-Livemint.com Given the over-optimistic revenue estimates and under-budgeted expenditure, the FinMin’s budget projections should be taken with a pinch of salt Dark clouds are gathering over the fiscal horizon. Finance minister Arun Jaitley will table an interim budget on 1 February—just weeks before India goes to polls. There’s a growing consensus among analysts that the government will miss its revenue target for the year, largely because the collections from the goods and services...

-The Hindu The outgoing CEA also batted for the lateral entry of talent into the government The compensation payable to the States for revenue loss arising due to GST is just ?5,000 crore, far lower than was estimated, according to Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian. In a candid interview to The Hindu, the outgoing CEA also batted for the lateral entry of talent into the government, saying that it was a “no brainer”...

-Frontline.in Despite its deeply flawed neoliberal perspective, Economic Survey 2017-18 is rich in detail, has many useful analytical discussions at different levels of aggregation, and would serve as a useful resource for students and scholars. When Arvind Subramanian, the present Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance who took office way back in October 2014, presented his first Economic Survey, the one for 2014-15, there was considerable novelty on offer, at...

-The Hindu The slowdown in private investments is visible chiefly in the informal sector, not the corporate sector It is now well recognised that there is an investment slowdown in India, which is delaying a full-blooded recovery in the economy. Private investments, the principle engine of growth, are out of steam. The fall is so severe that it has more than offset the government’s macroeconomic stimulus of increased public investments. The slowdown started...

-Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) Union Budget 2018-19 is the fifth and the final full-year budget of the current ruling dispensation. The major plank on which this government was elected in 2014 with an exceptional mandate were issues of development related to reducing corruption, generating meaningful employment opportunities, tackling inflation (especially food inflation, an issue plaguing the economy at that point of time), reducing inequality, and pushing the economy...