-The Hindu Can the RBI’s reduction in borrowing costs help check the demand slowdown? India’s economy is inarguably slowing, and the latest estimates from the Central Statistics Office disconcertingly point to a deepening slowdown. GDP growth is projected to have eased to 6.6% in the October-December period. With the CSO now forecasting the full-year expansion at 7%, fiscal fourth-quarter growth is implicitly pegged at an even slower 6.5%. At that level, growth...
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Who will pay for sops? -Arun Kumar
-The Indian Express Government’s claim that structural changes to the economy are paying off, and that is being used to give back to the people, is problematic. The Interim Union Budget 2019 is no less than a full budget with changes in taxation and announcement of lucrative schemes for various sections of the population. The recent losses in three major assembly elections rang alarm bells for the ruling dispensation. With the...
More »Numbers That Count: An Assessment of the Union Budgets of NDA II -CBGA
-Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) The Interim Union Budget 2019-20, the last budget presented by the incumbent government, comes at a time when the economy is beset with myriad problems. Among the various challenges facing the economy, perhaps the most critical are those related to the acute agrarian distress, burgeoning unemployment and slowing down of the economy. While it is true that many of these problems began prior to...
More »The budget has exposed the NDA government's nervousness -Yamini Aiyar
-Hindustan Times Fiscal prudence has been compromised in favour of pleasing every conceivable vote bank the NDA can appeal to What a difference five years make. In July 2014, when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) unveiled its first full budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley made clear that the NDA was against “mindless populism”. “India,” he said in a media interaction, “has to make a choice between mindless populism and fiscal prudence…. the...
More »Modi Launches a Startling Pre-Election Budget, Massaged by Creative Accounting -Jayati Ghosh
-TheWire.in The aggregate macroeconomic impact of this Budget cannot really be assessed, since the actual fiscal stance is now so opaque. Let’s get one thing clear. This is not an interim Budget, whatever the government finally agreed to call it. The sweeping promises made on both expenditure and taxation fronts are well beyond the limited minor changes that are supposed to be allowed in a vote-on-account or interim Budget. For a government that...
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