's budget for the fiscal beginning April focuses on giving a boost to the ongoing economic recovery through a sharp increase in capex spending but is short on major growth-enhancing structural reform announcements, Fitch Ratings said Wednesday. The deficit targets present in the Union budget 2022-23 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday "are a bit higher than our forecasts when we affirmed India's 'BBB'/Negative sovereign rating in November," said Jeremy Zook, director and primary sovereign analyst for India, Fitch Ratings. While it was widely expected that the fiscal deficit will be lower than the targeted 6.8 per cent of the GDP in the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, Sitharaman put the number at 6.9 per cent.
Urban men lost more jobs than women during the second wave of COVID-19, implying a complete loss of livelihood for millions of households, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). The most disproportionate loss of jobs because of the first wave of COVID-19 was among urban women, CMIE's MD and CEO Mahesh Vyas said in his analysis. He said urban women account for about three per cent of total employment, but they accounted for 39 per cent of total job losses in the first wave of the pandemic.
The gig economy can serve up to 90 million jobs in the non-farm sectors in India with a potential to add 1.25 per cent to the GDP over the "long term", a report said on Tuesday. The gig economy, where workers get hired typically for short durations, can lead to transactions of over $250 billion over the long term, the report by the consultancy firm BCG said. The firm said gig economy is not a new concept but has seen greater adoption following the advent of technology.
Recovery of the Indian economy depends to a great extent on acceleration in the spending of these relatively richer households, explains Mahesh Vyas.
Over 10 million Indians have lost their jobs because of the second wave of COVID-19, and around 97 per cent of households' incomes have declined since the beginning of the pandemic last year, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) chief executive Mahesh Vyas said on Monday. The unemployment rate measured by the think-tank is expected to come at 12 per cent at the end of May as against 8 per cent in April, Vyas told PTI, adding this signifies that about 10 million or 1 crore Indians have lost jobs in this period. Stating that the main reason for the job losses is "mainly the second wave" of COVID-19 infections, Vyas said, "As the economy opens up, part of the problem will be solved but not entirely."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote a blog dedicated to his mother as she entered the 100th year of her life on Saturday, highlighting her sacrifices and various aspects of her life which 'shaped' his mind, personality, and self-confidence.
India's projected economic growth for 2022 has been downgraded by over two per cent to 4.6% by the United Nations, a decrease attributed to the ongoing war in Ukraine, with New Delhi expected to face restraints on energy access and prices, reflexes from trade sanctions, food inflation, tightening policies and financial instability, according to a UN report released on Thursday. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report downgraded its global economic growth projection for 2022 to 2.6 per cent from 3.6 per cent due to shocks from the Ukraine war and changes in macroeconomic policies that put developing countries particularly at risk. The report said while Russia will experience a deep recession this year, significant slowdowns in growth are expected in parts of Western Europe and Central, South and South-East Asia.
India-born American residents, numbering over 1.5 million, are the best educated among all the foreign born communities in the US and are also the highest earners in the country, latest census has revealed.
A change in the desire to buy consumer durables is perhaps the most important indicator of an economy changing direction, explains Mahesh Vyas.
Households with only one employed person can be considered to be somewhat vulnerable. Their proportion is rising. Also rising is the proportion of highly vulnerable households with no person employed, observes Mahesh Vyas.
'We are today worse off today compared to where we were two years ago by as much as 43 per cent,' notes Mahesh Vyas.
From middle-class it is middle-income India, marketers are chasing for volumes. The 166 million households in this category is the new focus.
If you have been planning to buy a house, don't postpone your purchase. Developers are offering discounts, freebies and attractive payment plans.
Policymakers need to work towards raising the median household income rather than per capita income.
According to the local Brass Handicrafts Manufacturers Association (BHMA), some 800,000 people are directly employed in Moradabad's massive brass handicrafts and utensils manufacturing industry, which has some 30,000 small and micro-scale units and a total annual turnover of Rs 10,000 crore. The manufacturers are heavily dependent on export markets such as the US, Canada, Australia and the European Union. And exports account for nearly 70 per cent of their revenues. According to industry insiders, since this year's lockdowns, manufacturing has been at 65 per cent of normal levels.
The survey, however, said that GDP is expected to revert to growth terrain next year, when it is likely to grow by 7.2 per cent.
While many of the lost jobs will come back, the current loss is huge and its impact on the households that have suffered because of this cannot be captured in the comfort that jobs will come back eventually, observes Mahesh Vyas.
Despite the large economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the markets have recovered sharply even though the performance among individual stocks has been quite polarised.
For EWS, the limit is raised from Rs 60,000 to Rs 100,000, and for LIG, the its Rs 200,000 now.
The Economic Survey will remain a documentation of the government's resolve to not recognise the severe stress on the labour markets and on the livelihoods of Indian households arising out of the pandemic and the consequent lockdown, observes Mahesh Vyas.
The government should end subsidised domestic cooking gas (LPG) for people with income of more than Rs 6 lakh per annum, a Parliamentary Panel has suggested.
The government has chosen to profiteer off people's misery and suffering, Gandhi said.
The cut-off to enter India's one per cent - Rs 12.5 lakh - is nothing to write home about compared to global standards.
In Q1, India's GDP shrank by a staggering 24 per cent year-on-year amid the imposition of one of the most stringent global nationwide lockdowns.
India's festival season is bound to leave behind a bitter taste for the common people with prices of several commodities skyrocketing.
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