-The New Indian Express Which means sometime last year, when crude was averaging $25 a barrel, petrol should have sold for Rs 50 a litre. Nearly two-and-a-half years ago, when global crude oil prices were around $75 a barrel, petrol was selling at Indian pumps for Rs 75 a litre. Today, when crude oil prices have fallen to $52 a barrel, petrol prices have hit an all-time high of Rs 86 or...

-NetworkIdeas.org India’s Constitution puts the bulk of responsibility for the basic goods and services to be provided to citizens on to state governments. That is also why it mandated that independent Finance Commissions be appointed every five years to determine the distribution of Tax Revenues between Centre and the various states. Successive Finance Commissions (FCs) have also recognised that state governments necessarily require more resources to fulfil their obligations, which is...

-Livemint.com The government will have to ensure its spending improves economy-wide productivity, and its own revenue-generating capacity, to avoid a stagflationary trap After dithering on a fiscal stimulus package for nearly a year, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has declared that she will not allow the fiscal deficit number to worry her too much as she pushes spending to revive growth in the upcoming budget. The government hopes that growth will generate higher...

-The Telegraph Three states — Punjab, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh — have not accepted the proposals yet Bengal and Kerala have dropped their opposition to the Centre’s borrowing option to bridge the gap in the Goods and Services Tax Revenue receipts. The two states have opted for the limited borrowing option under which the Centre will borrow funds and pass them on to the states but the debt will be recognised in the balance...

Just before Dhanteras and Diwali this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the November edition of its monthly bulletin. The latest RBI Monthly Bulletin says that the GDP has contracted by -8.6 percent in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020-21 (i.e. July-September, 2020) as compared to the gross domestic product (GDP) during the corresponding period last year. It may be noted that India’s GDP shrunk by -23.9...