-Livemint.com Correcting import-duty anomalies will attract foreign firms to set up assembly bases here and lift our global competitiveness A steady decline in import tariff rates in manufacturing industries had been an important feature of India’s economic reforms during the 1990s and 2000s. The average import tariff rate was reduced from about 84% in 1990 to the lowest-ever level of 8.6% in 2010. Consequently, imports of goods plus services as a percentage...

-TheWire.in The pandemic and lockdown threw existing budgetary calculus completely out of line. But that provides an opportunity too. In December 2020, talking at a CII meet, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman reportedly stated: “100 years of India wouldn’t have seen a budget being made post-pandemic like this”. Was it a mere statement of fact, that never before had parts of the budget-making process been done in a virtual manner after a pandemic, or...

-IDROnline.org Agriculture value-chains can only be strengthened by listening to multiple actors; most importantly, farmers. India has been witnessing a spate of month-long farmer protests across the country, particularly in the national capital, against the recently introduced farm bills by the central government. One of the major reasons behind these agitations, including calls for repealing the law, is that farmers were not actively involved in the policymaking cycle of these laws, which...

-The Hindu The paradox becomes clearer by recognising the circuit of financial flows beyond the real economy Divergences between the booming financial and the stagnant real sectors, which appear rather confounding as well as disconcerting, warrant an explanation. Enumerating the facts in India’s major secondary stock market, the Sensex (the benchmark index of the BSE Limited, or formerly the Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd.) has been found tracking an upward path, from 40,817 on...

-The Indian Express The Union budget should focus on enhancing credit flows to the small and marginal farmers, increase investment in health and education. The first advance estimates of GDP for 2020-21 are much better than the earlier market consensus and shows the inherent strengths of the Indian economy. The economy is expected to contract by 7.7 per cent implying a COVID-19 induced loss of Rs 9.61 lakh crore in real terms...