-The Indian Express With economic activity severely disrupted in the first two months of this fiscal, hit hard by a series of localised lockdowns and rising Covid-19 cases, GDP contraction for the first quarter is being pegged at an average 20 per cent by economists, with the de-growth range between 15.2 per cent and 25.5 per cent. The April-June Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will mark India’s entry into a recessionary phase —...

-The Hindu The World Bank’s decision to halt its annual ‘Doing Business’ report on data authenticity issues has major implications On Thursday, the World Bank halted its annual publication, ‘Doing Business’ report, as it detected irregularities of data for a few countries. A World Bank Press release of August 27 said: “The integrity and impartiality of our data and analysis is paramount and so we are immediately taking the following actions. We...

-Livemint.com The collapse of GDP growth by 23.9% for the Apr to Jun period isn’t a surprise. The economy was under a strict lockdown for most of the time to contain the pandemic. Nevertheless, a little digging throws up interesting trends. Mint takes a look. * What does the GDP figure highlight? One way to measure the GDP is to add private consumption expenditure, government consumption expenditure, investment and net exports (exports minus...

-The Indian Express The economic slowdown, which has been underway for almost three years now, began to adversely impact GST revenue collections in August last year. While the Centre Thursday chose to pin much of the blame for the delays on GST compensation payments to the slowdown inflicted by the pandemic, the delays preceded the Covid-19 shock by almost a year – when payments due for August-September 2019 got delayed. Since then,...

-The Hindu Devising State-specific industrialisation strategies in coordination with the Centre will improve manufacturing Many think that in the aftermath of the pandemic, several manufacturing companies operating from China will relocate their businesses to other destinations, including India. Many American, Japanese, and South Korean companies based in China have initiated discussions with the Indian government to relocate their plants to India. Companies are expected to exit China due to three primary reasons....