-Networkideas.org The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent war sparked rapid and dramatic increases in some global trade prices, particularly for fuel products, wheat and fertilizer for which Russia and Ukraine are major exporters. It is now clear that these price changes were not due to actual changes in total supply, which remained largely unchanged (although source locations and trade routes shifted). Instead, market expectations amplified by media hype, financial...

-ThePrint.in In recent years, fuel prices have been kept static for weeks before assembly polls, only to be changed soon after. However, there's no clarity over who's deciding the prices. New Delhi: Rising oil prices have meant that the Modi government is increasingly abandoning a dynamic pricing reform it had adopted in 2017 and is now exerting more control over fuel prices. Troublingly, government data shows that fuel prices are being kept...

-Newsclick.in The government appears to be blithely indifferent to the devastation caused by its food grain mismanagement. The latest available data shows that the allocation of wheat for distribution through the Public Distribution System (PDS)— the ration system as it is known—has fallen dramatically this year. This has naturally led to a drop in offtake, that is, the distribution to needy families. Till October 2022, 115 lakh tonnes of wheat was allocated from...

There is some respite expected for India in terms of prices of imported commodities. This may ease the depletion of its foreign exchange reserves. The country has faced a widening of its merchandise trade deficit from US$ -17.91 billion to US$ -26.91 billion between October 2021 and October 2022. The commodity price data provided by the World Bank in December 2022 (termed as The Pink Sheet) shows that energy prices plummeted by...

-The Telegraph This is the first upgrade of India’s growth forecast by any international agency amid global turmoil India’s economy is expected to grow 6.9 per cent in the current fiscal year, the World Bank said in a report on Tuesday, citing tightening monetary policy and high commodity prices as factors impacting the country’s growth. The Bank had trimmed its growth forecast for India to 6.5 per cent in early October from a...