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...

Following the pandemic, the income of the bottom 50 per cent of the population is estimated at 13 percent of national income and 3 percent of total wealth Apoorva Mahendru, Kanishk Gomes, Mayurakshi Dutta, Noopur, Pravas Ranjan Mishra Oxfam International's annual inequality report makes for stark reading. The India supplement, part of the main report, states that the top 1 percent of Indians own nearly 40.6 percent of the total wealth in...

-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...

-PTI/ The Telegraph Confederation of Indian Industry, which was part of the virtual pre-Budget meeting, calls for an aggressive focus on privatisation of public sector units The Budget should focus on measures to accelerate job creation and broaden the tax base by rationalising GST and personal income tax slabs to boost consumption, industry bodies said in their pre-Budget meeting with finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday. "The external scenario is likely to continue...

-The Hindu The one lever that the government could have pulled as it watched private investment decline was to step up public investment In a meeting held with the country’s corporate leaders on September 15, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman drew attention to an important aspect of the economy today. She rightly flagged concerns about sluggish corporate investment, despite the government’s business-friendly stance, including a reduction in the corporate tax. The reduction, effected...