-Livemint.com Krishi Kalyan Cess, a 0.5% cess on all taxable services introduced last year to support a drought-hit farm sector, will raise Rs 9,000 crore in 2016-17 New delhi: Krishi Kalyan Cess, a 0.5% cess on all taxable services introduced last year to support a drought-hit farm sector, will raise Rs 9,000 crore in 2016-17, budget documents presented in the parliament on Wednesday showed. The central government is spending money from this corpus...

-TheWire.in Were the budget estimates for corporation and income taxes in 2016-17 a good coincidence or were they supposed to have been be qualified with a note? New delhi: For the first time in at least ten years, the budget estimates (BE) of India’s corporate tax and income tax revenue receipts have exactly matched their corresponding revised estimates (RE) – give or take a couple of decimal points. A key part of every...

-NDTV The "highest ever allocation" to NREGA (which also led to it trending on Twitter)  in the Union Budget has provided a useful opportunity to raise some pressing issues related to the implementation of the scheme. It is natural, and welcome, that the government turn to NREGA to provide much-needed relief to those whose already precarious lives have been disrupted by demonetization, a man-made economic disaster. Widespread reports of job losses...

-Livemint.com On demonetisation’s impact on the agriculture sector, the Economic Survey said higher winter plantings may not necessarily lead to higher production New delhi: India’s farm sector is entwined in regulation and is a living legacy of the socialist era, the Economic Survey released on Tuesday said, criticizing curbs on marketing of agriculture produce and imposition of stock limits on traders. “While progress has been made in the last two years, producers (farmers)...

-TheWire.in   Two supplementary MNREGA allocations were made by the government last year. This means, there’s only a 1%, not 25%, actual increase in this year’s Budget.   New delhi: The finance minister claimed that this year’s Budget allocations for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) were a new “record”, at Rs 48,000 crore. But is this really a substantial increase? And, more importantly, is it enough? The 2016-17 Budget had...