KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-The Telegraph Corporate tax contributes 8 percentage points less to the gross tax revenue now than it did in 2014 when the Modi government took over, says P Chidambaram New Delhi: The Opposition on Monday sought answers to fundamental questions on the economy that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has strenuously asserted is the fastest growing in the world. Corporate tax, paid by business houses, contributes 8 percentage points less to the gross tax...

-Hindustan Times The petitioners had questioned whether the Government carried out any study linking demonetisation as an effective tool to achieve the objectives of curbing black money, terror financing or fake currency. Hardships caused due to demonetisation cannot be the basis for faulting the Government’s 2016 notification to ban currency notes of ₹500 and ₹1000, the Centre told the Supreme Court, adding that the cutoff date December 30 fixed by the Centre...

The newly released World Bank report has estimated that the number of extremely poor people globally went up by nearly 71 million in the year 2020 as compared to 2019 — a 11 percent increase. Between 2019 and 2020, the number of poor swelled by around 56 million in India. It means that about 79 percent of the total people globally who slipped into poverty during the first year of...

-Livemint.com The government had in October 2021 announced conCESsional import duty on crude soybean oil, crude palm oil and crude sunflower oil till March 2022, which was once extended till end of September. This has now again been extended till next March, as per the order. NEW DELHI: The finance ministry has extended conCESsional basic customs duty and agriculture and infrastructure development CESs applicable on edible oils by six months till end...