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...

Milk prices are expected to remain high this summer due to tight demand-supply balance and high input costs, said Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das at the first bi-monthly monetary policy of 2023 on Thursday. “Milk prices could remain firm due to high input costs and seasonal factors,” said Das. The RBI’s observation comes a day after reports stated that the government was mulling import of dairy products this...

Food inflation rose sharply to 6.19% in January from 4.58% in December, led by rising prices of most segments Livemint.com The union government on Wednesday sold 385,000 tonnes of wheat worth ₹901 crore in the open market, in the second round of a planned auction of three million tonnes it plans to offload from the central pool to counter rising prices of the key foodgrain. The move assumes significance as India’s retail inflation...

The Centre will introduce new guidelines for releasing subsidies to farmers for the purchase of farm machinery and tools, Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shobha Karandlaje has said. A major portion of the subsidy is at present set apart for the purchase of tractors and farmers are not able to purchase other farm machineries and tools required for their daily work, she said.  The minister asked youth...

-The Hindu Business Line Average prices of liquid milk in the North Eastern region saw the highest increase between January 1 and November 22, followed by the North, East, West and South regions. Inflationary pressures on milk remain unabated as Mother Dairy has decided to hike prices on two of its milk variants, effective Monday. While milk prices have been on the rise this year, dairy products such as curd and ice...