While FMCG companies were not barred from carrying out their operations during the 21-day lockdown, since most manufacture staples and essential products, capacity utilisation remained poor, owing to the restricted movement of raw materials, finished goods, and labour.
The country's textile industry is concentrated in a few pockets of Gujarat and Maharashtra in the west and Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the south.
Giving a relief to exporters community, the government on Thursday said it will release Rs 56,027 crore to exporters against pending tax refunds under different incentive schemes for outbound shipments. The amount will be disbursed to more than 45,000 exporters. Briefing the media about the decision, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that the Rs 56,027 crore, which is being released under various export promotion schemes, is over and above duty remission of Rs 12,454 crore for the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Export Products (RoDTEP) Scheme and Rs 6,946 crore for Rebate of State and Central Levies and Taxes (RoSCTL) Scheme already announced.
EPFO has verified or attested 64.67 lakh Aadhaar numbers.
While the number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 7,409, as many as 764 people have been cured and discharged, and one had migrated, it said. Of the total 273 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 127 fatalities, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 36, Gujarat at 22 and Delhi at 19.
The NDA govt launched the Mudra scheme to give unsecured loans of up to Rs 10 lakh to small enterprises with the objective to provide self-employment
At item level, rice, coconut oil, fish fresh, poultry, milk, onion, vegetables, fruits, sugar, cigarette, electricity charges etc. are responsible for increase in the index.
Thousands of farmers are protesting on various borders of Delhi since November 26, seeking repeal of three farm laws enacted in September.
Thackeray said he was in constant touch with the Centre over the issue of running more trains to ferry migrant labourers, stranded due to the coronavirus-enforced lockdown, to their native places.
The ministry of home affairs on Wednesday issued a fresh set of guidelines to let migrant workers, students, tourists and pilgrims stranded in different parts of the country to get back home.
The SOP said priority will be given to compelling cases of in distress, including migrant workers and labourers who have been laid off, short term visa holders faced with expiry of visas, persons with medical emergency/ pregnant women and elderly persons or those required to return to India due to death of family member, and students.
The government on Saturday announced a string of measures, including a pension for dependents of those having lost their lives due to COVID-19, among other benefits for the families who lost their earning members to the pandemic.
Maharashtra has the most number of coronavirus cases with 23,401 cases.
What some of us think are strong, bold and firm decisions are cruel, harsh and unwanted for others. This is what we need to consider when we look at what has happened with the farm laws, asserts Aakar Patel.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan announced on Monday that his government will allow India to send a humanitarian shipment of 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat to neighbouring Afghanistan through its territory after finalisation of the transit modalities.
The statement comes in the wake of two independent members of the NSC, P C Mohanan and J V Meenakshi, quitting the Commission over disagreements with the government on the back-series GDP data and delay in release of labour force survey. Mohanan was also the acting chairperson of the Commission.
The top court said it is not satisfied with the efforts of the Centre as well as the states on the issue of registration of workers in unorganised sectors.
'There is lack of demand because people have no jobs, and no income.' 'Lakhs of people have lost their jobs and they have no income which has led to no demand in the market.'
Shalini Gupta, a freelance writer from Pudicherry, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what she would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
While majority of the state governments and union territory administrations have made at least seven days' quarantine compulsory for anyone arriving in their jurisdiction, a few of them have opted for home quarantine for those reaching their administrative limits. According to an official estimate, as on May 26, a total of 22.81 lakh people were in quarantine facilities arranged by different states and union territories -- almost double from 12 days ago (May 14) when the people put under quarantine were 11.95 lakh, a government official told PTI.
The plea also states that the petitioners are also questioning why or how the project constitutes an "essential service", merely because some executive mandated contractual deadline has to be met.
The EPFO pays rate of return to its subscribers on the basis of returns it generates from its investments.
'Modi personally provides the higher direction of the ministry and the minister then works with bureaucrats on implementation,' points out Aakar Patel.
