Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will kick start the customary pre-Budget consultation exercise with stakeholders from Wednesday by holding the first such meeting with experts of agriculture and agro-processing industry. She will be seeking inputs from various stakeholders, including industry bodies, farmer organisations and economists for reviving consumption and boosting growth hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The growth this year is expected to be in the double-digit during the current fiscal.
'Laws have been used in a way to serve the needs of the current regime and its authoritarian ideology.'
IMF's Chief Economist Gita Gopinath on Thursday said it would be damaging for India to start tightening policy support in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and also stressed on reducing wasteful expenditures in the upcoming Budget. Delivering NCAER's '9th C D Deshmukh Lecture' virtually, Gopinath said there is scope for the Indian government to provide more direct support to people.
During an informal chat, economist Abhirup Sarkar explained in a layperson's terms why the prices in India are escalating so fast.
India's new policy commission has received a makeover and a dream team has been formed to head the Think Tank, NITI Aayog.
The recurrent increases in fuel prices over the past 10 days are eating into the margins of transporters, who will be forced to pass on the hikes to their customers. This, in turn, is set to make the prices of daily consumables and other goods dearer, affect consumption, and slow economic growth, said transporters and analysts. Freight rates on grand trunk routes have shot up 3-4 per cent month-on-month in the past few days, according to the Indian Foundation of Transport Research & Training (IFTRT).
The year 2021 could turn out to be India's year of IPO with the domestic unicorns through their public issues setting "domestic stock markets on fire and global investors in a frenzy", an RBI article said on Tuesday. The successful Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) by new age companies in the recent months are a reflection of bullishness about Indian technology, it said. "...growth impulse is igniting financial markets. 2021 could well turn out to be India's year of the IPO.
'With the ease of access, we have seen an increased participation from tier-2, tier-3, and tier-4 cities/towns.'
An industry survey has showed that economic growth for the current fiscal may slip to 4.8 per cent from 5 per cent estimated earlier.
The country's demographic dividend is dissipating, with seriously adverse consequences for young India, asserts Shankar Acharya, former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India.
Some of the Congress's new-found enthusiasm for hitting the streets will show its result in the Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Karnataka elections. That is when we will know if the Congress will go to the regional parties or the parties will come to the Congress.
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has earned a year's worth of bragging rights -- he is the only person of Indian origin to feature in Vanity Fair's annual power list of 100 most influential people.
'Raghuram Rajan is a wonderful economist, but he is not a wonderful Indian economist.' 'He doesn't understand India in the granular form.' 'India exists only from Delhi to Nariman Point for him.' 'India is much, much bigger and complex.' 'The new RBI governor shouldn't get ready to open his umbrella when it rains in America'
Having exposure to international funds and gold is a must for those who have foreign currency-denominated goals.
Uttar Pradesh's GDP per head is close to that of Kenya.
Moody's on Thursday upped India's growth projection for the next financial year beginning April 1, to 13.7 per cent, from 10.8 per cent estimated earlier, on the back of normalisation of activity and growing confidence in the market with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccine. For current fiscal, the US-based rating agency expects the economy to contract 7 per cent, lower than its previous estimate of 10.6 per cent contraction.
A head of its meeting, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) can take some solace from the softening food commodity prices. However, the events surrounding the last few weeks show that the fall may not be uniform across all commodities, and cereals like wheat and rice could be the outliers. A Reuters report said that local wheat prices jumped to a record Rs 23,547 per tonne on Wednesday. That is a 12 per cent rise from the recent lows that followed the government's surprise ban on exports on May 14.
With economic growth slowing to a six-year low, IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath says the government should undertake structural reforms such as bank clean-up and labour reforms to address the slowdown in domestic demand. She rooted for government policies focusing on managing a slowdown in domestic demand, and on boosting productivity growth and supporting employment creation in the medium term.
We have our own problems for sure and they are not trivial, but for now, our economy is in not too bad a shape, our politics is as personality-driven and authoritarian as that of most countries in the world. We must make the best of what we have and not be excessively unhappy looking at the grass on the other side of the septic tank which may not be greener after all!, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
For now, the upside appears to offset damage done to exports by weaker global demand.
India's manufacturing sector activities improved in September as companies benefited from strengthening demand conditions amid the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, a monthly survey said on Friday. The seasonally adjusted IHS Markit India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) improved from 52.3 in August to 53.7 in September, indicating a stronger expansion in overall business conditions across the sector. The September PMI data pointed to an improvement in overall operating conditions for the third straight month. In PMI parlance, a print above 50 means expansion while a score below 50 denotes contraction.
The RBI working group's proposal to allow corporate houses to set up banks is a 'good-looking' step in a 'bad direction' and may lead to crony capitalism and eventual financial instability, former chief economist of World Bank Kaushik Basu said on Thursday. Basu further said that there is a good reason why all successful economies have a clear dividing line between industries and corporations on the one hand, and banks and lending organisations on the other.
India's economy is unlikely to see double-digit growth and may grow between 8 per cent and 9 per cent this fiscal year (2021-22, or FY22), against the estimated 11.5 per cent, according to leading economists and rating agencies. The downward revision of growth projections to as low as 10 per cent is mostly on account of stringency in restrictions by states, relatively slow vaccination pace, and the possibility of a third wave of the pandemic. However, they say the impact will not be as severe as the first wave, and expect the first quarter to see positive growth.
'When I came here in 2002, I said you can grow at 8%.' 'And I was told that was crazy, and (now) here we are.'
'Did the Moneyball philosophy get redefined in the domain of the cash-rich IPL, which has become an integral part of the cricketing ecosystem?' asks Atanu Biswas.
It is a classic case of extremes: The worst contraction in GDP along with the highest-ever levels of cash in the economy; and a severe dent in consumption together with strong growth in bank deposits and digital payments.
So, while it is great that India's numbers look relatively good, don't raise a cheer just yet, points out T N Ninan.
From 1980 to 2014, the top 1 per cent captured 29 per cent of total growth, as much as the bottom 84 per cent put together.
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India stands out as a poor and very unequal country, with the top 1 per cent of the population holding more than one-fifth of the total national income in 2021 and the bottom half just 13 per cent, according to a report. The report, titled ' World Inequality Report 2022', has been authored by Lucas Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Lab, and coordinated by several experts, including French economist Thomas Piketty. It further said India is now among the most unequal countries in the world.
There are indications or signs of the economy picking up -- collection of GST and consumption of electricity, said former RBI governor, C Rangarajan.
Just a decade ago, a kind of muscular nationalism was the leitmotif for talent management within Indian corporations. Any suggestion of bringing in foreign talent had managers bristling with indignation.
The thing is that unemployment and joblessness are a personally felt shame. It is not easy to mobilise a set of people who identify with others as a group that cannot get work, asserts Aakar Patel.
Indian economy is set for a 'goldilocks' period -- used to describe a timeframe of high growth and low inflation -- while it can become Asia's fastest growing economy in 2016, Japanese financial major Nomura said.
'He also understands and foresees potential challenges.'
India's exports jumped 45.76 per cent to $33.28 billion in August on account of healthy growth in segments like engineering, petroleum products, gems and jewellery and chemicals, even as the trade deficit widened to a four-month high of $13.81 billion.
Until recently, average incomes in advanced countries were increasing at much faster rates than in the rest of the world.
'Unemployment barely figures in the Budget except as a derived demand from the industry and infrastructure.' 'There is no effort at direct attack on unemployment.'
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