One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...
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Budget 2012: Farce of food subsidy being played out again-Nidhi Nath Srinivas
The UPA-II has used the Budget to again play politics with hunger. But it has paid no heed to the ticking time bomb of growing social tensions as 58 million Indians living off agriculture slide deeper into poverty. The Economic Survey says more than half the population is dependent on a sector whose share in the economy is shrinking. The urban-rural income divide is therefore steadily widening, a tinder box that...
More »Retail inflation at 8.83 per cent in February
-PTI Retail inflation was at 8.83 per cent in February on account of higher prices of protein based items and edible oil products. Retail inflation, based on the Consumer Price Index, was 7.65 per cent the January, as per the government data release here today. Among other items, only vegetable prices saw a decline of 4.73 per cent over the February 2011 level. During the month, the prices of egg, meat and fish rose...
More »Building on Aadhaar
-The Business Standard In Budget, reformers win, NAC loses The consensus opinion that has developed about the 2012-13 Budget presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday is that it was unambitious, especially in terms of reworking government spending. It delivered little in terms of a vision for reform, the argument goes, constrained as it was by the spending-hungry allies in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the entitlement-hooked Congress leadership. A...
More »Subsidy bill reduction target ‘ambitious’-Aman Malik
The government plans to cut its subsidy bill to under 2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012-13, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said in his budget speech on Friday. High crude oil prices and burgeoning fertilizer subsidies, primarily on account of imported non-urea fertilizers, have meant India’s subsidy bill has zoomed to Rs2.16 trillion, or 2.5% of the GDP. Mukherjee has set an ambitious target to reduce this to under 1.75%...
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