-The Economic Times At a time when the Rangarajan committee is giving final touches to its recommendations on sugar deregularisation, The Union food ministry has come up with two proposals for fixing new retail price of sugar sold in ration shops (levy sugar) to reduce the food subsidy bill. According to the first proposal, the food ministry has recommended to free up the prices of levy sugar and allow state governments to...

-The Hindu Batting for about 30 lakh sugarcane farmers of Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has expressed his reservation over the Central Government’s proposal to de-regulate the sugar and cane sectors, which would effectively signal an end to the State’s control over reserving the cane area of the sugar mills and fixing the procurement price for the growers. At his meeting with the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council,...

-PTI Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council today said poor monsoon is likely to pull down farm sector growth rate to 0.5 per cent in the current financial year, a projection that is even lower than in 2009-10 when monsoon was the worst in 28 years. The growth in the agriculture sector was one per cent in 2009-10 when production had fallen by 16 million tonnes due to poor monsoon. As many as...

The NAC lies defanged; the markets leap for joy at Manmohan’s & Co’s charge of a ‘new’ economy How swiftly things change. Just a month ago, the great Indian growth story was being written off. Now, the “new economy”, run by the PM-cum-FM, will sift through the rubble of under-seven per cent growth, find the hidden springs of recovery and throw in some reforms for good measure. A top taxman says...

-The Indian Express   Time to take the bolder steps, bring FDI to small towns When the GDP falls below 7 per cent, we need to start worrying. When it is less than 6 per cent, we must treat it as a crisis situation. Growth models show that the robust investment rates already achieved, and twice the productivity growth achieved in the 1980s and ’90s, will get us 8 per cent growth. This...