In order to understand why the Union Budget 2021-22 is being termed as ‘transparent’, it has to be read simultaneously with the 15th Finance Commission Main Report for 2021-26. But first, let us discuss 'fertilizer subsidy'. The budget documents for Union Budget 2021-22 show that the spending on ‘fertilizer subsidy’ was slashed from Rs. 1,33,947 crore in 2020-21 (revised estimate) to Rs. 79,530 crore in 2021-22 (budget estimate). However, the budgetary...
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With savings rate falling, phasing out exemptions may hit it harder -Udit Misra
-The Indian Express The savings rate, expressed as a percentage of the gross domestic product, reflects the pool of investible funds within the country that are available for the government and private businesses to use for investment purposes. The government’s plan to gradually get rid of all exemptions and deductions under the personal income tax regime — in a bid to provide lower taxes and a simplified tax architecture as well as...
More »Prabhat Patnaik, an economist and former economics professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, interviewed by Kaushal Shroff (The Caravan)
-CaravanMagazine.in In the budget unveiled in July, the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman ambitiously claimed that India’s economy would hit $5 trillion by 2025. In the weeks that followed, the Central Statistics Office revealed that the gross domestic product growth rate for the April–June quarter fell to a six-year low of five percent; the Reserve Bank of India cleared a surplus transfer of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the union government; and...
More »Cash still the king. Cash savings highest in a decade -Gayatri Nayak
-The Economic Times Demonetisation seems to have had no impact on cash savings by the Indian household, Savings are again going out of the banking system with share of savings in form of cash touching decade high and that of deposits touching decade lows. While currency in circulation is at Rs 19.38 lakh crore is much higher than pre-demonetisation levels, household savings in form of cash and currency has surged to...
More »Too clever by half? -Venkatesh Athreya
-Frontline.in Despite its deeply flawed neoliberal perspective, Economic Survey 2017-18 is rich in detail, has many useful analytical discussions at different levels of aggregation, and would serve as a useful resource for students and scholars. When Arvind Subramanian, the present Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance who took office way back in October 2014, presented his first Economic Survey, the one for 2014-15, there was considerable novelty on offer, at...
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