With a view to keeping inflation under check, essential items including food, which presently constitute roughly half of the consumer inflation basket, will be taxed at zero rate.
India's equity markets are on a roller-coaster ride, after delivering spectacular returns for two consecutive years - in 2020 and 2021. The benchmark National Stock Exchange's (NSE's) Nifty50 is down 1.5 per cent in the first nine months of the current calendar year 2022 (CY22) as foreign portfolio investors sold Indian stocks due to rising bond yields in the US and across global markets, including India. The sell-off in the Indian equity markets has, however, not been broad-based and largely limited to sectors facing earnings headwinds from rising interest rates, lower commodity and energy prices, and likely economic recession in advanced economies.
The funds will be used to expand the merchant offerings across India to equip them with technology and various other services.
The state has extended its full support, provided its revenues are protected.
The report admits that converting MSP to a floor price of auction on the eNAM portal will not completely solve the problem as the current data shows that average modal prices in e-NAM mandis is lower than the minimum support price in all commodities except urad.
The ministry is preparing a draft note for consideration of the CCPA on pricing of diesel, kerosene and LPG, official sources said.
Intense showers battered Chennai and other northern regions of Tamil Nadu on Thursday while the depression over Bay of Bengal crossed the coast by evening.
In a first, the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) officers reached out to several ministries in the last week of April as part of a confidence-boosting measure. The meeting brought the CAG officials and those from the ministries across the table to discuss the pain points in their relations. CAG of India Girish Chandra Murmu took this novel step because of growing tensions between those audited and the auditor.
If Vodafone Idea shuts, a bulk of the high-paying ARPU customers will move to Airtel as Reliance Jio does not have a comprehensive postpaid offering like it, and have aggressively preferred to play in the prepaid market. The bulk of Vodafone Idea customers use 2G phones and only a few of them use data. It will be easier for Airtel to woo these customers as they can shift seamlessly to its 2G network without changing handsets or even SIM cards,
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).
Gurgaon and Mumbai, the richest cities in Haryana and Maharashtra, respectively, have always been the preferred markets for investors. Most parts of these cities are beyond the reach for those looking for affordable homes.
The government on Thursday hiked by 62 per cent the price of natural gas that is used to produce electricity, make fertilisers and turned into CNG to use as fuel in automobiles and cooking gas for household kitchens. This is the first increase in rates since April 2019 and comes on back of firming benchmark international prices but does not reflect the spurt in spot or current price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) witnessed during the last couple of weeks. The oil ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) said the rates paid for gas produced from fields given to state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) will be $2.90 per million British thermal unit for the six-month period beginning April 1.
'The Budget numbers presented severely underestimate the magnitude of the unstated fiscal crisis that we went through in 2018-2019, which cannot be conceivably be fully reversed in 2019-2020,' points out Rathin Roy, director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
The government said that far from targeting any US entity, the purpose was to ensure fairness, healthy competition, and to exercise the ability of governments to tax businesses having a nexus with the Indian market through digital operations.
In the early part of 1800, a 30-acre plot next to Fort Gloster on the banks of river Hooghly in Howrah district of Bengal was the nerve centre of industrial activity; it housed India's first steam-powered cotton mill, Bowreah Mills, which was set up by a British merchant and went on to become a hub of factories - a rum distillery, foundry, cotton yarn factory, an oil mill and a paper mill, et al. Spearheaded by Dwarkanath Tagore, the industrialist grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore, the commercial complex was possibly the first of its kind in the country. Close to 200 years later, after much ebb and flow of history, the hub is set for a resurgence of sorts.
Extended check-in time, frequent disinfection every hour, additional queue managers at entry, exit, boarding point, check-in halls, security check areas and boarding gates, with social distancing markers and reminders - welcome to our airports post-coronavirus.
Bettering the promise of monthly payouts to homemakers by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the DMK, Kamal Haasan's Makkal Needhi Maiam on Friday assured Rs 3,000 "value rights assistance" to them in its manifesto for the April 6 assembly polls, but maintained it was not a dole.
Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years largely because he reported losing much more money than he made, the report said. The US president immediately dismissed the report as 'totally fake news'.
In the upcoming round of privatisation, unviable airports are likely to be clubbed with six main airports and a prospective bidder may be restricted to bid for two airports.
These refineries, commissioned mostly in the 1950s and 1960s during India's early industrialisation push, are inefficient and costly to maintain compared to their modern counterparts on the coast mainly operated by private companies.
'Kerala isn't as dependent on agriculture like Bihar or Odisha or even other southern states.' 'Economic losses would not be too intense, unlike other states.' 'The floods could, at best, impact India Inc's earnings for a quarter or two.'
While Arun Jaitley remains part of the decision making process, Piyush Goyal, who was given additional charge on May 14, attends cabinet meetings and takes the day-to-day decisions.
India's top listed companies reported their best-ever quarterly net profit of Rs 2.39 trillion in the September quarter of FY22, up 46.4 per cent year-on-year. The earnings were driven by a big surge in the profitability of banks, non-banking financial companies & insurance (BFSI), oil & gas, and metal & mining firms. The combined net profit of these three cyclical sectors were up 87 per cent YoY to a record high of Rs 1.53 trillion, up from Rs 82,000 crore a year ago and Rs 1.08 trillion in Q1FY22.
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.
Deserted streets, limited customers, no revenue generation, huge rentals and restricted operations have forced many outlets to put their shutters down permanently while many others are struggling to survive by retrenching staff and tightening their purse strings on several other expenses.
Telecom department says spectrum can't be used as collateral because it's government property
"I have earlier appeared for the inquiry five times. The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) had filed a C-summary report in a Pune Court that there is no truth in the allegations and the case be closed," he said.
As far as India is concerned, the danger is the potential of the IS to create mischief rather than its actual capability as of now, says Rajiv Kumar
New Zealand authorities have begun easing social restrictions in recent weeks with COVID-19 cases slowing to a trickle, and sports have been given the green light to restart domestic competitions.
'I am helpless and there is no one to help me.' 'I have been on this platform since Saturday.'
The Goa CM knows running a coalition government while pursuing a development agenda will require a fine balancing act.
The collector along with some policemen on Saturday stopped the man, identified as Aman Mittal (23), who was on his motorcycle, on a road in Surajpur where the coronavirus-induced lockdown is in force.
The marketplace was simply not conducive to the extension and evolution of broadband networks, particularly for less dense rural markets, so connectivity and services suffered.
'They will be able to ride over this immediate crisis and carry on, but they need to take corrective steps and these will have to be long term measures which must include working closely with state governments.'
The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Saturday adopted a resolution urging the Centre to withdraw three contentious farm laws, against which farmers have been holding protests outside Delhi for months.
What will the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government do to answer the queries and fears of investors who will want to be doubly sure they would not be harassed at a later date, as has been happening to Sterlite, should be interesting to watch, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Criticising various provisions in the proposed GST regime, Moily said it will be a "technological nightmare" and the anti-profiteering provisions in it are "far too draconian."
On Thursday, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had stated that the government was reworking the subsidy-sharing formula.
The divestment process, however, will not be an easy affair as there are multiple stakeholders, including the employee unions, whose concerns will have to be addressed.
There are tell-tale signs of a slide in the quality of Budgets presented by the current administration, says Parthasarathi Shome.
