-The Hindu With an eye on the upcoming elections in different States, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has declared that he is presenting a Budget that provides “additional resources for vulnerable sections, rural areas and social and physical infrastructure”. But since aggregate expenditure in nominal terms is slated to rise by just 10.8 per cent between this financial year and the next, that seems difficult to believe. Consider, for example, the...
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Just another trivial Budget -Ashok V Desai
-The Hindu The Finance Minister’s prescriptions are a classic case of being unable to see the wood for the trees, be it on the tax proposals, the rural outreach or the bank bailout. It was a marathon achievement: 12,187 words in 111 minutes. True, there were no interruptions; the Finance Minister virtually sent the House to sleep. I have listened to many Budget speeches; and I cannot say that Dr. Manmohan Singh...
More »A budget for Bharat can reset the narrative -Anil Padmanabhan
-Livemint.com Pro-poor and yet not populist can be the single defining strand of this year’s Union budget The run-up to this year’s Union budget, especially the past one week, has taken place in the backdrop of an unprecedented, vicious political confrontation between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition. Together with the hit-wicket tendencies of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), it probably exaggerated the magnitude of every challenge...
More »Budget 2016: Govt to spend Rs 5,500 cr on crop insurance scheme
-Business Standard An uniform premium of 2% needs to be paid by farmers for all Kharif crops and 1.5% for all Rabi crops The government is planning to spend Rs 5,500 crore for the crop insurance scheme that was announced earlier, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the farmers will have to pay a nominal premium for the coverage. There will be an...
More »Be cautious on new accounting system: CGA -TCA Sharad Raghavan
-The Hindu The new method provides a more accurate picture of a company's financial position. It is also more complex, expensive and time-consuming. The Controller General of Accounts has asked the government to be careful in adopting the accrual method of accounting considering the costs involved as only a few of its departments can benefit. “We should tread this subject in a careful manner. There is no such thing as a big-bang approach....
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