In each of the last three years – from 2020 through 2022 – Indian banks lent more money to retail customers purchasing homes than they did to farmers. In fiscal year (FY)2021-22 commercial banks gaveRs. 17.54 lakh crore worth of housing loans, while agriculture and allied activities got Rs. 15.16 lakh crore. That is nearly 14 percent less. In FY 2021 and FY 2020 – one of which saw a...
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Price pinch: Editorial on the impact of inflation
-The Telegraph The Reserve Bank of India’s usual strategy of raising interest rates to hold inflation at bay kicked in a bit late and has not been working well so far In India, price inflation has been creeping up in the recent past. The latest data for June 2022 show consumer price index inflation to be 7.01% and wholesale price index inflation to be 15.18%. Food prices, which are an important component...
More »The poor are bearing the brunt of inflation -Krishna Raj
-The Tribune The prices of essential food items have increased by 50% in seven years, whereas the real wage rate has risen by 22%. These figures show that inflation has outsmarted the real income of the poor, making their lives miserable as the food basket constitutes a substantial proportion of the total expenditure on the poor. The net effect is that the poor earn less and take loans to maintain the...
More »Is the govt. doing enough for the Jan Aushadhi scheme?
On Janaushadhi Diwas this year (i.e., March 7th, 2022), Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi stated that the poor and the middle-class benefited from the 'Jan Aushadhi Kendras' that were set up to provide generic drugs at affordable prices. He said that the poor and the middle class saved around Rs.13,000 crore through these stores during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of COVID 19 crisis, the 'Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India'...
More »EMI crisis creeping up on borrowers -Shayan Ghosh
-Livemint.com * The spike in auto-debit failures suggest that the pain may have only just begun for India’s small borrowers * With mandatory EMI repayments kicking in since September, many feel the available recast options and a waiver of compound interest are not sufficient. India may be staring at a loan crisis MUMBAI: For someone who had never defaulted on any loans before March this year, Monica Keerthi Karri gets quite harried at...
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