Amethi: With ATMs suddenly running dry in several states, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for what he described as destroying India’s banking system by ushering in “acchhe din” for fugitive jewellers Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. Gandhi also criticised Modi for his silence on[Read More…]
New Delhi: Allaying fears of currency shortage in the country, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the government has reviewed the situation and “there is more than adequate currency in circulation”. “Have reviewed the currency situation in the country. Overall there is more than adequate currency in circulation and[Read More…]
New Delhi: India’s wholesale price-indexed (WPI) inflation softened to 2.47 per cent in March from 2.48 per cent reported for the previous month, official data showed on Monday. According to the Commerce Ministry data, the WPI inflation in March 2017 was more than double at 5.11 per cent. “The annual rate[Read More…]
New Delhi: Decrying the economic orthodoxy in India handed down from Europe of cutting fiscal deficits to balance budgets, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar on Sunday called for new definitions to be adopted for government expenditure and described as fallacious the comparisons made between household and national budgets. Speaking at[Read More…]
New Delhi: Revenue collection under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) fell for the second consecutive month in February by Rs 1,144 crore to Rs 85,174 crore. The collection had marginally slipped in January to Rs 86,318 crore from Rs 86,703 crore in December. “The total revenue received under GST for[Read More…]
Kolkata: Describing himself as “not an expert on economics”, Infosys co-founder and India’s IT industry doyen N R Narayana Murthy on Wednesday said he could not understand the logic behind the Narendra Modi government’s note ban move in November 2016, particularly when it remonetised the monetary system with same or even[Read More…]
New Delhi: Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Sunday described demonetisation as the “greatest lie” and said it ended up destroying jobs. The Congress leader also accused the Centre of pushing people into poverty by implementing a flawed Goods and Services Tax (GST). “There cannot be a greater[Read More…]
New Delhi: Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman on Saturday said India has made rapid progress on the economic front but economic inequality in the country remains an issue. India has become a much “better place to do business” than it was earlier, though the bureaucratic obstacles have not gone away completely[Read More…]
Washington: Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has urged global policymakers to guard against trade protectionism in the wake of US proposed tariffs on steel and aluminium. “Policymakers need to work constructively together to reduce trade barriers and resolve trade disagreements without resort to exceptional measures,” Lagarde[Read More…]
New Delhi: The Indian government’s public debt increased to Rs 66.61 lakh crore by the end of the third quarter ending December, which represented a rise of 1.22 per cent over the previous quarter, official data showed on Thursday. According to a Union Finance ministry release, the government’s debt (excluding liabilities[Read More…]
New Delhi: India’s trade deficit in February at $12 billion narrowed from an over a four-year high of the previous month at $16.3 billion, as exports picked up while imports moderated, official data showed on Thursday. Indian exports in January had plunged nearly 10 per cent to $24.38 billion. According to[Read More…]
In a blow to government employees, the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) on Wednesday decided to lower the interest rate on provident fund deposits to 8.55 per cent from the existing 8.65 per cent. The rate cut decision for the fiscal 2017-18 was taken at the meeting of the Central[Read More…]
New Delhi: The central government on Wednesday said that “all existing protections” have been retained while consolidating the Public Provident Fund (PPF) Act under the proposed Government Savings Promotion Act. The development comes a day after the central government proposed to merger separate acts on small savings, PPF and government savings[Read More…]
New Delhi: India’s retail inflation for January has eased down to 5.07 per cent compared to 5.21 per cent in December 2017, according to data released by the Central Statistics Office on Monday. On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the CPI inflation last month was 3.17 per cent in January 2017. [Read More…]
Mumbai: A public interest litigation — probably holding the key to the historic demonetisation of November 8, 2016 — filed by RTI activist Manoranjan Roy will finally come up for hearing at Bombay High Court here on February 12. The PIL was filed in 2015, on the basis of RTI replies[Read More…]
Mumbai: The key Indian equity indices provisionally closed Tuesday’s trade in the negative territory, paring some losses to recover from their day’s lows. A massive downturn in the global stock markets unleashed a selling frenzy on the domestic bourses during the day’s trade. The barometer 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the[Read More…]
A massive downturn in the US and East Asian stock markets unleashed a selling frenzy in the Indian equity markets during the morning trade session on Tuesday. The two main indices of the Indian equity market — S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty50 — corrected by around 3.30 per cent[Read More…]
New Delhi: Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda on Friday termed the proposed National Health Protection Scheme as “NaMocare” and said various health components of the ambitious programme have been worked out. “In this NaMocare, under the Ayushman Bharat, all health components and its stages have been addressed,” Nadda told reporters here,[Read More…]
New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday announced a flagship National Health Protection Scheme under which Rs 5 lakh cover will be provided a year to 10 crore poor and vulnerable families in the country. “We are now launching a flagship national health protection scheme to cover 10 crore poor[Read More…]
The World Bank is estimating India’s economy to grow by 6.7 per cent during the current fiscal year, higher than the 6.5 per cent estimate by the Indian government. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is expected to rise to 7.3 per cent in 2018-19, making India again the world’s[Read More…]
The country will shortly have new Rs 10 denomination notes in circulation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced on Friday. The new Rs 10 note in the Mahatma Gandhi series is designed in the base colour of chocolate brown and has the motif of the Konark Sun Temple in[Read More…]
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will on Friday chair a pre-Budget consultation meeting with financial sector regulators, according to official sources on Thursday. Finance Ministry sources here said that Jaitley would chair the meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) which is likely to discuss issues related to the[Read More…]
Income inequality in India has increaed since deregulation started in the 1980s, with the top 10 per cent of earners accounting for 55 per cent of the national wealth in 2016, according to a global research report released on Wednesday. The India-specific finding of the ‘World Inequality Report 2018’ authored,[Read More…]
New Delhi: Implementing the GST, the improvement in India’s World Bank ease of doing business rankings, the sovereign rating upgrade by US agency Moody’s and bank recapitalisation all contributed to make 2017 a historic year, the Finance Ministry said on Monday. Besides, the cleansing of the financial system instrumentalised by demonetisation[Read More…]
NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Monday said the days of physical banks were ending, and that banks unable to make a transition to data analytics and digital banking would die by 2020. “You will see a huge transformation towards digital payments by 2020. My view is that 2020 will[Read More…]
