- Deepanshu Mohan, Soumya Marri, Bilquis Calcuttawala, Malhaar Kasodekar, Aniruddh Bhaskaran and Hemang Sharma A pre-budget deep dive by the Centre for New Economic Studies (CNES) Infosphere team has come up with some interesting takeaways. The analysis has looked at past macroeconomic and budget trends to set the tone for Budget 2023-24. They do this by looking at capital and revenue expenditure, sectoral analysis of budget expenditure and a scheme-wise allocation...

- Financial Express The Union Government will present its ninth and last full budget before national elections in early 2024. But none of the growth engines inspire optimism, Santosh Mehrotra writes in Financial Express.  Nearly 60 percent of India's GDP is accounted for by private onsumption expenditure. However, since demonetisation consumer expenditure has been tepid as job growth fell sharply. Per capita consumption in 2022-23 is just above the level of 2019-20.  Private...

-IndiaSpend.com Several important datasets that help in formulating government policies have not been released for over two years Mumbai: Of 20 government datasets that IndiaSpend analysed, the collection of data or its public release has been delayed for 12 datasets. Crucial data such as from the census, household expenditure and poverty estimates, which influence other data sets and policymaking, are over two years old. Political manipulation in data releases and a weakened data...

-The Hindu The Centre’s taking up the burden for free food grain distribution in 2023 will provide relief to States The Government has decided not to extend the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, (PMGKY), a scheme that ran between April 2020 to December 2022 (except for a short period in between), and provided additional allocation of food grains, i.e., rice or wheat from the central pool at five kilograms a month...

-PTI/ The Telegraph Confederation of Indian Industry, which was part of the virtual pre-Budget meeting, calls for an aggressive focus on privatisation of public sector units The Budget should focus on measures to accelerate job creation and broaden the tax base by rationalising GST and personal income tax slabs to boost consumption, industry bodies said in their pre-Budget meeting with finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday. "The external scenario is likely to continue...