-Business Standard GVA growth at 2-year low of 5.6%; Farming only bright spot India’s economic growth fell to 6.1 per cent in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2016-17 (FY17), primarily because of demonetisation adversely affecting economic activity. This was at least a four-quarter low. The sectors worst affected were construction and financial services. Without indirect taxes, growth figures would be more dismal. Gross value added (GVA), the difference between gross domestic product...

-PTI The court was hearing a PIL alleging that the statutory cess levied from Real estate firms for the welfare of construction workers was not being utilised properly. Where has a whopping amount of Rs 20,000 crore, meant for workers’ welfare, gone? Spent on tea parties or vacation of officials? Even the Comptroller and Auditor General doesn’t know, wondered the Supreme Court. These posers were put to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)...

-IANS As per the report, the disruption caused by demonetisation had ‘greater and longer-lasting’ impacts for lower-income individuals, households and businesses. The Indian government’s demonetisation measures did not impede future black money flows in new denominations, a UN report said on Monday. According to UN Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2017, complementary measures to demonetisation would be required to target all forms of undeclared wealth and assets. “Broader structural reforms...

-PTI RERA Act would bring about a paradigm shift in the way the Real estate industry operates Even as the Real estate Regulatory Act (RERA) comes into effect, delay in issuing notification and non-uniformity of rules across the states may dilute its effective implementation, says the rating agency Icra. The Act would bring about a paradigm shift in the way the Real estate industry operates and improve the level of transparency and accountability...

-The Hindu Business line It must focus on human security and societal development rather than feed the avarice of a golden ghetto minority The discipline of economics has long been obsessed with gross domestic product as the base measure of development. Contemporary economic globalisation and its dominant neoliberal ideology see other considerations as not worth more than a passing glance. Neoliberalism, which used to be referred to as the Washington Consensus, was promoted by...