Expressing the government's commitment to continue with reforms, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday assured India Inc that it is ready to do everything required to revive and support economic growth hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stressing that there is a need to promote growth as it helps bring down poverty, she however said it would not be at the cost of inflation. RBI has been mandated to keep inflation at 4 per cent, with tolerance level of 2 per cent on either side.
The Essential Defence Services Bill, 2021, introduced by Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt amid din created by the Opposition over three new agri laws and the alleged Pegasus snooping controversy, seeks to replace an ordinance issued in June.
Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Saturday said the lockdown rules will remain unchanged in the state will May 3. Tope said there was no clarity in the Centre's latest order regarding reopening of shops.
India's COVID-19 recoveries have sprinted past 27 lakh, taking the recovery rate to 76.61 per cent, while the case fatality rate has further dropped to 1.79 per cent, the health ministry said on Sunday.
If 2019-20 (FY20) was an unusual year for highway construction in India, with the pace of work slowing down for the first time since the Narendra Modi government assumed power in 2014, largely due to the general elections in May and liquidity crunch, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21 (FY21) only made matters worse with lockdowns and labour unavailability. The pace of highway construction in 2021-22 (FY22) has not been able to bulldoze the pandemic barriers in a year marred by two Covid-19 waves - the second at the start of the fiscal year, the third towards the close. With localised lockdowns and restrictions on mobility, highway construction growth in the country has now fallen to a five-year low.
Just a few weeks ago, the Centre has come out with the long-awaited Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines, which have drawn a dismayed response from the companies concerned.
The letter from West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha to Chairman of Railway board V K Yadav dated May 22, stated that the state has been severely impacted by Super Cyclone Amphan on May 20-21 which caused extensive damage to the infrastructure.
The protests brought home the fact that the Sri Lankan public is in no mood for halfway measures, as voices against Rajapaksa 'family rule' and 'securitisation' of the civilian administration began sidestepping the more critical economic crisis, affecting the nation and afflicting the individual, observes Sri Lanka watcher N Sathiya Moorthy.
The output of eight core sectors grew by 16.8 per cent in May, mainly due to a low base effect and uptick in production of natural gas, refinery products, steel, cement and electricity, official data released on Wednesday showed. The eight infrastructure sectors of coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilisers, steel, cement and electricity had contracted by 21.4 per cent in May 2020 due to the lockdown restrictions imposed to control the spread of the COVID-19 infections. In March this year, these key sectors had recorded a growth of 11.4 per cent, and 60.9 per cent in April.
Centre's off-the-record instructions through WhatsApp and a squeeze on funds brought the rural work programme to collapse after a roaring first half of the year.
The largest upward contribution to the change in current index came from food group which increased by 1.22 per cent, contributing 1.64 percentage points to the total change. At item level, rice, arhar dal, fish fresh, poultry (chicken), milk, chillies green, garlic, ginger, tomato, root and green vegetables, tea leaf, tea (readymade), cigarette, country liquor prices, electricity charges, medicine (allopathic), and repair charges, are responsible for the rise in index.
Apart from Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, where none of the estimated 6.7 million construction workers got cash transfer benefits, the coverage of the construction workers was the lowest in Delhi, where only about 5 per cent of the estimated workers received cash under the PMGKY, followed by Kerala and Uttar Pradesh (22 per cent), among major states. In India, construction workers belong to the unorganised sector but account for the highest share of non-farm jobs after manufacturing.
Under fixed-term employment, workers are entitled to all statutory benefits available to a permanent worker in the same factory. However, employers may not give notice to a fixed-term worker on non-renewal or expiry of his or her contract.
Mudasir Ahmed, a businessman from Kashmir, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what he would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
He also announced an assistance of Rs 3,000 for accredited journalists while acknowledging their role in the dissemination of information on COVID19.
As the COVID wave gradually shifts to rural areas, several states are gearing up to check its spread through self-proclaimed lockdowns by Panchayati Raj institutions, creating a database of migrants and providing free online medical consultation to the sick.
The migrants were ferried to their villages in sanitised buses arranged by the Jharkhand government to take them home after preliminary medical screening at the station, officials said.
