The global financial meltdown has pulled down India's economic growth to 6.7 per cent during 2008-09 from about 9 per cent a year ago. During the current fiscal, as per the Planning Commission estimates, growth rate may fall to 6.3 per cent.
There is no doubt that economic growth has picked up. It's also true that inflation has edged up. We had said at the beginning that sometime in the course of the year we would begin to slowly wind it down and what has happened is on course for that decision but exactly what, it's too early to say, says Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
"The word populist has negative overtones, but I am sure (the) finance minister will present a popular Budget. However, we should maintain the mystery of the Budget and you have to wait and see what comes out," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Alhuwalia said.
Even if you raise the poverty line as much as the Expert Group does, it turns out just 11 per cent of Indians are poor, not 37 per cent -- that's a huge poverty of estimation.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who took additional charge of the finance ministry recently, has rejected a Planning Commission proposal to increase the upper limit for Viability Gap Funding (VGF) for infrastructure projects coming up under the public-private partnership model.
Arvind Panagariya, first vice-chairman of the NITI Aayog, replacement for the five-decade-old Planning Commission, has decided to return to academics.
In an interview with Business Standard's Sapna Dogra Singh and John Samuel Raja D, C Rangarajan says there are some encouraging signs in the economy, but the real recovery will come only in 2010-11.
The Cabinet's decision to auction 3G spectrum in January next year will give a fillip to investments in port, power, telecom and roads in the next 12-18 months, deputy Planning Commission chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said.
Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who has just resigned, on Monday remained non-committal on his prospects of becoming finance minister while describing reports on this as "speculation".
Stressing the need for coal sector reforms, the presentation said, "Independent regulation of coal sector becomes essential to ensure that e-auction remains competitive, to fix formulae for price revision for long-term fuel supply, to fix trading margins and to improve exploitation and allocation of available resources.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Tuesday the global economic downturn which had affected Indian economy as well, is now coming to an end with slow return to normalcy.
The meetings with Singh and Ahluwalia have taken place just two days before the announcement of the results of the general elections for the 15th Lok Sabha. Besides Karnik, the other nominees on the Satyam board are HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, former ICAI chairman T M Manoharan, CII chief mentor Tarun Das, LIC executive S B Mainak and former presiding officer of Securities and Appellate Tribunal C Achuthan.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will preside over a full Planning Commission meeting on September 1 for the mid-term appraisal of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period (2007-12).
The prime minister's economic advisory council was disbanded early on, and not reconstituted.
The Indian economy rose by 7.9 per cent in the second quarter of this fiscal, belying analysts expectations of 6-6.6 per cent growth for the period.
"The rest of the world should pass a motion of thanks to India for keeping its emission at a level which actually is below the level required to achieve climate sustainability," says Montek Singh Ahluwalia, a key member of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's economic team.
Jadhav has a certain way with the crowds with his earthy Marathi speeches he got unprecedented crowds whenever he held public meetings as the VC and his innovative schemes at Pune University which took academia to the villages have made him a popular figure in Pune.
The government may raise the number of job days under the NREGA scheme to compensate rural households for loss of income due to a poor monsoon in large part of the country.
Nilekani, who has been appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to head the National Authority for Unique Identity, has been in the news for providing a unique identification number to all Indians.
The country's new home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, today said he prefers a Congressman as his successor in the finance ministry, setting off speculation about the implication of his statement.
The Planning Commission has mooted an idea to expand funding from the Reserve Bank of India to the India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd, so that infrastructure projects can access finance at lower cost from the government-owned IIFCL.
The President may not have agreed with the government on many occasions. Not once was this ever made public -- though he told off ministers in private.
Hailing the Budget 2009-10 as "growth oriented", Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Monday said there would be no need for another stimulus in the current fiscal.
"It is a huge scam. . . . The CPI-M has been opposing this. The Parliamentary Standing Committee, of which I am the chairman, has also all along opposed it," Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said. He said the public-private participation route, pursued by the Planning Commission, was 'disastrous as finally the burden falls on the people'.
The impact of stimulus measures was evident as manufacturing grew by 10.2 per cent, electricity by 10.6 per cent in August.
Nandan Nilekani will have the responsibility to lay down plans and policies to implement the Unique Identity card scheme and shall own and operate the UID database. The authority was notified on January 28 this year as an attached office under the aegis of the Planning Commission with an initial core team of 115 officials and staff. The scheme will be implemented in three years.
The idea of modernising railway stations under a PPP arrangement was aired several years ago by the then railway minister, Lalu Prasad, who visualised attracting Rs 15,000 crore (Rs 150 billion) investment in 22 stations.
The centres will be set up under a pilot project on PPP (public-private partnership) mode across the country, principal advisor (skill development mission) of Planning Commission Jayati Chandra said, adding that these are expected to come up by the middle of the year.
The Prime Minister Economy Advisory Council has projected a mere two per cent growth in the sector for the current year. Earlier in August, PMEAC had projected the agriculture production to grow at a lower pace of two per cent in the current year as against 4.5 per cent in 2007-08.
Railways were now less dependent on budgetary support than five years earlier due to the efforts of Lalu Prasad in making the sector financially self-reliant, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Saturday.
The Planning Commission has scaled down the growth rate for the Eleventh Plan ending 2012 to 8.1 per cent from 9 per cent in the wake of the global financial crisis that slowed the pace of economic expansion.
Amid growing concerns that modernisation of the much-hyped Chennai and Kolkata airports may miss the deadline, their modernisation is all set to cost an additional Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) to the state exchequer.
Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister Suresh D Tendulkar, as well as other member of the apex panel submitted their resignation on Tuesday.
"Second quarter will be worse (than 6.1 per cent growth in Q1) and may be Q3 also," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today after the full plan panel meeting. However, he said the economic growth will rebound in the fourth quarter to enable the economy to clock 6.3 per cent for the entire fiscal.
The panel also said the decline in exports would slow down after 2010 when the developed economies would return to positive growth. India's exports are on a down slide since October 2008, because of the global slump in demand. In 2008-09, the country's overseas shipment grew by meagre 3.4 per cent to about $168 billion compared to the same period last year.
While Lalu's chances of retaining Cabinet berth seems remote, experts believe there may not be too many new faces as far as important ministries are concerned.
The agriculture growth slowed down to 2.4 per cent in the April-June quarter this year from 3 per cent in the same quarter last year.
Breaks self-imposed rule never to return to an office he has occupied in the past.
The 'golden share', which will be owned by the government, will ensure that it has a say in all major decisions taken by the private concessionaire. It will also obviate the need for the government to invest in the equity of the company. The proposal has been mooted by the Planning Commission in the new model concession agreement that it has developed for the infrastructure sector. The agreement has been circulated among various stakeholders for consultation.
Food security for all was a poll promise from the ruling Congress party before this year's general elections.
