Most of us don’t even get a single shot at making history — Manmohan Singh has a second chance The fiscal deficit is an outcome, not a policy. It is the net resolution of the policies pertaining to taxes and expenditure. It is worth analysing separately the two components of the deficit. The table reports the results of relating the tax and expenditure share of GDP to per capita income for...
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UPA’s elbow room to push crucial reforms may shrink
-The Indian Express The Samajwadi Party’s sweep in India’s biggest state, Uttar Pradesh, and Congress’s defeat in Punjab and Goa will further shrink the elbow room the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre has to push through key initiatives such as foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, pension reforms and legislation such as the goods and service tax (GST) that require support from states. The Centre had postponed some of these...
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-Live Mint High on hype, the budget speech of the Union finance minister today is merely a statement of account. As India’s economy diversifies—with the private sector playing an increasingly important role—this annual feature has assumed much lower salience. Not only have fiscal policies lost the space they enjoyed in earlier years, even major policy announcements are restricted to being mere statements of account. Examples from other arenas include “activism” on...
More »PM panel for diesel price hike
-The Times of India Making a strong pitch for raising diesel prices, Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council chairman C Rangarajan on Wednesday said there was a need to revise prices to reduce the huge subsidy burden and bring down the fiscal deficit. While releasing the economic review for 2011-12, Rangarajan said it was earlier agreed to deregulate diesel prices but the decision was never implemented. He advocated a phased deregulation of diesel...
More »Decontrol urea prices, raise excise duty: PMEAC
-PTI Amid widening fiscal deficit, Prime Minister's economic advisory panel today suggested aligning diesel prices to global market in a phased manner and also raising excise and service taxes to pre-crisis level of 12%. Releasing the Review of the Economy: 2011-12, Chairman of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) C Rangarajan also pitched for deregulation of urea prices. Expressing concern over high fiscal deficit which is expected to overshoot the target of 4.6%...
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